Titles cut short after first punctuation in desktop search

[#1]

Good morning everyone! I found that my listing titles are cut short after the first punctuation mark in Etsy desktop search. Do we know if this is permanent or a temporary thing?

My original title of:

"M| 90s Y2K Black Punk Mini Skirt - Medium | Vintage Chain Striped Low Rise" now appears as just "M". Other's titles are suffering in the same way.

If anyone at Etsy is reading this, how long will this be going on for? If its a while I'll need to retype my 4000 listing titles to be compliant with this new change. I don't think many people will click on my new listing title of "M". 

Etsy sellers, if you are having this same problem please reply below. I'm curious how widespread this problem is. Etsy reinforced how important our titles were in the latest Etsy direct, but now they're taking out titles away from us. 

[BarnFullExpressVtg]

@FlyingAppleVintage If you remove the space after the punctuation, the whole title will show.

[FlyingAppleVintage]

@BarnFullExpressVTG thank you, we've started doing this! Unfortunately it nukes the title's first word's search ability. For instance M| 90s Jeans will be M|90s Jeans, changing "90s" to "M|90s" in the search engines eyes. For now its what we'll do, thank you for your thoughtful response!

[SewlyButtons]

@FlyingAppleVintage 
What if you just delete the | after the letter M?

[QuiltStencilsAndMore]

I was on the phone with Etsy this morning and I gave them an ear full. All my stencils were cut off after 5" as an example. My buyers look for sizes. I got the usual response saying they knew it was a problem & they will escalate it. Anyone else turning blue from holding your breath?

[HouseofWhisperingFir]

Thanks for posting this.  I would have never known to look to see if I was in this incredibly idiotic test. I am.  Search is bad enough without having to deal with this BS.

[ChillwolfArt]

@HouseofWhisperingFir  Here is how to look.  Plug in one or more of your Titles.  If you are in the test, wherever your first comma (or other punctuation) falls, your Title will be cut off in search results.  And even if you mouse over your Title, you will not see it in its entirety (if you are in the test)  If you don't have any commas (or punctuation), the entire Title will show when you mouse over it in search results.

Hope this helps. I saw a Title which said "Boo".  That's it.  

[ChillwolfArt]

@HouseofWhisperingFir  In your Shop, some Titles have commas and others don't.  The one with the Butterfly Bell has commas.  If you plug that one into search, and you are in the test, you will see your Title is cut off after your first comma (even if you mouse over it in search results).

[HouseofWhisperingFir]

@ChillwolfArt 

Thank you- what a debacle!

[Shabbywonder]

this is spec very helpful after the Description " Hide & Seek " when the most important information was in the Title too

[ButterflyFeetDigital]

Commas make the title easier to read, decipher. And longer titles gave enough information to help people decide to look further. 

[stuartroadvintage]

This is almost laughable. I had one that said Vintage 7". Now we have to check all our listings for this.

[FlyingAppleVintage]

I just got an email back from Etsy Support, I'll post it below for anyone that's curious. Apparently I'm the first person to submit a claim about this, so more attention needs to be brought to the issue. If you're affected by this please submit a claim here.  

"Hello there,
 
Warm greetings from Etsy! I see that you have some concerns about the titles on your Etsy shop since it was truncated and I appreciate the details that you provided. No worries, I'd be more than happy to look into this for you.
 
I know where your coming from since it is important on your Etsy shop. After taking a look, currently, we don't have received any reports from our team about this kind of concern about the listings. And we appreciate your effort in sharing your observation about the listings on your Etsy shop.
 
So with that being said, I will take note of this concern and pass on to our products team so that they can discuss and incorporate it with future changes with the site. Please know we take comments from the community to heart, and we make many changes to the site based on what we hear."

[EightMileVintage]

I feel the need to fix all the grammar errors.

[OneEyeCatStudio]

Oh my.  Well, on a positive note, it doesn't look like AI.

Good to know that useless titles will be incorporated with future changes, though.

[PlatypusDream]

"We don't see the problem so it doesn't exist."

Completely fvcking useless!

[MissPussinBoots]

@FlyingAppleVintage I followed your example, went through Etsy chat and explained the shortened titles in search thing and the hidden description location issue (I'm in both tests).

She had never heard of either of the problems and escalated the issues to the technical department (for whatever that's worth). Someone will be contacting me shortly.

Since I'm still waiting for someone to contact me about a different sitewide issue that went to the technical department 4+ years ago, I won't be holding my breath.

But if being another squeaky wheel in this nightmare helps in any way, I'm happy to contribute my 2 cents. 

[MorningGlorious]

I actually reported this last week and the Etsy person said she would pass my concerns up to the team that handles it. I said the truncated titles is the worst test I've ever seen and I've been here since 2008. I use commas to separate phrases in my titles and the test punishes punctuation and sets buyers up to either scroll on or give up. Combined with an impossible to find item description and a badly cropped first photo, not to mention items that don't come up in search even with exact titles entered, it's like Etsy doesn't want us to actually sell anything anymore!

[WhimsicalTreasuresOK]

Thank you for this information!  I will be filing a claim first thing in the morning.

[C20Ceramics]

@FlyingAppleVintage Yes this is the standard canned response to every issue or query raise with Etsy support....It really isnt support, it is just cut and paste with a few variations depending on the issue.

Howver, I have found if you give very low feedback score when you get sent "how did we do?" - you will receive an email response almost straight away from an actual person that works at Etsy.

( not that they respond or do anything about it after that ....other than to say they "will investigate"....then just complete silence to any further responses or information provided by the seller ) 

[AlluringArtbyGerry]

Flying Apple Vintage ... Canned reply they won't do anything about.  You will have to remove the punctuation marks.

I found my titles were cut off WAY BEFORE the 1st comma & read only "Hand Carved" instead of "Hand Carved Hand Painted xxx Art Gourd" for example. xxx being Roses OR Daffodils OR Oriental Lily or whatever word distinguishes 1 title from another title. 

[FlyingAppleVintage]

@SewlyButtons That would totally work! I have over 4000 listings so I'd have to rework all those titles to make sure it still made sense. I'd just like to know how long search will be this way. A week? A month? Three months? Is it worth me redoing everything or will this pass quickly?

[ChillwolfArt]

@FlyingAppleVintage  We never know how long tests will last; Etsy never shares that with us.

I don't make any changes when tests are being done. But since I saw this and how horrible it is, I took all of the commas out of my Titles.  Now every Title shows in its entirety when you mouse over.  I'm not saying this is what to do, but it's what I decided to do after seeing what I did.

[FlyingAppleVintage]

@ChillWolfArt Thank you that’s good to know. I’m light of that information I think I may need to take a military action and find a new way of doing things if punctuation is maybe on the chopping block, so to speak.

[joyphillipsart]

I did a search, and they look terrible
A quick test with products on both my shops and I've found:

Full stop (.) is fine, they don't stop any wording after them.
Comma (,) stop wording from showing after
Apostrophe (') is a mixed bag. If you have it before a letter eg: Woodland's, the words appear after. If you have the apostrophe at the end of the word eg: Woodlands' then no words appear after.
Dash (-), again a mixed bag. If it has spaces around it eg: Size S - M - L, the wording will stop after S. If you don't have spaces eg: Sizes S-M-L, it will show words after.

Hope that helps a bit.

[FlyingAppleVintage]

@joyphillipsart Thank you for testing all those options, that's really helpful!