Contents4
Category pages or product pages: which bring the most traffic? The debate comes back regularly, backed by click studies. It is legitimate, but it looks at ecommerce through yesterday’s glasses. A product’s visibility no longer plays out only in the ten blue links.
A click does not tell you what Google chooses to show
Most of these studies count clicks. Yet a click measures the user’s choice, shaped by the title, the hook, the displayed price. What Google decides to show is read in impressions.
Mixing the two leads to bad decisions. A category may get more clicks because its title is better, while Google mostly shows product pages for the same query. Before reorganising a site, look at both columns in Search Console, not just one.
The heart of ecommerce: the product feed
Sticking to Search Console’s classic performance report means forgetting the essential. Today, a product is visible on many more surfaces than text results:
- free merchant listings, built from the feed sent to Google Merchant Center, in the Shopping tab and elsewhere;
- visual search: Google Lens, visual carousels, searches where people photograph an object to find it;
- AI answers, which draw on product structured data to recommend, compare and cite.
On all these surfaces, the page does not come first: the product data does. A precise title, complete attributes (size, material, colour, brand), clean images, an up-to-date price and stock. We cover the setup in our article on Google Shopping and marketplaces.
Yesterday’s debate
Categories or product pages: which gets more clicks?
A single report, the text results one
You optimise the page
Today’s priority
Categories and product pages, each on its right intent
Impressions, free listings, images and AI
You also optimise the product data
Categories and product pages: not one against the other
The two page types should not be pitted against each other. They do not answer the same search:
- the category page answers broad searches, when the customer is still comparing (“convertible corner sofa”);
- the product page answers precise searches, when they know what they want (a model, a reference, a colour).
The job is to qualify the intent of each query, then give each page its own, without two pages competing for the same one. A solid product page that answers the customer’s real questions remains essential: that is the subject of our article on the product page that converts.
Our view
While some debate which format gets the most clicks, the real lead is taken elsewhere: a clean, complete product feed, pages that each answer a clear intent, and tracking that looks at impressions as much as clicks. The stores that care for their product data are the ones Google, Lens and AI put forward, whatever the page type.
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
Also in e-commerce
Practical guide5 min
Product page that converts: what buyers look for
Before paying, buyers check four things: what exactly the product is, what they will pay in total, when they will receive it and what happens if it does not suit them. A page that answers those questions sells better than a page full of fine phrases.
Practical guide8 min
Google Shopping and marketplaces: preparing your store
Before listing a catalogue on Google Shopping or a marketplace, you need clean product data: identifiers, titles, prices, availability, shipping and returns. What Google Merchant Center asks for, and why it is the same foundation for every channel.
Practical guide5 min
Google Shopping: what makes a campaign rise or sink
A Google Shopping campaign is not tuned with keywords: it lives on product data, on price against competitors and on the queries you exclude. The levers that lift it, and the mistakes that sink it without a sound.