Free Shipping Eligibility: Requirements and Setup in GMC

Why Free Shipping Matters in Shopping

Products with free shipping show a "Free delivery" badge in Shopping results. This significantly increases click-through rate — across most categories, products with free shipping out-click comparable products with paid shipping by 20–40%.

Getting the free shipping configuration correct in GMC is worth the setup time.

Configuring Free Shipping in GMC

Go to Shipping and returns in GMC. Edit or create a shipping service.

Option 1: Unconditional free shipping Set the rate to "Free" for all orders. Simple and clear.

Option 2: Free shipping above a threshold Set up two rate rules within the same shipping service:

• •Orders under $X: flat rate (your standard shipping cost)
• •Orders $X and above: Free

GMC supports conditional rules within a single service using order value ranges.

Option 3: Free shipping via feed attribute Include a shipping attribute in your feed with cost 0.00 for products that qualify for free shipping. This overrides account-level settings for those products.

Critical: Match GMC to Checkout

The shipping configuration in GMC must exactly match what customers see at checkout. If GMC shows free shipping over $50 but your store requires $75 for free shipping, this is a policy violation.

Audit this regularly — especially after platform updates or carrier rate changes.

Free Shipping on Specific Products

To offer free shipping on specific products only, use the feed-level shipping attribute. Add a shipping column to your feed with 0 cost for those products. For other products, either omit the attribute (falls back to account settings) or include your standard rate.

The Free Shipping Badge

The "Free delivery" badge appears automatically in Shopping once your GMC configuration correctly shows $0 shipping. No additional setup is needed.