Search results (tags) for: "search"

Tech Update: Google Product Search Syndication

2009-11-25T15:05:00-05:00

Sellers,

We're excited to announce that Etsy is partnering with Google as a participant in the Google Product Search Marketplace Partner Program.

Etsy's Google Product Search Syndication feature will allow Etsy sellers to have their items automatically submitted frequently and with all relevant attributes to Google Product Search. You can find Google Product Search via the "Shopping" link at the top of most Google search pages.

As a Google Product Search Marketplace Partner, participating Etsy sellers' items will appear in Google Product Search with the associated Etsy shop name and shop feedback visible and searchable.

This feature is being rolled out gradually to the Etsy seller community. Beta testing has been underway and we are now gradually activating this feature for Etsy sellers who currently use their shop feed to submit items to Google Product Search. No action is required from sellers. A gradual rollout to the remainder of the Etsy seller community will follow.

Participating sellers will see a link called Syndication under the Promote section inside Your Etsy when signed in. This Syndication page lists the partner websites Etsy is working with to help you maximize your shop's exposure. More partner websites will be added in the future.

Google Product Search Syndication will be enabled by default for participating sellers. Sellers can opt out of this service at any time.

We'd like to thank all the beta testers for their ongoing valuable feedback. We will update this article as the initial rollout is completed, with a link to a dedicated discussion thread in the Forums.

Please visit Etsy's Help site to learn more details about using Google Product Search Syndication.

Other Tips for Your Etsy Shop in the Seller Handbook

Tech Update: Upcoming SEO Improvements for Shop Home Pages

2009-10-30T19:40:00-05:00

UPDATE: We have completed the SEO improvements for shop pages, including the 302 to 301 redirect changes for username.etsy.com URLs.

[The following was originally posted on October 30, 2009.]

UPDATE: We're happy to announce that all the search engine optimization (SEO) changes described in the post below are now live on Etsy, except for the 302 to 301 redirect change for username.etsy.com URLs, which will roll out over the next 24 hours.

[The following was originally posted on October 28, 2009.]

As part of our ongoing initiative to increase SEO effectiveness on Etsy.com, we will be releasing an update within the next 24-48 hours that is designed to improve page rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

Search engines look at the number of links into a web page, such as a seller’s shop or product listing page, and the quality of those links to determine the relevancy of that page in response to a search query. Our change will ensure that ALL incoming links to Etsy pages are counted by the search engines.

Prior to this change, all links to your shop URL (username.etsy.com) were 302 redirects to www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=123456, which many search engines viewed as temporary and therefore did not count in their algorithms. From a technical perspective, we changed 302 temporary redirects to permanent 301 redirects, which are counted.

In the process, we’ve also updated the current shop page URL (www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=123456) from a format that uses a numerical “user_id” to one that is SEO-enhancing as well as shopper-friendly: www.etsy.com/shop/username.

We anticipate that you’ll have questions and hope to address the majority of them below:

Do I need to make changes to all the current links to my site?
No, you do not need to make any changes to your current site references — whether you’re using username.etsy.com or www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=123456. Both will be automatically redirected to www.etsy.com/shop/username. In the future, if you’re embedding the link to your shop page on another site, please use http://www.etsy.com/shop/username. If you’re marketing your site and need a URL that’s easy to remember, continue to use username.etsy.com in your marketing materials.

When I create a new shop, what URL will be generated?
When a new shop is created on Etsy.com, two URLs will be generated: username.etsy.com and www.etsy.com/shop/username. Etsy will automatically assign www.etsy.com/shop/username to the page URL. Shop owners can continue to use username.etsy.com for marketing purposes — this will be automatically redirected to www.etsy.com/shop/username.

When can I expect to see the results of these changes?
Once changes are made on any site, it takes search engines a few weeks to recognize that change and reflect it in page rankings. Search engines crawl Etsy.com more frequently than most websites because of its size, number of inbound links and frequency of change.

Tell me more about 302 vs. 301 redirects.
On the Internet, there are different types of redirects used for different purposes by the search engines. The redirect from username.etsy.com to www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=123456 was a 302 redirect. Search engines assume 302 redirects are temporary and therefore do not count links to 302 redirects towards the number of links to a page. In contrast, 301 redirects are seen as permanent, and do count towards the number of links to a page. We're changing the 302 temporary redirect to a 301 permanent redirect to make sure all links to username.etsy.com are counted by search engines.

We’d like to recognize and thank our partners at SEOmoz – Rand, Lindsay, and Jen – for their involvement in our initiative. SEO is an ongoing process and as we continue to roll out enhancements, we will communicate them on The Storque. If you have questions or comments, please join us in this discussion thread in the Forums. We’d love to hear from you.

P.S. If you want to get the breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox, then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Etsy Guide to SEO

2009-10-08T10:30:00-05:00

Attention, sellers! The Etsy Guide to SEO is here!

UPDATE: Daniellexo has made this handy video from Rand's first Virtual Lab chat. We suggest watching it over at Vimeo, where you can see the screenshots a little bigger. Rand will be giving another chat on Monday, October 12 and again on October 28. (See below for details.) He'll be going over this same material and taking questions. We hope you can join in!

[The following was originally published on September 24, 2009.]

SEOmoz, the Search Engine Optimization consultants we've been working with, have put together this handy document for sellers. It's full of great tips and insights into how to enhance your shop for search engines and improve your rankings. SEO is an evolving process, so it's possible there will be updates to this guide. We will bump up the post when this occurs.

