Search Ads

[Former_Member]

I started using the search ads today and I know it is still early on, but if you are using the search ads are they creating additional views &/or purchases from your shop?

I have gotten any extra views from my search ads. Maybe this will increase as time goes on. Any additional insight from other users? Are the search ads boosting your views/sales early on?

[Former_Member]

It won't work because Etsy chooses the tags and likes them to be small and non-specific.

So people type in blue underwear, and see blue paintings instead. Seeing a bunch of items they are not looking for definitely won't make them click.

[Former_Member]

I having major doubts about search ads too. I put my harry potter items out there, and they took key words like "glasses" and "brown," which aren't relevant at all. No one has actually clicked on one of my items from a search ad yet, and when I actually try to look for myself if my items come up when I search relevant things, there are no search ads!
Am I missing something?

[Former_Member]

I decided not to use search ads after following previous discussions on this:

http://www.etsy.com/teams/5002/etsy-success/discuss/9045466/page/1
http://www.etsy.com/teams/5002/etsy-success/discuss/9045350/
http://www.etsy.com/teams/5002/etsy-success/discuss/9045324/

I hope you have good results and I look forward to know if you had better luck :)

Carla
carlagrifo.com/shop

[Former_Member]

p.s. your puppies are adorable! I love your avatar

[Former_Member]

carlagrifo-
Thanks! They're a mess. Haha but they are really good sports about being "models" for my shop.

I'm glad it's not just me not quite understanding the process of the search ads and not liking the keywords they've created for me. I have also noticed that my keywords aren't the best and when I search the more relevant keywords they have listed for me I don't come up.

I'm almost considering cancelling my ads early if they don't start producing better results. :(

[ArtfulHummingbird]

I see a number of "impressions" - times the items supposedly appeared, but absolutely zero views resulted.

[Former_Member]

The average views a day I get is around 25 and so far today I'm at 9. I've had 102 impressions, but only 1 view resulted from it. It's still early on the west coast though.

[FaithBeads]

I agree about the keywords. Some that are on there have the least amount of relevancy to my items. One of the key words applies to only one of my items. I'm trying to decide whether I should just eliminate those key words...

[Former_Member]

It's a glorified showcase with even less relevant views. I'm pulling my ads.

[Former_Member]

"I see a number of "impressions" - times the items supposedly appeared, but absolutely zero views resulted."

^^
Yep.

[AlorasAdorables]

No additional customers, so I decided (I have several computers) to run a simultaneous test. I first did a search for "chenille" then "chenille fabric" then "chenille bedspread" from my shop and only one of my items came up on the 2nd page of the search (out of 547 listings).

Then I decided to renew 24 listings, waited 20 minutes for it to give the system time enough to load them - did a search on computer #2 without signing in (just as if I was a stranger to Etsy and just stumbled upon the site) and guess what... a bedspread I listed 4 days ago came up on the first page but not another listing of mine until page 3.

So, I went back to my shop and tried again... now here is where it gets interesting... everything I had just listed came up but only on my own shop page - not from a search engine search. So everyone who would have normally done a search for chenille would have found 3 of my listings on page 3 but searching from within my shop the screen shows everything. So far as I am concerned I can't trust the searches to show me what customers are seeing unless I go "incognito" from a search engine and then I see the search ads have given me NO advantage and I just lost $25.

There has got to be a more equitable way of displaying search results so that all shop listings are shown without having us relist or buy search ads.

[Former_Member]

I don't understand. The top items in my shop are leg warmers and 'leg warmers' isn't even a key word on the search ads, only leg.

I am so confused.

[ArtistiKat]

hmm... still trying to figure this out.
I'm trying it for a month (or so) so see if it pans out in more sales. I have a specific goal taking into account my past sales that will determine (in my mind) whether it is worth it or not.

If I don't reach that goal in sales, the ads stop. The bottom line for me is increased sales.

funny... my shop and listing views have been WAY down today compared to previous days.

waiting to see.

