Items marked "mature" not shown in search results

[MonstrousOnMain]

My shop has been growing & providing consistent income for the past few years. Around this time of year I usually get 20+ orders a week; in the last three months however, my sales have drastically declined, and now I'm lucky if I get 5. A lot of sales are suffering right now thanks to the economy, but not to this extent.

I sell a lot of items that contain mature themes, and today when I searched in a private browser, I found that none of my mature items--including some of my best sellers--showed up in search results. (I have them properly tagged according to Etsy's policy regarding mature items.) Even signed in, the items still don't show up. By relevancy standards they should be on the first page, if not the first listing for what I searched. I have the star seller badge & my other items show up just fine.

What could be the cause of this? Did Etsy stop listing mature items in search results altogether or am I doing something wrong? Can this be fixed on my end? This is severely impacting my income & I can't seem to find any answers elsewhere.

Edit: I found mature items from other shops in search results, so it appears to be a problem with my listings specifically. If they were de-indexed, I did not receive an email about this explaining why it may have happened, so I'm still in the dark.

[EatMeBoutique]

Your shop may have been deindexed due to all of your trademark infringement. 

[MonstrousOnMain]

Would this only affect mature items? The rest are showing up just fine.

[MirageRiverCreations]

I’m not going to comment on the mature part. However, Etsy’s search does not work on relevancy by search terms. It pulls up relevancy by a mix of things no one can entirely name: one thing being things you’ve searched in the past. Further, Etsy’s website keeps tabs on things you search even just out on the web. Recently, while searching on Google, I find stuff I clicked on only on the Google search I did being shown as recently viewed items here on my Etsy homepage. Many factors seem to factor into Etsy’s search and the least important one seems to be the terms searched. Finally, a lot of sellers are experiencing slow sales, especially for the time of year. Since the world economy is on a super sonic toboggan to dumpster-fireville, I wouldn’t expect it to improve a whole lot right now.

[MonstrousOnMain]

I did a little more experimenting & found that if I add the wird "mature" to my search, it shows up at the top, along with the other listings that showed up prior. Without adding "mature" it disappears with no other change to the results. I'm trying not to be paranoid but I'm pretty sure that's the factor at play Thank you for the reassurances tho, I appreciate it

[AAANativeArts]

Lots of people have been complaining for a long time about being bombarded with mature listings when they are offended by seeing them. Maybe Etsy finally did something about it. Other sites like eBay have a whole mature section, and you have to actually choose it to see mature content. I am surprised Etsy hasn't done something like that long ago.

[MirageRiverCreations]

I would very much appreciate if Etsy would do this.

[MonstrousOnMain]

I understand why that is upsetting, but I'm deeply concerned by the implication that Etsy would make such a change without informing sellers. I can't find anything from Etsy publicly about this change. (Not to mention, hiding these listings just de-incentivises sellers from abiding by the rules around correctly labeling mature content, which will just make the problem worse.)

[PlatypusDream]

@MonstrousOnMain 

 Correctly labeling mature content will mean that people you WANT to see mature listings are able to find them more easily and those who DO NOT don’t have to see them unexpectedly.

This is not a bad thing.  Etsy rarely tells sellers anything specific about changes in the algorithm.It always is work to figure out how the algorithm has changed, or how it is being tested.  It’s Etsy’s trade secret.