Please download the PDF file of the Etsy Guide to SEO here.

(Note: The file is approximately 2.0 MB and may take some time to download. If this is the case, please right-click on the link and save the document to your computer.)

Additionally, we will be continuing a series of three live online workshops in our Virtual Labs with Rand from SEOmoz. The schedule is as follows:

Thursday, October 1 at 5:30 p.m. ET
Monday, October 12 at 7 p.m. ET
Wednesday, October 28 at 4 p.m. ET

Click here to see what time the Virtual Labs are in your hometown.

These Virtual Labs will be an overview of what's been outlined in the Etsy Guide to SEO. So mark your calendars! We will also do our best to record one of the sessions and post a link to that video back here. So check back at the end of October if you can't make the scheduled sessions.

Thanks!

Neelam

We're closing comments here and linking to this Forum thread so we can follow your discussion there.

Find more how-to's in Etsy's Seller Handbook.

Seller How-To: Tag-o-rama With Descriptive Keywords

2009-10-05T14:00:00-05:00

Tagging is an essential part of the listing (and selling!) process. Many shoppers are using keywords to search for the exact type of items you make, and you want your work to show up in these search results! The key component in this search-and-rescue mission are your items' tags.

Tags are keywords sellers attach to their items during the item listing process. After selecting the first tag, which determines the category for your item, sellers can attach up to 13 keywords or tags. These tags are used to help surface items in search, and they currently determine which subcategories your item falls under.

After you choose the category and subcategories, you then can choose words that accurately describe your item. Etsy Admin often suggest using style, color, textures and motifs as tags for your items, so with the help of some of my colleagues (and sellers) I've come up with the following lists to help you if you get stuck.

Want a few more tips? Come on by the Virtual Labs for a workshop on Tagging, Titles and Descriptions on Oct. 15, 2009 at 4 p.m. ET.

Style 1980s (or any decade) adorable African Americana angelic antique art deco art nouveau Asian autumn avant-garde bizarre black tie bohemian boho chic bold burlesque business casual cheerful chic circus classic classy clever cocktail colorful complex contemporary country cute cyber dark deconstructed delicate DIY dramatic earthy eccentric edgy Edwardian elegant ethnic European everyday fall fantasy feminine flapper folk folk art formal formal French funky funny futuristic gag geek geekery gladiator glam goddess goth gothic gothic lolita grotesque harvest hippie hipster horror humorous Indian indie industrial Japanese kawaii librarian lolita luxurious manly masculine mermaid Mexican midcentury Middle Eastern mod modern modest modish mystical natural nautical nerd noir nostalgic old world organic oriental Paris peasant pirate playful polished prairie preppy pretty Primitive punk quirky refined Renaissance Renaissance Fair (Ren Faire) retro rockabilly Roman romantic rustic sailor secretary seductive shabby chic simple sophisticated southwest sporty spring steampunk summer sustainable tasteful traditional trendy ugly urban Victorian vintage waldorf weird western whimsical winter witty woodland zany	Texture airy bright bumpy buttery coarse cool cozy cuddly delicate downy embossed feathery fluffy frilly frizzy furry fuzzy glittery grainy hammered hard iridescent light luminescent luminous matte metallic opaque patina plush pointy polished prickly puffy rough ruffled sculptured shaggy sharp sheer shimmery shiny silky slick smooth soft sparkly stamped translucent transparent velvety waxy woolly	Size baggy big bulky chunky curvy deep delicate dense extra small fitted frail gigantic heavy huge large lightweight little long loose massive medium miniature oversized petite plump plus size shallow shapely short small snug streamlined substantial tailored tall thick thin tight tiny voluminous voluptuous wide	Motifs and Patterns argyle Asian asymmetrical brocade Celtic checked checkered complex damask dotted Egyptian fleur de lis floral geometric gingham Gothic hearts paisley plaid polka dot scalloped stars striped swirls symmetrical tartan tweed woodland	Specific Colors charcoal chartreuse chocolate brown cobalt blue coral pink cornflower blue cream crimson cyan emerald green fuschia gold hot pink indigo ivory kelly green lemon yellow lime magenta mauve navy blue nude olive green periwinkle robins egg blue royal blue sapphire silver sky blue slate grey taupe teal turquoise

Feel free to add other keywords that fit in these lists in the comments below!

Guidelines & Tips: Tagging on Etsy | The Seller Handbook

Tech Update: Filter Search Results by Category

2009-09-28T18:00:00-05:00

Today we're excited to announce a useful new addition to the Etsy Search experience — you can now filter your search results by category.

When searching on Etsy, you often get a lot of results back. We think it's important to provide shoppers ways to narrow down their search results, while highlighting the wide variety of amazing items on Etsy, from Handmade, Vintage and Supplies.

Let's look at the search results in Handmade for "Halloween," for example. Under the Handmade heading on the left side of the page, you will now see links to the top seven categories ordered by the number of results for that search term in each. You can click the "see more categories" link to view all the categories with results. You can also jump to the results for your search term in Vintage, Supplies or All Items.

In this example, we see there are 1,919 results for "Halloween" within the Handmade: Art Category. Clicking the link for the Art Category will take you to those results with the option to drill down further into the applicable subcategories.

Now we see there are 238 results for "Halloween" within Handmade: Art: Photography. Let's drill down further to the 60 surreal Halloween photographs.

