Listings indexed but not really, unindexed but only mostly... wth etsy?!

[VibeEnvy]

I don't know if this is affecting other specific words, things have been really off recently. Today i discover that NONE of my items with cherries on them are indexed... completely...? The word "cherry" returns no results in my shop though i have a diaper bag, a handbag and a swimsuit that have the keyword. They also use the word "pinup" which does turn all the products up. Also different combinations that do include "cherry" do and don't work.

This is ridiculous that we need to review every single specific keyword and keyword combination for indexing issues as the listings are indexed but specific words are not or specific combinations are or are not, and this specific word is the main keyword for the listing.

"Cherry" doesn't find results

"Cherry diaper bag" doesn't find results

"Black cherry" doesn't find results

"Cherry pinup" DOES find results...

"pinup" finds results...

ALL THESE SEARCHES SHOULD FIND A RESULT., My cherry diaper bag or other cherry items. smh...

I also now realize the cherry diaper bag listing is not showing when i just search "diaper" or "diaper bag" but all my other diaper bags do...

ugh... and now i see the cherry bikini does not show for "bikini" "swimsuit" "swimwear" but does show up for "pinup", "pinup bikini" "pinup swimsuit", "pinup swimwear".

Findings are the same in shop search and marketplace.

If you're one of the many who've been experiencing issues these last few weeks you may have listings that are also only partially indexed or partially unindexed and can only discover by wasting tons of time. I don't even know how i stumbled across this realization when i didn't even mean to think about these listings in the first place. If this is what i found by accident I'm sure its worse than this if i went through all my listings to check every keyword and keyword combo.

@cindylouwho2 dunno if this is useful info for anything you are keeping track of. Results were in incognito as well so i assume you can reproduce the issue.

[cindylouwho2]

When I search your shop, I get no results for "cherry" and can replicate your other results for the searches I checked (not all of them). 

This reminds me a little bit of when they were first trying out frequency capping; a few shops were severely affected, but their items were usually not fully deindexed, i.e., you could come up with combinations of words that would surface those items, while others would not. The current problems could be completely unrelated, of course, but this looks similar. It may also be related to incorrect item counts in shops, and Etsy's attempt to remove some products/keywords from being viewed in certain countries. 

I am slammed with messages today and the 4th Q report drops in 2 hours, so if anyone could collect some of the other recent examples of this phenomenon and post the links here, I would greatly appreciate it. I've only seen a few of the and assumed they were just random bugs that we always find, but that assumption might be wrong. 

[Miriboheme]

please see my reply below, cindylou.

[VibeEnvy]

@cindylouwho2 I now noticed affecting these but also other listings that don't have cherry, the word "rockabilly" turns up two results, "rockabilly pinup" shows like 9 results. I have a couple pair of dia de Los muertos shoes with rockabilly as a keyword and don't show up for it but show up for other keywords. Doesn't seem to be an isolated glitch but something affecting a number of different listings in different ways.

[SmudgePlant]

Hope she doesn't mind me tagging her but @Miriboheme posted about it in a couple of posts.

https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/items-not-appearing-in-search/m-p/141333720#M758723

https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/items-not-showing-up-in-search/m-p/141313880#M15230...

[Miriboheme]

thank you for tagging me!

[Miriboheme]

i don't know if this is related, but i recently noticed that a number of my listings were not searchable either site-wide or within my own shop. received this response from etsy support today:

"Due to regional restrictions your listing(s) were temporarily unavailable to view or purchase in certain locations. However, we have determined that your listings were restricted in error and have been unrestricted."

perhaps something similar is happening with your listings.

hope this helps. i know this can be very stressful.

eta: just wanted to add that this problem was resolved via the "have etsy call you back" option. tried chat twice, but was told both times that the problem was with my titles and tags. 

[cindylouwho2]

@Miriboheme "Due to regional restrictions your listing(s) were temporarily unavailable to view or purchase in certain locations" - that was one of my guesses. Did your items have any words related to plants, knives etc? Did the affected items have anything in common?

[Miriboheme]

@cindylouwho2 i've been thinking about that, cindylou. so far i can't come up with any similarities. they're all different colors, garments, fabrics, etc. if i think of something i'll post it here.

[WitticismsRus]

@VibeEnvy 

You aren't alone. I have the same issue in this shop for past 6 months or more. Honestly it could be closer to a year since it took me a while to notice it or realize what was happening. Etsy support insists everything is indexed but there are some specific words that yield zero results in shop search which should yield many. One of our best sellers hasn't had a sale in many months since it's just not showing up in searches. Also our etsy search stats are down more than 50% since it started. Maybe I'll try support again but it's just so frustrating dealing with etsy email support sometimes and getting them to actually understand the issue and repeating myself 15 different times 15 different ways (I won't bother with chat or phone call back for this issue) 

[Miriboheme]

this just happened to me. instead of chat or email, please try the "have etsy call you back" option. the lady called me back almost immediately, listened to (and believed) me, and escalated the case to support. they fixed it within a couple of days.

tried chat twice, but was told both times that it was because of my titles and tags.

