I just can't anymore with search...

[AnchorRoadVintage]

I'm looking for some specific Christmas gifts and search is worse than usual. I'm looking for a specific item in vintage gold jewelry and even with narrowing down search by all the drop drowns and trying a few different phrases, it's still not working. Like at all, worse than usual. I'm search "vintage gold ...." and firstly, it's not defaulting to vintage. Secondly, silver items are popping up. Lastly, it's bringing up the general category that my item falls under, but is less specific than what I'm looking for. Like, say I'm searching cuff, and it's bringing up bracelets that are not cuffs, when I already specified cuff. 

Next, I started looking for something in vintage art supplies, visual arts, painting. It's bringing up things that are not used for painting, like scrapbook ephemera. I am looking for something for someone that paints, NOT scrapbooks. Even if it was designed to be "serendipitous", as they like to say, the drop down menus should allow you to eliminate what you don't want, but either they aren't working or a lot of sellers are listing things in the wrong categories. It's wasting my time and I am only willing to spend my money on what I am actually looking for. I will probably end up settling for an Amazon gift card because it's too hard to search here. 

I don't understand why it's designed to do anything other than find you exactly what you are looking for. It makes no sense. There is NOTHING to be gained by making this so bad.

[MouseGarden]

I hear you.  A few weeks ago I was looking for a collectible and I know it is here, but I couldn't narrow search enough and ended up wading through 200 items with the makers name in them.  Most people won't do that.

Also I see if I search blogger template, a lot of the search results are actually wordpress.  That is not helpful, as the two are incompatible.

And once you start clicking on items, they trail round after you into every other search, even when you've lost interest.  

It freaks me out that under Etsy's new growth tips section, the suggested tags to use are all irrelevant to the item.  New sellers may assume those are the best tags to use!  Search will only get worse.

[VintageRescueSquad]

Yes! I was just looking for some "vintage industrial gauges" and got jewelry, Lionel trains, pocket knives, beads, baseball cards, and razor blades. It's insanity.

[RockNRollSoulDesigns]

Yep last night I set the filters to look for a handmade brooch. I got vintage brooches, brooches that clearly aren’t handmade by the seller, necklaces, earrings and jewellery boxes. I gave up after twenty minutes.

[TheWeeShed]

'There is NOTHING to be gained by making this so bad.'

there is a lot of ad revenue to be made by having a bad search, people hunting around listings looking for things and clicking ads. If the exact thing you were looking for was 1st in search there would be no reason to scroll down clicking other listings, and the ad revenue would go down.

[AnchorRoadVintage]

I see what you’re saying but ads are even less of what people are looking for. Sales would go up if people could find what they’re looking for and they wouldn’t need as much from ad revenue. 

[TheWeeShed]

That's one of the things the FTC claim Amazon have been doing in their lawsuit against them,

they say Amazon designed their algorithm to show buyers what Amazon wanted them to show them not the cheapest or best product.

I'm not sure I can link to this article on Yahoo but it says.

'Did Amazon shoppers like the ads? Bezos didn’t care, the FTC claims, writing that he pushed executives to accept junk ads because they were so profitable: “the revenue generated by advertisements eclipsed the revenue lost by degrading consumers’ shopping experience,”

That sounds pretty much like Etsy to me. Search is just a maze, they've designed it so that people will get lost in it and just click ads

[ExpatriateVintage]

Etsy has decided they are better off making more revenue off seller services (selling ads to us, collecting listing fees and final value fees, etc.) than what increased sales would bring.

And crappy, AI based search is part of their strategy. This is killing many longtime formerly successful shops but they don't care as long as the money comes from somewhere.

[ksewingbasket]

You are actually lucky to find anything like what you are searching for. I've had very little luck for some time now. 

[CoquetteBath]

Truly? Unless I stumble over it, I don't have time to do the 'hunt the item' search here.

really sad, actually. Other than a single item I just bought today, I've done absolutely no holiday shopping for others here this year. Normally, about 50% of my purchases come from Etsy. But it is just too hard to find an item to buy.

and discriminators need to do THAT...if I want something gold, I mean the metal. And if I put 14k, then that's what I want...

seems simple enough.

[QuiltStencilsAndMore]

I was looking for some fill in pieces for my china set the other day. Gave up and went to eBay where it showed up as the 1st item. Sorry Etsy I tried.

It seems to be especially hard to find vintage items here.

[AnchorRoadVintage]

Yes! I sell vintage so I often search for it to see prices. I couldn’t find any of something the other day and it’s not that uncommon. 

[AAANativeArts]

And often, after you give up and "settle" for something that isn't quite what you wanted, the next time you search for something else totally unrelated, what you wanted on that original search will pop right up.

[AnchorRoadVintage]

I refuse. I don’t have the money to settle. 