At any time, you can jump back up to any of your previously chosen filters. In this version, starting a new search will clear your filter choices. You can also clear your search term and simply browse all the items available on Etsy by category.

We hope you enjoy this new way to make discoveries on Etsy! Tell us what you think in this Forum thread. (We'll close comments on this blog post so that we can consolidate your feedback on the thread.)

P.S. If you would like to receive breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox — then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Tech Update: Upcoming Changes for Shop and Item Page SEO

2009-09-23T18:00:00-05:00

UPDATE: We're happy to announce that the search engine optimization (SEO) changes described in the post below are now live on Etsy. It's important to note that the changes won't appear in Google search results immediately. Google checks web pages for updates periodically, so the changes won't appear in Google search results until Google visits your page again and updates the information it has about your page. If you want to see when Google last checked one of your pages, search for the page in Google and click the "Cached" link for your page.

At the top of the cached version of the page, Google states when they last viewed the page.

We're also excited to announce the launch of a tool that enables sellers to preview how their item pages and shop home page will appear in Google search results. When you list a new item or edit an existing listing, you can click a link to "View a preview of how your item will appear in Google search results."

This shows a preview that updates as you enter or edit your item title and description. You can simply enter your item title and description and instantly view how your item will appear in Google search results. This tool is also available on the Your Etsy > Appearance page where you can update your Shop Title and Shop Announcement and preview how your shop home page will appear in Google search results.

As we mentioned in the original post below, SEO is an ongoing process. We'll continue to make improvements and keep you updated on our progress here on The Storque.

[The following was originally posted on September 1, 2009.]

Etsy has been working with SEOmoz, a third-party consultancy, to improve the search engine optimization (SEO) for Etsy.com, including shop and item listing pages. Improved SEO means shoppers are more likely to find Etsy pages when they use search engines like Google and Bing.

We're excited to announce that we’re getting ready to move forward with some changes based on the guidance of the experts at SEOmoz. (Big thanks to Rand, Lindsay, Jen and everyone at SEOmoz!)

We're pre-announcing these changes to ensure sellers have time to prepare, but it's important to note that you don't need to make any changes to your shop or item listing pages. It's your choice whether you want to work on SEO. We know some sellers will want the opportunity to optimize their pages and take full advantage of these changes, and we also want to explain what Etsy is doing to improve SEO.

These changes will take effect within the next few weeks, and we’ll update this announcement to let you know when the changes are live on the site.

We'll start with an overview of changes we're making and then dig into some examples.

Titles

Google and other search engines limit the number of characters displayed in the page title of links on their search result pages. SEOmoz has found that the likelihood of Web searchers clicking through on a specific link in search results increases if the page title appears complete in Google or other search engines. To prevent page titles from getting cut off, we will remove non-essential characters, such as periods and commas, and then truncate page titles at the end of the last complete word up to 66 characters. (If this sounds complicated, check out the details and examples below.)

It's important to note that page titles are only visible to search engines, on search engine search result pages, and at the top of web browser windows.

SEOmoz has also found that brand names tend to increase the likelihood of Web searchers clicking on a page title in search results, which is why we're putting "on Etsy" at the end of page titles. Familiar brand names help searchers quickly identify links they trust, and to the extent the Etsy brand has gained significant awareness, SEOmoz recommends including "on Etsy" at the end of page titles. However, sellers' shop, section, and item titles are likely most relevant to searchers, and will be prioritized at the beginning of page titles. In certain situations "on Etsy" will be removed to create more room for the seller's shop, section, and item titles. We're also making sure that the seller’s username, which is often the seller’s brand, appears in page titles.

And now for some detailed examples.

Shop homepage title

The current format is: <username> on Etsy - <shop title>
The new format will be: <shop title> by <username> on Etsy

In order to keep the page title tag to 66 characters or fewer, we created rules for how the content will be truncated. The rules ensure that the full username is in the title tag, remove "on Etsy" if the <shop title> is too long, and truncate the <shop title> if it's still too long after "on Etsy" is removed.

If the <shop title> + <username> is greater than 54 characters, but less than 62 characters, "on Etsy" will be removed.

If the <shop title> + <username> is greater than 62 characters, "on Etsy" will be removed and the <shop title> will be truncated to the end of the last complete word, up to 42 characters + (20 - <username>). If your username is less than 20 characters, there's more room for a longer <shop title>.

Here are a few examples:

<username>: littleblackrabbit (17 characters) <shop title>: vintage and recycled inspiration (32 characters) <shop title> + <username> = 49 characters, so "on Etsy" will be included and nothing will be truncated Page title: vintage and recycled inspiration by littleblackrabbit on Etsy

<username>: BettyTurbo (10 characters)
<shop title>: mostly involving cake ice cream and moustaches (45 characters)
<shop title> + <username> = 55 characters, so "on Etsy" will be removed
Page title: mostly involving cake ice cream and moustaches by BettyTurbo

<username>: iheartnorwegianwood (19 characters)
<shop title>: Harnesses cage skirts fringe leggings specialness (49 characters)
<shop title> + <username> = 68 characters, so "on Etsy" will be removed and the <shop title> will be truncated
Page title: Harnesses cage skirts fringe leggings by iheartnorwegianwood

Here's a tool you can use to calculate the number of characters in your <username> and <shop title>.

Because you have limited space in titles it's best to include the most important keywords at the beginning of your <shop title> and to focus on the unique value of your shop.

