Should you be on Amazon at all, and how do you position yourself as AI fundamentally rewrites product discovery?

Amazon quits shopping ads. What Actually Happened: The Timeline

May 2025
Amazon cuts its Google Shopping spend by approximately 50% in the US — a gradual withdrawal that went largely unnoticed at the time, later identified as a deliberate incrementality test. [1]
21–23 Jul 2025
Amazon disappears completely from Google Shopping globally — including the UK. In the UK specifically, Amazon’s impression share fell from 55% to zero within 48 hours. Confirmed by Josh Duggan, co-founder of UK agency Vervaunt, who monitors approximately 13 million daily Shopping impressions: “We’ve seen Amazon completely disappear from the auction since Tuesday afternoon. On average, Amazon appears in roughly 30% of our client base’s Shopping auctions — so this is a big shift.” No statement from Amazon. No warning. [2]
23–26 Aug 2025
Amazon returns to all international markets — UK, EU, AU, CA — exactly one month later. Back to approximately 74% impression share in international markets within days. Mike Ryan at Smarter Ecommerce: “Amazon appeared as an account-level competitor for three quarters of European advertisers overnight.” The UK/EU window closes almost immediately. [3]
April 2026
Amazon is fully back on amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.fr and all EU marketplaces at pre-July auction levels. It remains absent from the US only, where the absence has now stretched to nine months — a useful comparison for understanding what the UK window briefly offered.
UK sellers: the honest summary
You had roughly five weeks — late July to late August 2025 — when Amazon was absent from UK Google Shopping auctions. That window is closed. Amazon is back at full pressure across amazon.co.uk and all EU marketplaces. The lesson from those five weeks isn’t that you missed a windfall. It’s this: UK brands with clean Merchant Centre feeds, zero disapprovals, and budget flexibility were the only ones who could actually capitalise within 48 hours. If your foundations weren’t in order, the opportunity didn’t exist for you regardless.

Current Market Status

Market Amazon on Google Shopping? Situation for UK/EU Sellers
🇬🇧 United Kingdom Back since Aug 2025 Amazon.co.uk fully restored — back to or above pre-July auction pressure
🇩🇪 🇫🇷 🇪🇸 🇮🇹 Europe Back since Aug 2025 amazon.de, .fr, .es, .it all restored — Temu also filled the gap and has stayed
🇺🇸 United States Still absent For comparison: ongoing reduced competition — CPCs softer in Amazon-heavy categories
🌏 AU / CA / Others Back since Aug 2025 Fully restored — window has closed in all these markets

What Actually Happened to UK CPCs?

The headlines at the time were dramatic. The reality for UK advertisers was more nuanced — and the data was mixed depending entirely on how much Amazon overlapped with your specific product categories.

~30%
Amazon’s typical share of UK Shopping auctions pre-exit, per Vervaunt’s 13M daily impression data [2]
1–4%
Average CPC reduction across UK/EU Shopping auctions overall — competitors filled the gap within days [4]
+47%
ROAS uplift for high Amazon-overlap clients who acted immediately in the July–Aug window [5]

Why the gap between those numbers? In categories where Amazon held dominant share, the initial CPC relief was real — some advertisers saw drops of 25–30% in the first days. But Temu’s impression share in Europe jumped from appearing in 60% to 75% of advertisers’ auctions practically overnight as it filled the vacuum. Wayfair, eBay and mid-market retailers also moved in fast. [6]

The real lesson for UK sellers
UK performance agency Mabo put it plainly after reviewing the 31-day period: “This episode highlights the importance of best practices with the basics of your feed. When a dominant player leaves, Google is quick to reward advertisers with clean, accurate data.” [7] The +47% ROAS uplift went to brands already in the auction with optimised feeds and available budget. A broken Merchant Centre or a feed full of disapproved products means no market shift can help you.

Should Your Brand Be on Amazon? The Honest Pros & Cons

Amazon.co.uk is the UK’s largest online marketplace, with over 400 million monthly visits and approximately 30% of UK ecommerce market share. [8] There are around 281,000 active UK sellers — the second-largest seller base in the world after the US. [9] Over 85,000 UK businesses use FBA, and Amazon operates 21+ fulfilment centres across the UK. [8]

The scale is impossible to ignore. But the question isn’t whether to be on Amazon — it’s whether you’re doing it on your terms.

