The jury's out: cheaper products rank higher in Google Shopping

If you've ever suspected that Google favors cheaper products in its organic shopping results, you're not wrong. But the reason why is more interesting than you might think, and the implications for sellers are a lot more nuanced than "just lower your prices."

We analyzed 997,953 product listings across 56,466 Google search results to find out whether price actually influences where a product appears on the page. The short answer: it does. Products priced below their search result page average rank about 8.7% higher than products priced above it. But that number doesn't tell the whole story.

If you want to dig into the live data, we update it daily at our Google Shopping price ranking insights page. The last 30 days of data are always available there.

How we measured product position

Before getting into what the data shows, it's worth explaining how product position was measured, because ranking "number 1" is less straightforward than it sounds.

Google's search results are dynamic. A product that appears first in a carousel isn't necessarily near the top of the page. Depending on the query, Google might show an AI overview, a Google Maps pack, a YouTube video carousel, or several other result types above the product carousel. This means that absolute carousel position tells you very little about where a product actually appears on the page.

To account for this, we measured pixel depth: the relative position of a product compared to the total height of the search result page. If a page is 2,000 pixels long and a product appears at pixel 500, its pixel depth is 25%. A lower pixel depth means the product appears higher up on the page.

Products priced below their SERP average had an average pixel depth of 60.4%. Products priced above average came in at 65.7%. That 5.3 percentage point gap translates to an 8.7% difference in page position.

The dataset only covers the first page of Google results. The second page exists, but in practice, almost no one visits it.

What "cheaper" actually means

Whether a $50 product is cheap depends entirely on context. For pencils, it's expensive. For a dishwasher, it's basically free. Treating price as an absolute number would make comparisons across categories meaningless.

Instead, we normalized prices at the search result page level. For every keyword, we calculated the average price of all products appearing on that page. A product is considered "cheaper" if its price falls below that page-level average, regardless of the actual dollar amount. This makes the comparison fair across completely different product categories.

Does Google actually reward lower prices?

Not exactly. Google's algorithm almost certainly doesn't have a direct rule that says "rank cheaper products higher." What's more likely happening is indirect: Google tracks engagement signals, and cheaper products tend to get more clicks.

Think about it from a consumer perspective. If two products are roughly equal in quality and one costs less, most people will click on the cheaper one. More clicks mean better click-through rates. Better click-through rates are a strong signal to Google that a product is relevant and appealing to searchers. Over time, that engagement data can push cheaper products higher up the page.

This is an important distinction. Google isn't rewarding cheap products. It's rewarding products that consumers find compelling, and price is one of the biggest factors in whether a product looks compelling in a carousel. Products with better perceived value get more attention, and Google notices.

What this means for sellers

So should you lower your prices? Maybe, but it's not that simple.

The first thing to understand is where your prices stand relative to your competitors for any given search. If your products are consistently more expensive than what Google is already showing for your target keywords, you're fighting an uphill battle for visibility. That's a competitive reality worth knowing before you make any decisions.

Productrise shows you exactly this. For any query group you're tracking, you can see the price distribution of every competitor appearing in Google's organic carousels. Rather than just showing you a single average price per competitor, it breaks down how their prices are spread across their entire product range for that category. So you can see at a glance whether a competitor is consistently cheap, or whether they're ranking with a mix of budget and premium products. That context matters when you're deciding how to respond.

If lowering prices is genuinely possible, and your competitors are all significantly cheaper, then it's at least worth testing whether adjusting pricing improves your visibility over time. But for many sellers, price cuts aren't on the table. Margins are tight, or the product is simply positioned at a premium.

In that case, the play is to justify the price through everything else. Products with more reviews, stronger ratings, and more detailed product information give consumers reasons to choose them even when they cost more. A product with 500 reviews and a 4.8-star rating can compete with cheaper alternatives, because the value proposition is clear.

It's also worth thinking about what "competitive" means beyond price. If your products are well-optimized with strong titles, complete product data, and proper structured data, Google has an easier time understanding and featuring them. That foundation matters regardless of where your prices land.

You can try Productrise for free to see how your products compare to competitors ranking for the same keywords, including price comparisons, without needing a credit card.

The bigger picture

Price is one signal among many. It influences click-through rates, which influences rankings, which influences visibility. But it's downstream of a lot of other factors: how well your product feed is set up, how your titles are written, whether your structured data is in order, and whether consumers trust your products based on reviews and ratings.

The data suggests cheaper products have an edge, but it's not a deterministic edge. Plenty of higher-priced products rank well because they've got everything else right. And plenty of cheap products rank poorly because their product data is a mess or their images are weak.

If you want to understand where your products stand and how your pricing compares to what's actually ranking in Google's organic carousels, the data is right there to explore. We update our price ranking insights daily, so you're always looking at fresh data.