It's important to note that your <shop title> will only be truncated in the page title, which is visible to search engines, on search engine search results pages, and at the top of web browser windows. Your full <shop title> will still appear on your shop homepage on Etsy.

Item page title

The current format is: <item title> by <username> on Etsy

While we're not changing the format, we are adding rules for how content is truncated. The rules ensure that the full username is in the title tag, remove "on Etsy" if the <item title> is too long, and truncate the <item title> if it's still too long after "on Etsy" is removed.

If the <item title> + <username> is greater than 54 characters but less than 62 characters, "on Etsy" will be removed. If the <item title> + <username> is greater than 62 characters, "on Etsy" will be removed and the <item title> will be truncated to the end of the last complete word up to 42 characters + (20 - <username>).

Section page title

The current format is: <username> on Etsy - <section name>
The new format will be: View <section name> by <username> on Etsy

If the <section name> + <username> is greater than 49 characters but less than 56 characters, "on Etsy" will be removed. If the <section name> + <username> is greater than 56 characters, "on Etsy" will be removed and the <section title> will be truncated to the end of the last complete word up to 37 characters + (20 - <username>).

Canonical tags

We're going to use canonical tags on shop homepages, section pages and item pages.

What's a canonical tag? This is part of the code for your Etsy pages that lets search engines know when different URLs (web addresses) are actually the same page. For example, check out these two URLs: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sc_main_21&listing_id=29577528
and http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=29577528

The URLs are different, but they point to the exact same page. Generally, search engines assume that a different URL means it’s a different page, unless the code of the page uses a canonical tag to tell the search engine otherwise.

This change will only be visible to search engines, but is important because it will help improve the search engine rankings of sellers' pages. The number and quality of links to a page is an important factor in search engine rankings. If Google thinks those two pages are different, it will count the number of links to each page separately. If Google knows pages with different URLs are the same page, it will add up the links to the different versions of the page and give credit for all of those links to one version of the page, likely increasing the ranking of the page.

If you're interested, SEOmoz has more info on canonical tags.

What's next?

It's important to note that SEO is an ongoing process, and we'll continue to make improvements. We're working with SEOmoz to identify how to improve site-wide SEO, and we'll keep you updated on our progress here on The Storque.

Over the past several weeks, many Etsians have participated in Forum discussions and a Virtual Lab with Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz. If you didn't get a chance to participate in the recent Virtual Lab with Rand, we'll be announcing additional Virtual Labs in the coming weeks.

We're closing comments here and starting a Forum thread so that Etsy Admin can better answer your questions and the discussion will be searchable. Join us there

Tech Update: Sorting Your Item

2009-09-09T10:30:00-05:00

Tags are keywords sellers attach to their items during the item listing process. After selecting a category for your item, sellers can attach up to 13 keywords or tags. These tags are used to help surface items in Etsy's Search, and they currently determine which subcategories your item falls under.

For example, an item in the Bags and Purses Category with the tags "Clutch" and "Applique" will appear in the Clutch subcategory and Applique subsubcategory of Bags and Purses:

Etsy suggests subcategories for your item on Step 2 of the item listing process, where sellers are asked to "sort your item." These suggestions come in the form of links based on the tags you enter or suggested subcategories you choose.

In the past, these suggested subcategories appeared as "Related Tags" and the suggested subcategories could come from anywhere in Etsy's category tree. Beginning today, we'll only suggest subcategories relevant to your chosen top-level category. We're also making it clearer that these suggestions are not only tags, but also directly relate to the Etsy Categories.

Why are we doing this? We believe this update will help reduce mistagging and confusion during the listing process, and help make the Etsy Categories more relevant. This update should make the item listing experience feel a little more logical.

There is no need to edit or re-tag your listings. You can still enter tags not suggested by Etsy during the item listing process, and the order of your chosen subcategories does not have an impact on your placement in Etsy's Categories. For tagging tips, see this article on current best practices for tagging items on Etsy.

We're taking a thorough look at categorization and tagging on Etsy, and this small adjustment is part of that process.

Check the Virtual Labs Schedule for Shop Critiques | View the Etsy Seller Handbook

Etsy and SEOMoz: Helping the Etsy Community with Search Engine Optimization

2009-08-10T16:30:00-05:00

UPDATE: Join us for the first in a series of workshops with Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, a well-known search engine optimization consultancy. Rand will provide an understanding of SEO tactics, give tips to increase your Etsy Shop's visibility in search engine results, and take questions.
When? August 14, 2009 at 4 p.m. ET
Where? Etsy's interactive online classrooms, the Virtual Labs.

[The following was originally posted on July 21, 2009.]

We are pleased to announce that we have hired SEOmoz, a well-known search engine optimization consultancy, to assist in helping Etsy and its sellers to increase their visibility in search engine results. SEOmoz will work with us in the coming months on a comprehensive SEO strategy as well as an implementation plan.

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz’s co-founder and CEO, is a renowned SEO expert and has spoken around the world on SEO topics. We wanted you to meet him and hear from him directly as he begins his work with Etsy. Without further ado, here’s Rand.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by some of Etsy's staff, asking for my assistance. They explained to me that a lot of folks in the community have been thinking about search engine traffic and how Google, Yahoo!, Bing, & Ask.com can help drive business to their stores.

I was only too happy to help. After all, Etsy had been a crucial resource in one of the most important days of my life: my wedding. My wife's headpiece, the fascinators that her bridesmaids wore, and even her garter were from Etsy. She told me that she wanted something special that she could pass down to our children — not something mass-produced and sold at the mall. Etsy was her answer. Her experience was incredibly positive, and since then, Etsy's role in our lives has grown — from birthday presents to thank-you gifts to the holidays, Etsy has helped us time and again.