The Real Benefits

  • Dominant UK reach — Amazon.co.uk tops the UK marketplace charts with 400M+ monthly visits; Amazon Prime membership in the UK stands at approximately 15–20 million people [8]
  • Where UK buyers search — a study of EU5 markets (UK, DE, FR, IT, ES) found 66% of consumers start product searches on Amazon rather than Google [10]
  • FBA UK infrastructure — 21+ UK fulfilment centres handle storage, packing, shipping and returns; Pan-European FBA lets you serve DE, FR, IT, ES from one inventory pool
  • Solid margin potential — average FBA profit margins of 15–20% for well-run UK sellers; 60% of all Amazon UK sales come from third-party sellers [8]
  • Multi-marketplace reach — one Seller Central account reaches amazon.co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it via the European Fulfilment Network
  • Brand Registry protection — UK trademark holders get A+ content, storefronts, and counterfeit removal tools

The Real Risks

  • UK/EU fee changes are mixed, not simply rising — Amazon reduced average UK/EU FBA fulfilment fees by £0.15 per unit in 2026, but storage fees, return-to-seller and liquidation fees have increased. The net result: approximately £0.02 increase per FBA unit overall. Run the numbers per SKU in £. [11]
  • You don’t own the customer — no email addresses, no retargeting audiences, no direct relationship. Amazon owns the buyer. In the UK, where email marketing to repeat purchasers is a core DTC growth lever, this is a significant strategic cost.
  • Amazon PPC costs rising fast — separate from fulfilment fees, Amazon PPC CPCs rose 18–32% across categories in early 2026 globally. Organic visibility on amazon.co.uk has declined as sponsored placements dominate. [12]
  • Post-Brexit EU complexity — UK sellers shipping into DE, FR, IT, ES face customs declarations, IOSS thresholds, and potential delays that EU-based competitors avoid. VAT registration obligations in each country apply unless using the OSS scheme.
  • Account suspension risk — Amazon’s enforcement has tightened; a suspended account can halt UK and EU sales simultaneously with limited recourse. UK sellers report slower appeals processes than pre-2024.
  • Storage and returns costs creeping up — while fulfilment fees fell, monthly storage fees, return-to-seller fees and liquidation fees all increased in 2026. Sellers with slow-moving inventory are seeing net fee increases. [11]

How to Manage Amazon Without Losing Control

📦

Control Your Distribution

Authorise only approved resellers on amazon.co.uk and EU marketplaces. Use Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies and Brand Registry to prevent grey market listings undercutting your own store or your retail partners. UK brand owners have specific Brand Registry tools not available to unregistered sellers.

📧

Build Your Own Audience in Parallel

Amazon gives you the sale — your own site gives you the customer. UK consumers respond strongly to brand-direct relationships. Use packaging inserts and post-purchase email sequences to move repeat buyers to your DTC channel. Every repeat buyer on Amazon is a customer you’ve paid to acquire but can never remarket to.

💷

Model Your True Margin in £

Calculate every SKU properly: referral fee + FBA fulfilment fee + storage fee + PPC + returns + COGS + VAT. Use the Revenue Calculator set to amazon.co.uk and Profit Analytics in Seller Central — updated with 2026 UK rates. FBA fees can total £3–£5 per item even on lower-value stock. [13]

🌍

Plan EU Expansion Carefully Post-Brexit

Pan-European FBA offers reach across DE, FR, IT, ES and more — but brings VAT registration obligations in each country, or use of the OSS scheme. Post-Brexit, UK sellers face customs declarations and IOSS thresholds that EU-based competitors don’t. Get this right structurally before scaling into EU marketplaces.

🎯

Run Amazon PPC as a Margin Exercise

With Amazon PPC CPCs rising 18–32% in 2026, treat every campaign as a profitability question, not just a visibility one. Focus Sponsored Products spend on hero SKUs with strong conversion and reviews. Monitor ACoS against your actual margins — most sellers are targeting 15–25% but many are running above 30%. [12]

🛒

Keep Google Shopping Healthy in Parallel

The July 2025 events proved UK auction dynamics can shift overnight. Brands with clean, approved Google Shopping feeds and flexible budgets were the only ones who could capitalise immediately. If your Merchant Centre has disapprovals or your feed is stale, no market opportunity will be accessible when it matters.

How AI Is Changing Amazon and Google Shopping — and What UK Sellers Need to Do

The Google Shopping / Amazon drama of 2025 was partly a symptom of a deeper shift: both platforms are rebuilding product discovery around AI. For UK sellers, this is the more consequential long-term story — and it is already underway.

On Amazon: Rufus Is Rewriting How UK Buyers Find Products

Amazon’s AI shopping assistant Rufus has quietly become one of the most significant shifts in UK ecommerce search since the platform launched. Available to Amazon’s full UK customer base, Rufus replaces keyword-based search with conversational, intent-driven recommendations. Instead of searching “running shoes women,” a shopper asks: “What’s the best running shoe for someone with flat feet who runs on pavements?”

According to Attest’s 2025 UK Consumer Trends Report, 37% of UK consumers under 40 now use AI for search at least half the time — and AI shopping assistants like Rufus are identified as increasingly influential in marketplace product discovery. [14] The same report notes that only 18% of UK consumers now head directly to a brand’s own website when they want to buy something — down 3 percentage points year on year.

