Several shops have this search indexing error…

[Madrigallery]

Hi. I discovered many months ago that some of my Etsy shops have certain items that are somewhat unsearchable. I say “somewhat” because they can be found in search only if the searcher uses ALL the words in the listing’s title. This is true whether I am searching all of Etsy, or just within my shop. I have four Etsy shops, and to varying degrees I have found the same issue in 3 of my shops. 

This listing, for example, is only findable when my shop is browsed, or if the shopper uses ALL 20+ title words in their search query. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1432942451

If you were to search my shop (or all of Etsy) with just “cramps shirt” then it wouldn’t be found. This search limitation seems to be true for 64 items in my shop. 

Similarly, if I search within my shop for the general term “shirt” then it gets only 1174 hits, even though my shop sells only shirts and I can see there are 1238 active listings. 

I have double checked that none of the poorly indexed items have any listing differences than the correctly indexed items (all have return policies set, and all use the same shipping profile, etc.) I also tried copying some of the affected listings (rather than renewing them), but the problem still continued with the copies. 

As I said, I discovered this many months ago. I waited for the indexing to correct, but it didn’t. Then I tried contacting Etsy, and when I finally spoke to someone, she said she’d have to escalate the matter, and that I should wait to be contacted. Weeks later, the “contact” was a boilerplate message about something completely unrelated. I of course responded to that to say my problem wasn’t resolved but no human ever replied. 

As I imagine many here know, this was infuriating (if an eyeroll can be considered Fury) since the last 2 fee hikes were supposed to have bought me some improved customer service. Even if Etsy has a legitimate reason for de-indexing certain items, the fact that they continue to take renewal fees for those items, without notifying me of the existence of—or reason for—the de-indexing of those items seems unethical. 

As with many concerns, I’ve given up on help from Etsy, and would like to ask if anyone else has experienced this type of search/partial-indexing issue? 

Also, would appreciate if you could tell me if you have the same result when searching within my shop for the listing that I previously showed as an example of the issue (https://www.etsy.com/listing/1432942451). It should come up just by searching my shop for the word ”Cramps” but seems to require ALL title words before a shop search will find it. 

And lastly, if you wouldn’t mind checking your own shop to see if the number of hits produced by any shop-specific search for any of your own common title or tag words is accurate. (You can easily check this by seeing if the number of search results in your shop search equals the number of hits for that same word when searching your active listings from within the shop manager.) 

Any help appreciated, 

Christian

[ArtDollsbyJD]

Well with over !,000 to look at and even limiting to US shows far too many to look for your example, I can't tell you where your items may be.

I agree your search inside the shop is not working right.

We can't help in the forums as we are fellow sellers.

Your best bet is to contact Etsy and relay to them what your are experiencing.  It may take several back and forth emails.

Shops I visit and my shop are fine.  Everything is working.

There are shops that have indexing issues at times. Only Etsy can really solve them.

[Madrigallery]

Thanks for the info, much apprecaited.

Regarding your first sentence, I think you may have misunderstood my message as I didn't intend to ask for anything that would require the browsing of 1000 items. Rather, it was about performing a shop search (using the shop-specific search bar found in every Etsy shop.) Your first sentence also said "I can't tell you where your items may be," so I wanted to clarify that I haven't asked anyone to tell me where my items are. Nonetheless, I am glad to hear that you were able to see that the search isn't working correctly in my shop. 

You mentioned that "We can't help in the forums as we are fellow sellers" so I wanted to clarify that I know I am writing to sellers (the reason for which was addressed in the original post), and that I wasn't hoping a seller would solve an issue. Rather, I was investigating to see if others had similar experience when searching a specific term in my shop, or when searching any terms in theirs. I believe asking for input on technical issues here is expected, and is in fact why there is a "technical issues" category in the forums. 

I agree that my best bet should be to contact Etsy, but as my post explained, those attempts have been fruitless thus far (and I think that is a common experience here.) 

Your message says “Shops I visit and my shop are fine. Everything is working.” It actually wouldn’t be possible to know if everything is fine with the shops you visit, as that would require a keyword search of their shop, that was then compared to a keyword search within their shop manager (only they would have access to their shop manager.) But thanks for letting me know that your shop is without search errors. 

[VibeEnvy]

I can confirm the issue easily. Search "cherry" in my shop shows no listings, search for "cherry pinup" shows my 3 listings with cherry designs. Seems only the word pinup in the search triggered them as a search result, but ignored cherry without the added word. I have pinup listings that don't include cherry and it excluded them, it specifically included cherry in the search with pinup but blocked it every other way I used cherry in search.

Escalated forever ago, never fixed

[SewlyButtons]

@VibeEnvy 

I was curious so I took a quick look in your shop. I did a search for just the word "cherry" and results were for all 3 of your items. A search for "cherry pinup" returned the same 3 items. So maybe you finally did get the attention of someone at etsy... or else an embarrassed AI finally fixed the problem (assuming an AI could possibly be embarrassed...???)

[VibeEnvy]

@SewlyButtons no they never fixed it and never even got back to me at all. I ended up fixing it myself by removing the word "pinup" as well as from my bikinis the word "sexy" and I don't seem to have any issues with any listings anymore (the word combo "pin up" was left, it didn't seem to trigger anything). It could be said that editing the listings at all caused the fix, but I think search results behaving different based entirely on that word being used or not in the search makes me feel very confidently the word "pinup" for the cherry listings was the problem. I'll never actually know because etsy never actually did anything about this or even inform me that there was no solution or they couldn't reproduce the problem or anything, just told it was escalated and then ghosted.