I know the value of Etsy, and all of the amazing creations that are offered on the site. But how could I get that message out to the millions of shoppers on the web? More importantly, how can I empower Etsy sellers with the skills they need to get the message out themselves? I've faced some of these same struggles myself — I started my SEO company with my Mom, out of a tiny office in Seattle. We were responsible for everything — managing finances, making sure we had satisfied customers, and having a steady stream of business coming into the company. It's very similar to what a lot of Etsy sellers have to do.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some Etsy sellers are very familiar with the term, and others aren't. My goal is to help everyone. There's a lot of misconceptions about SEO — some people think it's black magic or random luck. But like my friend Susan's perfectly knitted creations, it's more of an exact science combined with a dash of creative marketing. You start with some raw materials, and bit by bit, intricately weave them together to create something amazing — you just need to understand how all the pieces come together.

In order to do that, you need to know a bit about how search engines work to rank documents. The process can be complicated, but there are a few important things to remember:

Search engines rely on the use of keywords — the words and phrases people type into search engines — as indicators of relevance. Employing the right terms in the right places is a basic tenet of good SEO, but it's important not to go overboard or appear manipulative.
What you say about yourself is valuable, but when Google was conceived in 1999, they realized that what others say about you is both more credible and more useful for producing relevant results. Thus, the engines in the past 10 years have turned to links as a huge part of the algorithms they employ to rank the search listings. If many unique websites link to your page, you're viewed as a more credible, relevant result.
The engines don't just look at individual pages, they look at entire domains. If you've ever noticed low quality, half-empty pages from Wikipedia taking over the top rankings, you've observed this phenomenon in practice. Search engine algorithms have evolved to measure "trust" and "reliability" on a domain-wide basis, and thus, Etsy.com is a very exciting opportunity. Every member of the Etsy site who points a link to their shop and every news article on the web that links to Etsy.com helps every one of us rank a little bit better. In the SEO world, we call this phenomenon "the rising tide lifts all ships," and it works in precisely this fashion — the rising tide of Etsy, through the traffic that comes to the site and the links it earns, means that every page has a better opportunity to earn traffic.

So, as an Etsy seller, what can you do to optimize your page and get more business? There are a few quick tips I'll share now, but it's my goal to get a comprehensive "Etsy Guide to SEO" online in the weeks to come.

Research Keywords

Google offers a great tool for researching terms and phrases that people are searching for in their engine. By typing in a few words and phrases that relate to your products, you can see what keywords have higher and lower degrees of search volume. Remember that high volume keywords are going to be harder to rank well for, so taking advantage of the "low hanging fruit" can be a great tactic.

Get Links

Many of us have personal websites or blogs and networks of friends, colleagues and family who operate websites as well. Creating links to your products and stores is a terrific way of boosting your rankings and it also encourages direct traffic who will come through those links and see your work.

Read the Ranking Factors

Every two years, SEOmoz runs a survey of the world's top SEO minds, asking for their opinions about what factors matter most for high rankings. This collection of data is available here — SEOmoz's Search Engine Ranking Factors — and a new version is only a couple weeks away. If SEO is important to you, take a few minutes to browse through — while the engines use hundreds of factors to determine rankings, only the top 10-20 are really important to worry about.

Great SEO doesn't happen overnight, and the constant evolution and myriad of issues make it a challenging subject to master. But over the weeks and months to come, I (and possibly a few other staff members from SEOmoz) will be participating in the Etsy community and working hard behind the scenes to give us all the best possible opportunity to succeed.

What's impressed me most about Etsy is the sincerity of the site. Everyone puts their greatest creations forward, and stands behind their work. It's something I intend to do as well. Etsy has been a great part of my life, and I can't wait to spread the word to even more people through the power of SEO.

Sincerely,
Rand (a.k.a. randfish)

Thanks to Rand for his thoughtful contributions to the future of SEO here at Etsy. As Rand noted, a comprehensive "Etsy Guide to SEO" will be available in the coming weeks. We will provide further details here in our blog once this is available.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and suggestions. We'll close comments here so we can follow discussion in this Forum thread.

Kind regards,
Sara (a.k.a. saralouhicks)

Tech Updates: Related Searches

2009-07-10T15:00:00-05:00

Now when you perform a search on Etsy, you will often see links for recent popular related searches above your results. You can try it out now with a search for "handbag":

These related searches are actual searches recently performed by Etsy shoppers. They are specific to Handmade, Vintage and Supplies — you will receive different related searches in a search for "handbag" under Handmade than in a search for "handbag" under Vintage, for example. Related searches are also available for popular searches on category-specific search results.

The related search links for a given search query are selected at random from a pool of recent popular related searches, and they change upon refresh or as you page through search results. They are designed to help shoppers narrow their search results with more specific searches, and they also serve as a suggestion tool providing ideas for searches.

Tip: Sellers can get ideas for item tags from relevant related searches, as they represent actual recent searches from Etsy shoppers. It's amazing to see the things people search for on Etsy!

More improvements are in the works for Etsy's Search, with much of our focus now on improving Etsy's category structure and introducing category-specific search refinements for shoppers. Please keep the detailed feedback coming and stay tuned. We'll close comments here so we can follow discussion in this Forum thread.