Globally, Rufus is now available to 300 million active customers and is driving an estimated $12 billion in incremental annualised sales for Amazon — making it a proven commercial engine, not an experimental feature. [15]

The Rufus visibility problem for UK sellers
Research by Mars United analysing over 1,000 products found that only 22% of products on Amazon’s first search results page match what Rufus recommends. And 36% of Rufus suggestions were products not even on that first page. [16] This means you can have strong keyword-based SEO on Amazon and still be completely invisible to Rufus. The algorithm is fundamentally different — and UK sellers need to adapt now, not in 12 months.
🤖

How to optimise your listings for Rufus

Write product titles and bullet points in plain English that answer real questions — not keyword strings. Fill every product attribute field completely. Your Q&A section directly feeds Rufus responses; build it out. Rufus only recommends products rated 4 stars or higher with substantial review counts. Your external brand reputation — Trustpilot, press coverage, editorial mentions — also factors into Rufus recommendations beyond Amazon itself.

⚠️

What to stop doing

Keyword-stuffed titles don’t help Rufus and actively hurt readability. Thin product descriptions with no use-case context won’t get you recommended. Leaving Q&A unanswered lets Rufus fill gaps with competitor comparisons. If your reviews are below 4 stars or sparse, Rufus will effectively ignore your listings regardless of your organic search rank.

On Google: AI Overviews Are Entering UK Shopping Searches

Google’s AI Overviews — the AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional results — are now affecting UK search behaviour at scale. A study specifically of Google UK found that AI Overviews appear in roughly 4 in 10 UK Google searches overall, with the fastest growth occurring in commercial and product research queries. [17]

For UK ecommerce brands, the impact data from Charle’s analysis of UK ecommerce SEO is stark: organic click-through rates drop by over 50% on queries where an AI Overview appears. Meanwhile, 80% of the sources cited in AI Overviews don’t rank organically for that query — meaning you can rank on page one and still be excluded from the AI answer. [18]

UK agency Priority Pixels identifies this as a structural shift for UK retailers specifically: “AI Overviews are redirecting clicks away from organic results and into paid placements including Shopping Ads and text ads. UK retailers need to invest more in Shopping campaigns to maintain visibility.” [19]

Google is also pushing toward conversational shopping through Gemini. UK-based agency Radiator Digital, writing about the UK rollout of Google’s AI shopping features, notes that shoppers can now research products and buy directly from Gemini’s interface: “There’s a chance it’ll offer your products in the chatbox window if the searcher shows commercial intent.” Gordon Young, their PPC specialist, advises UK sellers: “To ensure you are best set up to appear in agentic search results, it’s important you have properly optimised your product feeds — Merchant Centre, onsite and ad copy should be geared toward user intent.” [20]

🔍

How to optimise for Google AI Shopping

Your Merchant Centre feed is now AI training data — treat it that way. Product titles should describe use cases, not just product names. Add complete product descriptions; Google’s AI reads them all. Schema markup and structured data on product pages help Google’s AI cite you. Reviews across Google, Trustpilot and your own site reinforce the trust signals AI systems use when deciding what to surface.

📊

Feed quality is now an AI readiness issue

UK agency Lydia Mansi, writing specifically about the UK ecommerce AI rollout: “The difference between winners and losers? Whether brands have adapted their product data and content for AI-powered search results.” [21] Disapproved products, missing attributes, and stale pricing don’t just hurt your Shopping ads — they now limit your AI Overview visibility and your Gemini shopping eligibility. This is the same feed, but the stakes are higher.

The Bigger Picture: Agentic Commerce Is Coming to the UK

Both Amazon and Google are moving toward a world where AI agents don’t just recommend products — they complete purchases on behalf of buyers. Amazon’s “Buy for Me” feature lets UK shoppers purchase from third-party websites without leaving the Amazon app. OpenAI has embedded checkout into ChatGPT with UK retailer partnerships in development. Perplexity launched an AI-powered browser with shopping capability.

Modern Retail summarised the stakes precisely: “If 2025 was the year companies laid the groundwork for agentic commerce, 2026 will be the year retailers, tech giants and startups jockey to determine whose AI agent becomes the default interface for shopping.” [22]

For UK sellers, the practical implication is immediate: your product data needs to be AI-readable everywhere it exists. Your Merchant Centre feed, your Amazon listing, your website product pages, your Trustpilot profile. An AI agent completing a purchase on a UK shopper’s behalf will draw from all of these — and brands with complete, consistent, trustworthy data will win the recommendation.

