What is or can be the most important thing that can be done to assist in your items being found.

[Former_Member]

The method of search seems to be on a continuing and on going change and in my opinion? Not changes that are beneficial to using it or them to actually find things.

And that is a shame because the most important factor in finding things on the internet
IS
The search used to do it with.
All other factors are secondary to that.

And that includes the method or methods used to List something to be found.

There are two basic search methods use to successfully find things.
One is a carefully constructed point and klick search method based on a structured listing methodology that essentially drills down through the variables in a predictable manner. Predictability based on a carefully controlled listing procedure and includes the possibility of a juried approach to listing things.
Predictability in the probability of finding something is only as good at the predictability of listing things.
The suggestion of creating your own category is not a method to insure a predictable result.
And of course this system does not exist but it can be purchased and that has not been done either.
It also requires a staff assigned to controlling the listings.
The alternative method is to have a state of the art general search tool that uses appropriate drop downs for suggestions and responds to state of the art search commands.
That of course can be controlled by the individual using it. That of course assumes the person using it knows how to command the search engine to find what they are looking for.
On one hand the plus is the commands are pretty much standard and have been in use for multiple years. So if you know how to use any search engine, it will work for you. But a good search depends on a well written request. It is up to the person making the search to determine what will be found.
The down side naturally is, if you do not know how to do that, your results will not be that good. But it is the search that is the important part, not the listing. Even with that method.
So how does the listing play in this picture?
Only as good as the listing is in painting a verbal picture as to what it is that is being listed.
You can not, depend on knowing what search terms will be used as one who is listing something. Why? There is one of you and an estimated 40,000,000 people a month visiting here to try to find things. Your crystal ball has got to be really good to predict what one of 40,000,000 people will use. as a search request.
However, if you stop and think about it, what ever it is that you are trying to list, the probability is that some one is actually looking for one.
And that person is going to try to describe in words what they are looking for using words that have the highest probability of actually describing what they are looking for. Thus creating some form of a verbal picture.
If you as a listing person approach the same problem, that is creating a verbal picture of the item you are listing there is a high probability that the two of you, the person looking and the person listing will use pretty much the same words to describe the same thing.
And the more generic or general purpose those words are the higher the probability the two of you will use the same words.
Thus. On their list of objects found, your item will appear on their list.
Generally people who search for things that way will create a search string and get a list of things of which they will look at for additional terminology to further describe what they are looking for, correcting spelling, adding terms or expanding on them.
SO in my opinion? The absolute best way you can show up on a list of things found, is to clearly describe in the minimum number of words you can used what ever it is that you would like some one to find.

Now the Etsy search used to work that way, it really is too bad it no longer does.
Which leaves me with the problem of, how do you expand on things here to help others.

[Retromagination]

Thank you Unclejohn, as always..........
Any follow up thoughts of how to address this in the way Etsy is currently working???

[Former_Member]

SherryAnn from Retromagination says
Thank you Unclejohn, as always..........
Any follow up thoughts of how to address this in the way Etsy is currently working???
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I apologize SherryAnn for not seeing your comment any earlier than just this min. I was working on getting my Taxes done (yes they were due in April but an extension puts them into the middle of next week at the latest)
I do not understand how or why Etsy is currently working. Then again I do not have to, to quote and old saying it's not my job.
My concerns as a buyer is trying to find things I am looking for and the mechanisms offered as buyers tools are getting more and more useless and making a workable list of desired products harder and harder to generate in order to have in front of me, a desirable list of products. .
As a seller my concern would be in being found and depending on some one browsing is not a business plan.
The only thing that I can offer and frankly when I look at listings for people who are concerned about not being found I find the following things repeatedly.
Titles which do not define what is being offered and in general suffer from verbal diarrhea.
Tags that do not emulate what the description is trying to define and again suffering from verbal diarrhea.
That is for an Etsy search.
An Etsy search that also depends on brevity. That is the fewer the words used, the better the position on a list of found items.
A Google search depends on the Title and the first couple of lines of the description to rate high in search matching the request of some one looking for things and the first couple of lines wax eloquent on how wonderful, beautiful, emotionally satisfying something is which is at best an opinion and not necessarily mine.
The bottom still is if you are depending on a search engine to find you, it is a machine that works a certain way. It can not interpret! Just match words. It looks for plurals, singulars and roots of words. Words used by a people who want it to find something and make a list of them.
No matter how good or bad the pictures are or how eloquent or poorly you write your product will not be looked at by a person using a search engine if he search engine can not find it.
This is a team about tags.
Tags are used by a search engine, thus this is a team dedicated to your products being found by some one using one.
Not browsing, photographic skills or writing discipline.
And at the moment, heavily dependent on the search engine doing it's job in a well defined and intuitive manner based on a person telling it what is to be found.

And the Etsy search engine neither has definition nor is it intuitive.
So sorry, as to how Etsy is working?
Don't know.
but I find it increasingly difficult to work with.

[Retromagination]

Thanks as usual Uncljohn!!! ;)

[Dressumups]

Also giving you a big Thank You Uncljohn.

[Former_Member]

Dressumups from Dressumups says

Also giving you a big Thank You Uncljohn.
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To you and everyone else, Your Welcome