Seller Workshop Recap: Tags, Titles, Descriptions and Most Relevant Search

2009-06-02T11:30:00-05:00

Thanks to everyone who came to our May 28, 2009 Virtual Lab on Tags, Titles, Descriptions and Materials and the new Most Relevant option in Etsy's Search. We had some great questions come up, and we wanted to make sure we shared the answers with those who couldn't make the workshop. Here's a quick Q&A.

Q: How long should my item titles be?
A: We suggest three to seven words. The most important words in your title should be first, as the first 18 characters of your title are going to be seen in Gallery View in Etsy Search, and the first few words will be the ones displayed on external search engine results (see this Seller How-To: Optimizing Your Etsy Shop for Search Engines). If your item titles are too short they will not grab a buyer's attention, and if they are too long they will distract buyers, so balance is key. It's great to be creative in your titles for your branding, but we recommend beginning titles with the specifics. Try to think like a buyer and use words that your customers would use when searching. Generic-sounding titles don't attract potential buyers as well as specific titles, so don't be afraid to be specific! You'll improve your targeting and attract more buyers in the market for your items.

Q: How important is the order of your item's tags?
A: Your first tag is your item's top-level category. If you are interested in promoting your item in a Subcategory Showcase, your next tag should match that Subcategory. We suggest tagging in order of importance, and in general for each of the item fields (Tags, Titles, Descriptions, Materials), go with the most important information first. Note: Major changes to tagging guidelines or the listing process will be communicated in advance. Our current tagging guidelines still apply.

Q: Should I use all 14 tags?
A: Yes! It is important to use 14 relevant tags that properly describe your item. See this article on tagging for lots of tips!

Q: Should I be tagging a striped item with "stripes," "striped" and "stripe"?
A: No. Using the root word "stripe" is enough, and our search function will pick up these variations. No need to use multiple variations of a word.

Q: What about "floral" and "flowers"?
A: Yes. Those words are different enough to be used as two different tags.

Q: How much of your item's description shows up in a Google search result?
A: The first 160 characters of your item description appear in Google search results, so be sure to include the most important information first! Be as specific as possible and use words that you think your customers would use. Item dimensions and measurements are important pieces of information for buyers but can go lower down in your description. Lots of great information on search engine optimization can be found in this article.

Q: I sell soy candles. Should I be adding "soy" to my item titles, tags and descriptions?
A: Yes. The fact that your candles are made of soy is an important selling point. Include this information in the title, description and as a tag, as it is relevant information.

Q: I've heard that if I use only a few tags my items will show up higher in search results sorted by Most Relevant.
A: The best strategy for placement in search results sorted by Most Relevant is to describe your items accurately and thoroughly, using words your customers would use. It's important to follow our guidelines for tagging and to keep your tags relevant (and to use them all!). Improvements to relevancy on Etsy are being rolled out regularly and frequently, with the goal of matching well tagged, thoroughly described items with the often very specific searches shoppers are performing.

Remember, if a shopper is searching for "emerald green earrings" and you've only tagged your item "jewelry," for example, your item won't be found in that shopper's search results. When you describe your item thoroughly and accurately with specifics and details, you give your item more opportunities to be found by buyers looking for your items. Items not described well are simply not seen by the right people. Also, note that optimizing a listing for a single search term you have in mind will actually limit your visibility — you won't appear in as many searches as you might otherwise. The more tags you can use the better.

See this article for more tips on optimizing your listings for search results sorted by Most Relevant.

Q: What percentage of searches on Etsy are currently using the Most Relevant option?
A: A very small percentage of searches on Etsy (less than 1 percent) are currently being sorted by Most Relevant. The Most Relevant search option is not the default search option. It is a feature in active development and updates are being rolled out regularly and frequently behind the scenes, just as with other search engines. Searches sorted by Most Relevant are leading to purchases at a higher rate than searches sorted by Most Recently Listed, and we're actively monitoring the performance of the Most Relevant search option — as well as your feedback — to make it even better.

Q: How important are Materials in search results sorted by Most Relevant?
A: Materials are a factor in search results sorted by Most Relevant, but not an important one. Item tags, titles and descriptions, in that order, are the most important item fields in search results sorted by Most Relevant. However, don't forget that Materials is an option in the Advanced Search.

Q: Why is item listing date a consideration in search results sorted by Most Relevant?
A: It's true, an item's listing date is also a factor in determining relevancy, though not the most important one. We've found shoppers value fresh results for their favorite searches. This is common among other search engines — you'll find Google often returns relevant and current (recently updated) results.

Q: If I put "free shipping" at the beginning of my title, will that hurt me?
A: It can. Remember that in Gallery view, Etsy shoppers can only see the first 18 characters of your title, and you have a better chance of making a sale when you attract shoppers that are searching for specific things. People do perform searches for "free shipping," but they usually qualify those searches with something specific. We recommend doing the same: include "free shipping" in your title if you like, but start with something more specific.

Q: Does using your Etsy Team tag hurt your item's performance in search results sorted by Most Relevant?
A: Team tags are relevant for Team-related searches. Using one or two Team tags will not hurt your chances of being found in search results sorted by Most Relevant.

Q: Is the price of an item a factor in relevancy?
A: No. Price is not a factor in search results sorted by Most Relevant.

Q: How would you tag something that can be made in any color scheme?
A: Use "custom" or "personalized" as a tag.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Seller Workshop Virtual Lab! Please keep an eye on the Virtual Labs schedule to find out about upcoming Seller Workshops. (EDITOR'S NOTE: The previously noted discussion about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on June 15 has been postponed.)

