I've been with Etsy for almost a year and a half. One of the big things I remember in discussions on the Etsy Forums is that sellers would talk about how adding new items or renewing older items would increase the activity on their websites. Well, recently I was concerned that I wasn't seeing some of my new items coming up in searches and I was then told by an admin member that Search defaults to "Relevancy". To my knowledge this is a new and major change as it's never happened to me before, Search has always previously defaulted to Most Recent as I always use to check and make sure my items were visible by doing a search - without changing the search criteria in the drop down box.
Etsy, maybe you think that Relevancy is the best thing for Search to default to but I want you to know that's not true. It's especially not true for the newer shops who haven't had a chance to build relevancy. It's especially not true for the smaller shops that haven't had a chance to build inventory.
The great equalizer that gave the smaller and newer people a chance to be known, a chance to have an income, was when Search defaulted to Most Recent. The older shops already have their strengths by being known. They have direct hits from people who seek them out constantly. They have an established clientele. They've had time to build the size of their shop. And because of those 3 things they also have constant turn over, which means they wouldn't be hurt by going back to the search default being Most Recent.
Please, Etsy. Reset the Search default to Most Recent. Do you see the posts in Team after Team saying how slow April has been? Those are the little, younger shops who could die because they don't ever have a chance to build relevancy without Search defaulting to Most Recent to give them a chance to be known. Please, give us that chance again so we little, young shops can help Etsy grow.