[LaurasLastDitch]

I think the irrelevant search ads will just annoy buyers. I looked up "wool blanket" just to see what came up, and I got nothing that might be considered a typical blanket. Just a rug, a security blanket, and some other things that weren't very blanket-y. I'm glad I didn't put any money into this. A wait-and-see attitude is usually best when making business decisions like this.

The thing is, we used to get our things at the top free, when they were newly listed. Now you have to pay to get it up there when it's often not even relevant. My main hope here is that it doesn't annoy buyers too much. We can't afford to lose any of them.

[ColoursandTextures]

Search by relevancy seems a much better idea for a buyer as well as seller. Help them find what they want get the sales. Etsy would then get the revenue from more sales. Why change it?

[FaithBeads]

Did anyone else notice that if you search from the homepage, no search ads show up on page one? or is it just me?

[Former_Member]

It really was a bad idea to purchase ads the first week. I get the feeling all of our impressions are just from all of us sellers trying to see where our items are showing up in the ads. It would have been better to wait until week two and get more accurate numbers.

[Former_Member]

They've only begun running today, so I'm going to wait until Friday to see how they're working for my shop. So far I have quite a few impressions, but no views resulting from the ads.

But, as I said, I don't want to jump the gun. I'll give it a few days, and if they're not resulting in views, I'll cancel them.

[RobotsAreAwesome]

Just looked at my Search Ad status for the first time:
Spent $0.15 USD Impressions 149 Views 1 Favorites 0 Orders 0 Revenue $0.00 USD

It's 12:40 eastern time, I don't know when exactly the search ad officially began.

[Former_Member]

I feel as if it would be helpful if your item only appeared in the search ad when more than one of your keywords was searched for. that way, it would eliminate the problem of irrelevant keywords.
for example, i'm doing my harry potter amigurumis, so if someone searches for amigurumi, they're getting harry potter, which they might not care about, but if they were to search for amigurumi + gryffindor, then my search ad would be so much more relevant.
search ads truly need to be refined before they can be of use, and i feel as though there needs to be more communication with us sellers as to where exactly they're going to show up. it seems quite random to me when ads even show up when i'm doing a search.

[jewelrybyNaLa]

As of 11:50 am CST, I have almost identical results as RobotsAreAwesome:

Spent $0.15 USD Impressions 143 Views 1 Favorites 0 Orders 0 Revenue $0.00 USD

[Former_Member]

If you bought in starting today, then it started at 8am ET. If you want to make changes, they take effect tomorrow @ 8am ET.

I don't understand the lag time if I want to take out some search words. Someone was looking for jewelry blanks and got to my page because blank was a search word but I make blank inside cards... So I wanted to delete blank and another few tags that I didn't think were appropriate. I did a lot of playing with it yesterday setting it up. I'll give it a few days. I only did $5 worth for the week. I figure I can do this experiment and see how everything goes. I will not renew if it doesn't produce at least one sale in the running time.

I'm frustrated because I would like to type in my own tags to use for the search engine - many of the provided ones are not relevant to my items, only partially descriptive.

[NeedlesnPinsStichery]

I really hope that the buyers do not get frustrated with this. I just went in and searched for "cabin pillows" and the pillow that came up in the ads had nothing to do with cabins! Even a t-shirt came up! I was going to wait and give it a few days before I bought ads to see how it works. If it doesn't improve I don't think I will do it. I wish Etsy would come up with a way to make it fair to everyone and make it where everyone gets noticed.

I may be wrong, but I thought when they switched to relevency search that I read somewhere the items would be rotated so everyone would be on the first page sometimes and not always buried on page 56 if you didn't renew constantly. Did anyone else read this or am I just imagining this?

:)

[Former_Member]

I bought a $5 for one week ad. Not sure I am going to like it either, for all of the same reasons listed. I was afraid that if I didn't spend the money my items would be really low in the search because so many others were purchasing them. I am not really thrilled with this new paid ad system. An accurate keyword search like on Art Fire is a lot better. I feel as if my shop is being held hostage and I will lose potential buyers if I don't buy ads.