[Madrigallery]

I found the problem. The unsearchable listings had the word "sex" in their tags (as a part of the band name "Alien Sex Fiend"). Apparently, all listings that use the word SEX or SEXY or anything similarly "risqué" are excluded from search results. 

[Amaradorn]

@Madrigallery wow! That's crazy but I believe you.

So Etsy can't give us a 'mature' filter but the search AI is a conservative prude!! lol

[Madrigallery]

I just checked my other shops and found that even the vintage dresses that I titled or tagged with the innocuous phrase "sexy dress" were shadowbanned from Etsy search results. So, if you're selling anything that you have described as "sexy" in titles or tags then you might want to check for this. To check, just search within your shop for that item but WITHOUT using "sexy" as one of your search terms. For example, I had a Louis Estevez dress that included "sexy" in the title. When I keyword search within my shop for the word "Estevez," the listing is invisible. It only becomes visible if I include the word "sexy" in the search term.

To fix this, so that the listing can be found using only the word "Estevez," I had to remove the offending word "sexy" from the listing's titles and tags. This has been true in all 4 of my shops so odds are pretty good that it will be true in some of yours as well. 

[nineteen27]

@Madrigallery 

you are correct.

i just checked my shop and the same thing is happening.

and hello... bettie page IS sexy but i have to remove that word... otherwise.

she does not appear under her own name.

etsy is just...so... backwards.

[Madrigallery]

@nineteen27 thanks for letting me know (I was pretty sure I couldn't be the only one.) It sucks, I noticed this in one of my shops many months ago, but had no idea so many of my items were affected. I've been paying all those relisting fees just to have items stagnating unsearchably for most of a year. 

[TickleYourWitch]

Can't say sex but you can have giant dildos everwhere? Lol. Why am i not surprised?

[MetroRetroVintage]

I recall being warned about same, regarding Google search -- and keeping away from certain keywords.

This was years ago, and imagine that many platforms have followed suit.

[ShimmyBoutique]

What?

Sexy is offered as a Choice, "Yes" or "No"in the Listing details by Etsy?????????

[Madrigallery]

Yep, it's super lame. I get constant pop-ups that tell me a new listing's shipping price is too high, but nothing to advise me that my tag "sexy dress" will cause that listing to be banned from search results. 

[cindylouwho2]

Here's another thread with similar issues: https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Listings-indexed-but-not-really-unindexed-but-only-mo...

@WitticismsRus @VibeEnvy  @Miriboheme  this OP seems to be affected by the word "sex". Does that work for you guys? 

[nineteen27]

@cindylouwho2 

it takes about 15 minutes before the items become searchable in the shop after you remove the sexy words.

[OneEyeCatStudio]

.....  or 15 minutes to disappear if you add them:)

[cindylouwho2]

@nineteen27 thanks! That's the usual amount of indexing time I see for listing changes. 

[WitticismsRus]

@cindylouwho2 

I'll check once I'm home but pretty sure they have a list of words that trigger the removal from search thing. It appears to be anything adult related. 

Edit to add- just searched in our shop on phone app for sex and sexual since we have lots of sexual humor stuff and both words yielded results so it seems to be ok in our shop. Lots of other words aren't though.

[VibeEnvy]

Maybe my bikini but I don't think I put anything line that for my diaper bag or handbag. I'll check if there's anything.

Maybe the word pinup, which I'm just referencing for the aesthetic/fashion style but could be considered sexy or risque. Would explain why that word specifically works like I'm telling Etsy to ignore the sexy safeguard in my search.

[VibeEnvy]

@cindylouwho2 

So it seems less definitive now for my possible word, I search "rose" and one of my rose shoes shows up, it has the word pinup, if I search pinup all 4 rose shoes listings show up in the results, so some listings with that word show up for normal searches.

Edit: The ones that seem to work I think only have pinup in the tags (it's early, I have to double check lol), the ones affected look like they have the word in the title. Perhaps priority is placed on the title since that gets actually seen/displayed in search.

[nineteen27]

@VibeEnvy 

if you remove the word *sexy* from your cherry bikini tags...it should appear for cherry.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1190785831/black-cherry-bikini-cherries-swimsuit

try it.

wait 15 minutes.

and see.

ps... i have pin up as well but sexy is the problem.

[VibeEnvy]

@nineteen27 I will see if that works, but there are no words in my titles or tags for things like my diaper bag, handbag, sneakers that do appear when i include pinup but don't appear without that specific word.

While testing words to see if anything besides pinup will bring these listings up, i searched "bag" in my shop, it says 58 results but it's only showing 36 listings and no next page button. Gift got 169 results but only shows one page of listings.

Diaper bag does not have the word sexy or any word close to that other than pinup. No single word from the title or tags results in the diaper bag showing up except for the only exception, pinup will bring up items that are otherwise being restricted from view.

If i search for sexy, my cherry bikini shows up with all my other bikinis that use the keyword. However if I search "bikini" i only get 5 results, all of those results include the word sexy but aren't being restricted from regular searches, the cherry bikini does not show up. It will show up for pinup bikini without searching for sexy and the listing has that keyword in it which would be restricting it, but pinup, for me, seems to behave the same way the word sexy seems to behave in my listings search results. But also, all of these are inconclusive since it's not having the exact same effect on all listings that include the same potential triggers.

[nineteen27]

@VibeEnvy 

i had searched for the word *cherry* in your shop and absolutely nothing appeared.

i have no idea how many cherry items are in your shop since i cannot search for them! : )

but i know the cherry bikini had sexy as a tag.

i did not check your diaper bags.

but remove pin up from the diaper bag and see if it works?

i use pin up in my pin up model items and they do appear so...

who the **** knows.