I sell neutron and gamma detectors on my website www.maximus.energy and on eBay. In fact, if you go on eBay and type ‘neutron detector‘ in the search box, my products will be at the top of the list. I am fortunate to have earned top organic placement for my products because they are popular, they sell, and I have outstanding, 100% positive seller rating.

The situation is similar on Bing. If you go to Bing and type ‘neutron detector’ in the search box – you will see my products at the top of the search results – Fig. 1.

The situation is exactly the same if you go to DuckDuckGo shopping – you will find my products at the top of the search results there as well – Fig. 2.

However, the situation is completely different if you search for my products on Google. If you type ‘neutron detector‘ in Google shopping, you will find anything but my products – Fig. 3.

In fact, Google Shopping will pitch you every single neutron detector listed on eBay or elsewhere except for mine. Even if you go a step further and type ‘neutron detector Maximus Energy‘ you will find none of my products. Or even if you search for any of my product models such as ‘MCA-LITE‘ or ‘NEUTRON-PRO‘ you will find exactly nothing in Google Shopping. Strange, isn’t it?

If you ask me – this ain’t alright and ain’t OK, and this didn’t used to be the case. My products in fact were at the top of Google shopping search results until I made one fateful mistake in Spring of 2020.

The pandemic that shall not be named caused my sales to drop off the cliff, and out of desperation I decided to buy some ads on Google to promote my products. After several months of advertising I have burned through my advertising budget without generating as much as single sale, so I did not renew my ads. when the budget ran out. Little did I know what would follow next…

Simultaneously with the expiration of by Google Ads my organic Google Shopping search results ceased to be. Nada, nothing, zip, zilch. From that point all of my products (even the ones I did not advertise) got effectively shadow-banned from Google Shopping. I have no doubt that this is a deliberate ban on Google’s part because one can still find every other neutron detector listed from eBay in Google’s shopping results, except for my products. Google scrubs eBay’s search result and removes my products. Even if you search by ‘Maximus Energy’ or by model names you will still find exactly nothing.

Google’s filtering algorithm is very sophisticated, too. Several times I have tried deleting my listings and creating new ones. I have even tried renaming my eBay account and completely scrubbing the term ‘Maximus Energy’ or any references to my website from my listings – to no avail. If you go to Google Shopping now – my products are simply no longer there, and I suspect that they never will be… unless I am guessing I resume paying for Google Ads.

I do not know if my story is a typical one. Please tell me if you have had a similar experience. The only conclusion that I can draw is this: if you have good organic search results think twice about advertising as you may loose a lot more than you think. In fact you may loose everything.