Related Articles:

Your Shop 101: Hitting the Sweet Spot with Etsy's Most Relevant Search

2009-05-21T13:33:00-05:00

What's the ultimate goal of the Most Relevant option in Etsy's Search? To get shoppers more quickly to the exact items they want. But how does Etsy get them there? The answer is bound up in our site's collaboration with you, our sellers. We need sellers to create listings that accurately and fully represent their items. The goal, really, is to arrive at that magical moment — that sweet spot — when shoppers find the items they love and sellers do the happy dance!

Although that sweet spot feels magical, there are a lot of algorithms and number crunching going on behind the scenes. Etsy's Most Relevant Search is a living feature in active development, and it will evolve over time as we monitor its performance and make improvements to the listing process. However, as a seller, you can follow these golden rules when listing your items:

"ANY 3-Letter Word in ASL Your Choice" By MoonlightAura

Tags: Tags, also known as "keywords," are the most important part of your listing! Sellers can use up to 14 tags right now; use as many as you can to accurately describe your item. Use the most important words in the tags, even if they are in your title. Remember, the first tag determines the category your item. Look at that category's subcategories and include the relevant one as one of your tags as well. Please see this how-to for thorough tagging guidelines.

Titles: Titles can be a catchy and creative way to lure in a shopper, but keep in mind that titles should also be descriptive. Think about it from the computer's point of view: a computer is not going to understand something titled "Welcome to My World," even if that is a really awesome title for your self-portrait art photograph. "Self-Portrait Art Photograph - Welcome to My World" may not be quite as catchy, but our computer friend crunching the algorithm will know how to translate that for relevant searches.

Also, consider if from the point of view of a shopper who is scanning a search results page in Gallery view: when you put your descriptive title first, those words quickly communicate what your item actually is to the shopper. Then when they click through to your listing page, they'll see the rest of the title and get hooked by your clever branding.

Super long and unnaturally written titles don't work well for Most Relevant, and they are unappealing to shoppers. A good, accurate, buyer-friendly title can help your relevancy; a super-long title, jam-packed with keywords — or, conversely, a short title with no descriptive information — will hurt it. Aim for the "sweet spot" in the middle here. Make sure to put very important search words, such as what the item is, in the title. For more tips on Titles, see this how-to.

Descriptions: Thorough and meaty descriptions will boost your relevancy. Having inadequate descriptions for your items will bring down your relevancy. Think about what keywords your ideal buyer would be using in her searches, and try to weave that into the story you're telling.

For example, "This handmade lamp would fit into a chic, modern home or office decor — perfect for contemporary design collectors. When designing this lamp, I was inspired by mid-century interiors and decor, so my piece has a bit of a retro furniture style. Its glossy finish and vivid green make this lamp a statement piece for your living room or workplace. I made this ceramic lamp by hand with a special glaze and fit it with standard hardware. It measures 16 inches high and 6 inches wide. Lamp shade is not included." This is just an example to illustrate that considering your target market when writing your descriptions will lead to proper relevancy.

ElizabethOcean's paper doll description includes the words "Bike Messenger, Rockabilly, Steampunk, Rollerderby, Goth Lolita"...because you can't fit all that in a title!

Extra tip: If you've made the item, use the active (not passive) voice. For example, "I made this item using reclaimed silver." Passive voice works better for vintage items: "This item was made with reclaimed silver."

While you want your descriptions to be thorough, you don't want them to be intimidatingly long blocks of text. Many online shoppers simply scan text. Daniellexo, the Etsy Admin who runs the Etsy Success email list, suggests breaking out your description text into easy to read paragraphs. She notes that you can use bullet points to call out important info, like dimensions, customizations or alternate sizing. For more tips on Descriptions, see these how-tos.

Extra tip: Following the instruction is this how-to will also be good for your search results in Google and other search engines. Learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Etsy here.

I found this Haute Potato Bag by SasakiCreations by searching Materials for "potato sack."

Materials: Fill this section out accurately with all of the materials that are used in your item. Think in terms of supplies (for example: chain, fabric) and content (for example: metal, copper, cotton). Most Relevant takes Materials into account as well as Tags, Titles and Descriptions; however, Materials are weighted lower than these others. Also, remember that shoppers can choose to search by Materials in the Advanced Search page.

Recency: An item's listing date is also an important factor in determining relevancy, as we've found shoppers value fresh results for their favorite searches. Sellers should experiment with what time of day and which days of the week work best for their types of items. Consider things like time zones and climates around the world. What time of day do you think your customers are on the hunt? Use the Craftcult site (craftcult.org), and scan the times that your items and shop get hearted. What times are bringing the best results?

To reiterate, Most Relevant will be an evolving site feature, and this is normal for search algorithms around the Web. Thank you, sellers, for taking the time to make your listings the best they can be. We know this is a time-consuming process, but we hope that the results will benefit both you and your buyers and create that magic moment. We want you doing the happy dance!

Please join Etsy Admin Daniellexo and Sean11 for a Tags, Titles, Materials and Descriptions discussion in the Virtual Labs on Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 3 p.m. ET. Please bring any questions you have.

Tech Updates: Sort Search Results by Most Relevant

2009-05-20T12:35:00-05:00

Today, after lots of user testing, public previews in the Virtual Labs and detailed feedback from the Etsy community, we’ve rolled out an exciting enhancement to the Etsy Search experience.

