Two of my Best Selling, Advertised and On Sale products are not showing up in searches.

[#1]

I have two products that are being advertised that are not coming up today in searches at all.  They are very popular right now and one of them is a Best Seller.  I even put them on sale to see if they would come up.  This is one of them:  https://thetimetaxi.etsy.com/listing/1479039095

I tried searching in incognito and it isn't coming up.  I am not getting any search visits either.  I am just getting visits from social media etc. 

It usually comes up under Dalmatian Ears, Dalmatian Hair Clips or Dalmatian Barrettes.  

[PracticalPrintsByLee]

@cindylouwho2 3 were best sellers that the etsy staff done instantly somehow as the sales are coming through straight away now, the other one took around 10 mins that wasn't a best seller

[cindylouwho2]

@ByVanillaMintDesigns @MENGCACA thank you. While there is a small possibility this is not the new handmade review process itself - it could be a bug related to those upcoming changes, for example - it is obviously not just a test of deindexing badged listings. 

[PracticalPrintsByLee]

@cindylouwho2 Just rechecked the listings and back to deindexed, what an absolute joke, no way to run a business at all

[Chrysalism]

@cindylouwho2 only 2 of my 8 de-indexed items are badged. 

[LKVINTAGEFAVOUR]

I am having the same issues here, two best sellers are gone from search and sales are down massively. Still awaiting a call back from Etsy

[hopeandjoystudios]

I would wonder since they are best sellers if their pix have not been stolen and the "duplicate photo bot" then removed them? But this seems like a LOT of removed listings even for that?

[cindylouwho2]

@hopeandjoystudios Definitely possible. Up until last week, that bot was just removing items, not deindexing them like this. So this could be the beginning of Etsy using deindexing, which they promised us back in September: https://community.etsy.com/t5/Announcements/An-update-on-how-we-re-keeping-Etsy-special/m-p/14345600...

It could also be the launch of that process going horribly wrong LOL I do think the deindexing is not a coincidence, though. 

[hopeandjoystudios]

What a flustercluck.. what is the assurance it will not be removed again? It makes me see the plus side of having no best sellers and crappy pictures...

[VibeEnvy]

One of my de-indexed listings i can not find any website using the same images, similar stuff but surprisingly i didn't find any scam sites that copied the listing so for my case it doesn't seem like this would be related to the sensitive mass produced/resell bot.

[ByVanillaMintDesigns]

I have been checking my item every hour and I am glad to report it has been indexed again and I can find it in my shop search.

Keep an eye on yours. Hopefully they will be indexed again soon too. 

[WaypostPaper]

Experiencing the same issue with two bestseller listings, though one bestseller listing DOES show up when searching within my shop, so it doesn't seem to be *all* bestseller listings. Etsy chat support told me, "In this case is an error that we are working to solve as soon as possible we can, our engineering team is working on resolving it as quickly as possible. I’ve added your report to our investigation."

[Chrysalism]

3 of my 8 are re-indexed, hoping for a quick resolution for the rest of them!

[VibeEnvy]

I've only just started looking into this on my shop and noticed so far, two of them are de-indexed, they are my most recent two sold items. Anyone experiencing this want to do a check and see if the sudden de-indexed listing are also most recently sold? (obviously this could affect best sellers, but one of mine is not a best seller and has only had a few sales ever and the other item sells regularly but never had a best seller badge, so for me it seems more of a timeframe issue as opposed to a rate of sales/traffic issue (best sellers just happen to be more likely to get sales in that timeframe).

I'm gonna keep looking and see if there are others but i discovered the two missing items first then realized they were the last two i've sold. 3 sales ago the item is indexed, busy now but will do a little more testing later.

[cindylouwho2]

@VibeEnvy that sort of thing has happened before, but not for several years.

In some shops, I am seeing reports of items that didn't sell but were deindexed, so there could very well be multiple causes. 

[Chrysalism]

Yes! Everything I sold between 6pm and 2am last night was de-indexed when I checked today. All 8 of my de-indexed listings were sold during that timeframe, and nothing else. Then I sold a few things today that remained indexed. But I just sold a pair of earrings a few minutes ago and checked- they are de-indexed now. Interesting

[NelsonsGifts]

Yes all of ours were sold yesterday then disappeared during the night.

[DianeMabrey]

Just did some more checking and so far I have two listings missing. One has the best seller badge and the other one does not.

[BlackSheepDyeworks]

@VibeEnvy, your post prompted me to check ... I have one de-indexed listing, which was a listing sold out a few weeks ago that I renewed this morning.  It's definitely not a best seller, it hardly gets much action at all.  This afternoon I renewed another older listing (sold out several months ago), and added a new listing - both of those are fine.

So I'm wondering if (certain?) listings renewed during a certain period (this morning?) were affected, due to some indexing programming error.  Etsy support does seem to be replying that it's a bug that they are in the process of fixing.  @cindylouwho2 , it could still indicate changes or rolling out of whatever code is needed for the de-indexing (rather than removal) promise.  Etsy always seems to give us an inadvertent heads-up re: programming changes by the glitches that precede them ; )

[cindylouwho2]

@BlackSheepDyeworks at least a couple of shops are reporting this for items not sold or reactivated, but hey, with Etsy bugs, you just never know ... could be multiple things going on. 

I thoroughly agree that sometimes seemingly unrelated bugs turn out to be connected to Etsy changes, though, and already speculated about this being a bug related to the handmade bot changes, instead of just the actual changes. Which were supposed to happen in September, but who is counting? LOL

[SeasideRoseCreations]

The usual "let's break this, while we fix that".

[ByVanillaMintDesigns]

@cindylouwho2 perhaps it's the renewing / listing that triggers it and as bestsellers well sell a lot it would trigger the renewing part more often....

[CraftyCornishMaids]

it looks like a bug

https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Etsy-Search-all-incorrect/m-p/144718814#M830177

[cindylouwho2]

@CraftyCornishMaids a bug related to "our routine sweeps to keep our marketplace safe and identify prohibited items" - which does fit my original theory. 

I certainly hope they are going to roll out the bot changes soon, as completely deactivating flagged listings for weeks with zero communication is not great, and it needs to stop. 

[MurphyGardens · Accepted solution]

Re-sharing my post from here: 

Hi everyone - thanks so much for bringing this issue to our attention so that our team could look into it. While rankings in search are based on many factors, we have discovered a technical glitch that limited the visibility of a very small subset of items in search. This occurred during our routine sweeps to keep our marketplace safe and identify prohibited items. We are in the process of implementing a solution, and impacted listings should be restored to search within the next several hours. We apologize for any confusion or frustration this may have caused.

[CompanyTwentySix]

Can we please get an update? I was told four hours ago a fix would be in place no later than two hours later.