The Bottom Line for UK Sellers in 2026

Amazon.co.uk is not going anywhere — with 400 million monthly visits and 30% of UK ecommerce market share, ignoring it leaves serious revenue on the table. But the brands that thrive treat it as one channel within a diversified strategy, not the whole business.

The Google Shopping disruption of 2025 proved that UK auction dynamics can shift overnight. The AI shift now underway on both Amazon (Rufus) and Google (AI Overviews, Gemini Shopping) is slower but more fundamental: product data quality, brand authority, and review strength are becoming the primary determinants of UK search visibility — not just bids and budgets.

UK-specific priorities for 2026: build your DTC email audience in parallel with Amazon; sort your VAT obligations before scaling into EU marketplaces; model your true margin in £ per SKU including the 2026 fee changes; and treat your product feed — on Merchant Centre and on Amazon — as a strategic asset that needs continuous investment. The UK brands doing this now are the ones AI will recommend by default in 2027.

Sources & References — UK and verified primary sources

  1. [1] Stan Ventures — Amazon Stops Running Google Shopping Ads Globally — May 2025 US spend reduction confirmed
  2. [2] Josh Duggan, Co-founder, Vervaunt (UK e-commerce and paid media agency, London) — LinkedIn post July 2025, 13M daily UK Shopping impressions; 55% UK impression share confirmed via 360 OM Agency analysis
  3. [3] Smarter Ecommerce — Amazon Quit Google Shopping (and Came Back) — Mike Ryan quote on European return; Digiday — Amazon Reverses Its Google Shopping Retreat (Aug 2025)
  4. [4] Engageacom — Amazon Exits Google Shopping Ads — 1–4% average CPC change across markets
  5. [5] Incubeta — What Amazon’s Shopping Ad Exit Means for Search (Dec 2025) — +47% ROAS is a specific high-overlap client result during July–Aug window, not a market average
  6. [6] Smarter Ecommerce — Temu European impression share data — 60% to 75% of European advertisers facing Temu as competitor
  7. [7] Mabo (UK performance agency) — When Amazon Vanished from Google Shopping for 31 Days (Sep 2025)
  8. [8] AMZ Prep — Amazon FBA UK Rate Card; StatsUp UK Ecommerce Statistics — amazon.co.uk 400M+ monthly visits, 30% UK ecommerce market share, 21+ UK fulfilment centres, 85,000+ UK FBA sellers, 15–20M Prime members
  9. [9] Sumtracker — Amazon Seller Statistics 2026 — 281,257 active UK sellers, second largest globally
  10. [10] Omnia Retail citing EU5 research — Where Do Consumers Start Their Product Search? — 66% of UK, DE, FR, IT, ES consumers start product searches on Amazon
  11. [11] Amazon UK official announcement — 2026 Updates to European Referral and FBA Fees — average £0.15/unit reduction in fulfilment fees; average £0.02/unit net increase when storage/returns increases included; Blue30 (UK) — Amazon UK FBA Fee Guide 2026
  12. [12] SQ Magazine — Amazon Statistics 2026 — Amazon PPC CPCs rose 18–32% across categories in early 2026; ACoS data
  13. [13] Top Down Trading (UK) — Amazon Selling Fees 2026 — FBA fees totalling £3–£5 per item
  14. [14] Attest — 2025 UK Consumer Trends Report — 37% of UK under-40s use AI for search at least half the time; 18% go directly to brand website (nationally representative survey of 1,000 UK consumers)
  15. [15] Tinuiti — Amazon Rufus AI: Optimization Strategies for 2026 — $12bn incremental annualised sales per Amazon Q4 2025 earnings; 300M active customers
  16. [16] Flipflow — From SEO to AI Agents: Amazon Rufus’s Strategic Shift — Mars United research: 22% overlap between search results and Rufus recommendations; 36% of Rufus picks not on first page
  17. [17] Studio36 Digital — AI Overviews in Google Search: UK Study 2025 — explicitly UK Google data only (google.co.uk); AI Overviews in ~4 in 10 UK searches
  18. [18] Charle (UK) — 60+ Ecommerce SEO Statistics for 2026: UK Data & Insights — 50%+ organic CTR drop on AI Overview queries; 80% of AI Overview sources don’t rank organically
  19. [19] Priority Pixels (UK) — Google AI Overviews and Shopping Ads: The New PPC Battleground (Feb 2026)
  20. [20] Radiator Digital (UK, Edinburgh) — How is Google Shopping AI Changing eCommerce? (Dec 2025) — Gordon Young, PPC Specialist quote on feed optimisation for agentic search
  21. [21] Lydia Mansi (UK) — Google’s AI Shopping Overviews: What UK Brands Need to Change Right Now (Dec 2025) — based on analysis of dozens of UK ecommerce brands
  22. [22] Modern Retail — Why the AI Shopping Agent Wars Will Heat Up in 2026 (Jan 2026)