[WitticismsRus]

@Miriboheme 

Yeah, tried that last year when I first realized what was happening. They escalated up the support chain to email support which was weeks of back and forth and them insisting nothing was wrong then closing the ticket. I tried again starting with live chat and them escalating it and exact same thing happened. So yeah, not much support from support for this issue for me thus far.

I may try again tomorrow when I have the time to repeat myself 15 times until someone actually gets it lol

So they fixed it in your shop? It's not happening anymore? 

[cindylouwho2]

@WitticismsRus same questions as I asked above: Did your items have any words related to plants, knives etc? Did the affected items have anything in common?

[Miriboheme]

@WitticismsRus 

this has been going on in your shop for A YEAR????

omg that is awful. i'm so sorry you've been dealing with this. i don't even know what to say. it seems that you have tried all avenues for a resolution. 

yes. it looks like the problem with my listings has been resolved. for now!

[WitticismsRus]

@cindylouwho2 

No, nothing about plants or knives. There is a similar theme with the items/words which I initially thought was maybe the issue. Like perhaps it was an "adult/mature theme" issue but that doesn't seem to be it. Things like dominatrix, domination etc. Basically many of the BDSM themed things with those specific words but not the term BDSM itself. BDSM yields results but domination or dominatrix yields zero. If I search for dominatrix or domination in my listing manager page there are multiple pages of results but zero in shop front search. I'm not sure if its a mature listing specific thing at all since we have lots of profanity that is required to be tagged as mature and censored and those listings aren't having an issue. 

hope that makes sense

[WitticismsRus]

@cindylouwho2 

just remembered another example. The word Kitten. I have several cat themed things as well as BDSM themed things with the word Kitten on it. Search in shop for kitten yields a few cat related things but not the 4 listings with BDSM themed item that just says kitten on it.

None of it makes much sense since it appears like it may be a BDSM/mature/adult theme issue but it isn't impacting all listings of that theme so maybe it's just totally random. I have no idea. 

[cindylouwho2]

@WitticismsRus "Search in shop for kitten yields a few cat related things but not that BDSM themed item that just says kitten on it." While that might not be an ideal approach, it at least makes a little sense, if they are trying to keep certain items away from people who might complain. People doing a generic "kitten" search probably do not want a BDSM item, most of the time. This likely also prevents most of these items from showing up on generic Market pages, I assume? That keeps Google traffic for generic terms from seeing them. 

I did the BDSM search in your shop and then targeted certain words I thought would also be blocked, and was mostly successful at guessing what would be blocked. "toy" had almost all items blocked, and "vanilla" was 100%. "bdsm vanilla" returns 3 items, though.

It's Etsy, so of course it isn't consistent. 

(Please understand I don't think this is right or anything; I am just trying to figure out the "why" behind this.)

[WitticismsRus]

@cindylouwho2 

Thank you! Yes, that all makes sense to me and is what I was thinking may be happening and why. I just wish etsy would at least acknowledge that it's even happening. While I get why they would limit or deindex such things it's still very frustrating. It's definitely had an impact on etsy search stats and sales for many of our bestsellers of those items have tanked completely since it started. 

Thanks so much for your help!

[VibeEnvy]

I haven't contacted support yet because I didn't want to have to do it again if I found more and have, but it may be a glitch weirdly related to restricted things. Listings I have affected have "sugar" and "skull" (sugar skull), "rose" (rose graphics) and "cherry" (cherry graphics) all those are words that can be related to plants or food or as a stretch human remains lol. I don't have a reference yet that doesn't contain a possibly plant or food related word.

[BoudoirPrive]

@cindylouwho2 

I have an item in my second Etsy shop which does not seem to appear in search, even when using the whole item title.

Vintage Pearl Necklace With Side Clasp Vintage Pearl and - Etsy UK

[cindylouwho2]

@BoudoirPrive I had no issues finding it: https://www.etsy.com/search/vintage?q=Pearl+And+Sapphire+Necklace%2C+Montana+Sapphire+Jewellery&ref=...

including in your shop. 

[BagmakerSupply]

@BoudoirPrive: "does not seem to appear in search, even when using the whole item title." Even exact word matches to your title no longer ensure that you will appear on page 1. Keep in mind that if everyone on this forum searched for the exact same phrase they would all get different results. Because of "personalized searches" you can NOT rely on anyone's search results to define how your listing is ranked. There are many many factors that affect listing placement and the relative weight of each factor probably changes constantly. Your listing may be appearing on page 251 and Etsy is only showing the first 250 pages to the world.

[BoudoirPrive]

@cindylouwho2 

Thanks so much for testing it for me.

[BoudoirPrive]

@BagmakerSupply 

I went through every single page, using the whole item title and it was not there.  I also picked a few phrases from the item title and it was not on any page that came up, yet I've just performed the same test and it's now on Page 2.  Weird.

[VibeEnvy]

I had contacted Etsy, it was escalated to the appropriate team. Never heard back, never fixed.