[CarnevalMefisto]

Seems like I was lucky to at least see items somewhat relatable to my tags.

As I purchased Kindle Scribe, I decided I wanted to get a case for it. And I decided to look after it on Etsy.

As a result, I got templates to download, several leather cases that I can't afford, and all the rest were a ton of cases for Kindle, but ABSOLUTELY NOT for Scribe. Only those few leather ones were for Scribe, but it was maybe 6 matching results.

So I bought etui elsewhere.

That is just sad.

Oh and beads, specific size, got results of the bead I asked for, but not the size I wanted. I managed to buy it off Etsy, but I searched with Google. Maybe that's what Etsy wants us to do now...

[EightMileVintage]

A few weeks ago, I was trying to find a handmade anniversary card here, specifically from Canadian shops. It was so frustrating. First of all, I had to wade through pages of the most vulgar cards that I would never in a million years give to my husband. Much of what showed up weren't cards and many of the cards that showed up weren't anniversary cards. I gave up but tried again another day and finally found a reasonable card that never even showed up in my search. I just tripped on it accidentally.

[bluegreenjewels]

I don't use Etsy search much any more.  If I need something specific, I look on google to find what I need on Etsy.  It's ridic.

[BirdieGirlAntiques]

I agree that "search" is just awful.  It was a lot better on the other "E" site until recently.  

[OneEyeCatStudio]

But Etsy knows best.

Say bye-bye, Etsy.

[cindylouwho2]

I know this isn't going to be done by the general public, but for those in the know, if you change the "sort" from relevancy to something else, it will usually remove all of the irrelevant items from the organic results.

Ironic. 

[OneEyeCatStudio]

Yes. I do frequently do that, it helps. But it also seems to remove some of the relevant listings.

[JMOldeVintage]

I tried doing that this morning: Vintage Pesticide Sprayer gave 514 results, plus ads.

Sorting by Highest Price reduced the results to 24 items. Plus ads which were all irrelevant for a total of 40 items on the page.

Sort by Lowest Price and again 24 items. The ads shown to me were 90% all the same items. About half of the relevant items that remained in this sorted search were also the same items shown to me when I chose highest. Ditto the results if I sorted by Most Recent.

Obviously, many of the relevant items that were on page one of the initial results sorted by Relevancy had disappeared - to realize that 490 items disappeared 

I've given up trying to figure out how Etsy's search works & like EightMileVintage hope I accidentally trip over something 

[AnchorRoadVintage]

Oh yes! I use that all the time.  Except it's only working sometimes now. I tried a sort just prior to this thread with no change in results. 

[cindylouwho2]

@JMOldeVintage That's the type of search that sometimes benefits from filters: https://www.etsy.com/search/vintage/home-and-living/outdoor-and-garden?explicit=1&q=Pesticide+Spraye...

as most of the items that might be missing the word "pesticide" will still be under Gardening. You don't always want to remove all of the items Etsy adds, because sometimes they get it right. 

[JMOldeVintage]

@cindylouwho2  - Using the same search term this morning the results 543 plus ads.

Using no additional filters I literally counted 183 relevant items. Why did I even bother going past page 7? - the results were truly all irrelevant. Clothing, lots of brass item, jewelry, lamps, you name it. The vast majority were not ad items. 

Once again, if I opted to sort by pricing (same for most recent) the results were reduced to 24 plus ads.

Filtering these 543 results down to "Garden Tools" reduce the results to 82 listings plus ads. Now the ads were slightly more relevant, at least they were garden related.

I can only assume that the other 100 listings that were relevant to my search term got weeded out because of the shop owner's choices?

Using any of the sort by options on these filtered results reduced the results down to 10 listings plus ads.

I'll tweak my search terms though for some reason Etsy has decided that using the word "pest" can't be done. They insist on changing the word to "best", "vest" or even "pet".
Using "vintage bug sprayer" definitely requires those extra filters otherwise the 840+ results are almost 90% jewelry. The filtered number drops to 90. Though I lost less results when opting to sort by any choice - 58 items.

Depending on the search term I'm using at times I'll add the word "garden" into the entry - "vintage garden pesticide sprayer" say. At times the addition of this word makes a difference, other times not so much.

Yes, my searches are for more niche items but I find the randomness of Etsy's Search frustrating. I guess 'collector's blood' runs thru me so I persist until I can't do it any more, lol.

Though sadly, my purchase this month was something I 'stumbled into'. That my purchases on eBay greatly outnumber Etsy is also a loss. But eBay doesn't erase the word "vintage" in the search bar, eBay remembers my choice of All Items, Collectibles or Antiques, it remembers & truly sorts by Recently Listed. In general the search results are absolutely more relevant. 

My morning rant over, off for more coffee. But I'll return - maybe I can use the Etsy coupon code provided to me this morning.