Tracking "In stores nearby" local organic shopping results at scale with Productrise

If you run ecommerce SEO for a brand with physical stores, your store location impacts organic shopping visibility more than you probably think. Google the same query from two different cities and the results can look very different, especially when the "In stores nearby" carousel shows up.

Here's a quick walkthrough of what this feature looks like, why it matters, and how you can now track it in Productrise.

What is the "In stores nearby" carousel?

"In stores nearby" is a specific organic product carousel that Google shows on shopping-related SERPs. Unlike the "Popular products" carousel, which pulls products Google considers best overall for a country, "In stores nearby" is tied directly to the searcher's location. It lists products sold by stores that are physically close to wherever the search is happening.

Google has been pushing this harder since 2020, when COVID made local shopping a priority. Since then, it has stuck around and expanded. In the US especially, you can see it on almost every product SERP.

Here's what it looks like in the United States for the query "12 inch screwdriver":

The carousel is not limited to the US. It also shows up in a handful of other countries, including Canada and Australia. Here's an Australian example for the query "plywood 12mm":

"Nearby" flags can show up even without the carousel

This is where it gets interesting. The dedicated "In stores nearby" carousel only appears in a limited number of countries. But that does not mean Google ignores proximity everywhere else. In many cases, Google will flag individual products as "Nearby" inside other carousels, like the regular "Popular products" block, when it knows a store is close to the searcher.

Here's a Canadian SERP for "samsung 50 inch tv", where some products inside the Popular products carousel are tagged as Nearby:

And here's a UK example for "rowing machine under 500gbp", where Google also surfaces a nearby flag on shopping results even though the dedicated "In stores nearby" carousel isn't part of the SERP:

The takeaway: even if your market doesn't get the dedicated carousel, proximity can still influence which products Google decides to show to a specific searcher.

Why national rank tracking falls short

If you're only tracking rankings at the country level, you might be missing a big part of the picture. A product that looks invisible on a national SERP can actually be ranking well for searchers near one of your stores, and the other way around: a product that looks like it ranks nationally might drop off completely in cities where you have no physical presence.

This matters most for brands with a local focus. Retailers with a handful of stores, regional chains, franchises, and any business where "winning" a SERP depends on being close to the buyer.

How to manually check local SERPs

Before jumping into tracking, it helps to know how to spot-check local results yourself.

First, Google usually shows the location it's using for your search at the bottom of the SERP. It's worth checking, because the assumed location is not always what you'd expect:

For simulating searches from a different location, a free tool called Valentin.app works well. Open an incognito browser, use Valentin.app to build a Google search URL for the city you want to test, and you can see roughly what a searcher in that location would see. It's a quick way to sanity-check your local visibility without flying to another country.

Track local organic shopping results in Productrise

Manual spot checks are useful, but they don't scale. If you want to monitor how your products rank in specific cities over time, you need proper tracking.

As of this week, city-level query tracking is available to all Productrise users. You could already track any country in the world. Now you can go one level deeper and track your queries from any specific location that matters to you, down to smaller cities like Bend, Oregon or Boise, Idaho.

For every tracked query, you'll see the exact SERP Productrise captured from that location, including the "In stores nearby" carousel when it appears, and any "Nearby" flags on individual products in other carousels. That gives you an accurate view of how your products actually rank for searchers in the places you care about, not just a national average that can hide what's really happening on the ground.

If you're a brand with physical stores, or an agency managing local ecommerce clients, this is probably the most accurate way to measure your real organic shopping visibility.