You can now sort your Etsy search results by Most Relevant, in addition to Most Recently Listed and by Price. While the default sort option for search results is still Most Recently Listed, users can now choose to view results for Handmade, Vintage, Supplies, All Items and category-specific searches sorted by Most Relevant.

How does the Most Relevant option work?

Etsy looks at a combination of item tags, titles, descriptions and materials to determine which items are most relevant for a given search query. Item listing date is also an important factor in determining Most Relevant, as we’ve found users value fresh results for their favorite searches. (The ability to save your favorite searches is something we’re actively exploring based on this feedback.)

Relevancy also works for Advanced Search queries — you can choose to limit your search to item descriptions via our Advanced Search page, for example, and sort your results by Most Relevant.

As on other sites, establishing relevancy on Etsy will be an evolving process and is in active development. We expect that Etsy’s ability to sort results by Most Relevant will progress as we roll out improvements to the item listing process. We will always communicate changes to the item listing process in advance — there are no changes to the item listing process at this time and sellers do not need to do anything differently to ensure their items appear in search results sorted by Most Relevant. Describing and tagging your items accurately is the best way to ensure your items are found for the appropriate searches. Our current guidelines and tips for tagging items still apply, and items tagged well according to these guidelines should perform well under Most Relevant.

What’s next?

We have a number of enhancements in the works, including links to related searches on search results, location-related search improvements and improvements to the item listing process. Stay tuned, and keep the detailed feedback coming. We will continue to communicate our progress in this area here on the Etsy Blog, in the Etsy Forums and to the Etsy News email list.

We've closed commenting on this article; please join in this Forum thread to discuss your questions or comments about these improvements to Etsy Search.

Please join Etsy Admin Daniellexo and Sean11 for a workshop about creating thorough listings with tags, titles, materials and descriptions in the Virtual Labs on Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 3 p.m. ET.

Tech Updates: Filter Search Results by Ship to Country

2009-05-20T12:30:00-05:00

Based on your feedback, we're happy to announce that buyers can now filter search results to only show items from sellers who ship to their country. This feature helps buyers quickly narrow search results to items they can buy and should be especially handy for our members who are not based in the United States.

What's changed?

The Search Tools box on search results pages now includes a dropdown to filter results by "ship to country." Buyers select their country from the dropdown and the search results update to only show items from sellers who ship to the selected country or everywhere else. The "ship to" filter persists until the buyer clicks a link to clear it, selects a different country, or leaves Etsy.

What's next?

We are actively working on another location-related search feature: the ability for buyers to filter search results by the seller's location. This will help shoppers find local sellers or sellers in specific areas of interest.

We've closed commenting on this article; please join in this Forum thread to discuss your questions or comments about these improvements.

P.S. If you would like to receive breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens—delivered straight to your email inbox—then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Tech Updates: Advanced Search

2009-04-30T12:08:00-05:00

UPDATE: There is a now a link to Advanced Search in the header at the top of every page on Etsy. Look for it next to the Search button.

After a busy period of testing and refining, we’re excited to announce some significant enhancements to Etsy's Search—and the shopping experience on our site. These changes were outlined in our March 9 article on Search, and a number of you have had the opportunity to preview them in recent sessions in the Virtual Labs about Etsy's Search.

What’s changed?

Simplified search dropdown menu. The main search dropdown menu now offers the following options for searches: Handmade, Vintage, Supplies, All Items, Sellers. Previous options included “Handmade Items: tags, titles,” “Vintage Items: tags, titles,” “Supplies: tags, titles," “Handmade Items: tags, titles, descriptions” and "Materials." Modifiers like tags, titles and descriptions have been removed from the search dropdown menu, and the Materials option has been moved to our new Advanced Search page (more on that in a minute). Etsy searches item tags and titles by default.

Redesigned search results pages. Search results pages for Handmade, Vintage, Supplies and category-specific searches have been redesigned. The Search Tools, Search Tips and Matching Sellers boxes have been moved from the right side of search results to the left side of the page, following a standard in use on many ecommerce websites and search engines. There is now a price filter on all item search results pages, including the pages you get when you click on links for Tags and Materials on item listing pages. Additional filters will eventually be incorporated into this area on the left.

When no results are found for a search, users will now be presented with suggestions for searching and see recently listed items on the site.

Advanced item search. We now have an Advanced Search page, accessible via the Search Tools box on every item search results page.

The Advanced Search page offers a variety of ways to search for items on Etsy. You can search within Handmade, Vintage, Supplies or All Items. You can also search within the categories specific to Handmade, Vintage and Supplies. By default, searches within these areas will include sellers' item tags and titles, but you now also have the option to include item descriptions and item materials in your search as well. You can also limit your search by including only item tags, titles, descriptions or materials in your search, or any combination of these attributes. You may find that including item descriptions is useful for some searches but not for others, or you may find that limiting your search to item titles returns the best results for your needs.

Expect this Advanced Search page to grow as we roll out additional enhancements including improved options for searching by seller and by location, as well as more intuitive ways to refine your search.

What’s next?

We’re refining a forthcoming option to sort search results by Most Relevant. In its initial rollout, we anticipate that users will have to actively choose to reorder the default search results (search results will continue to be sorted by Most Recently Listed by default). This new Most Relevant option will allow users to sort search results by Most Relevant in addition to Most Recently Listed and by price.

A number of you had the opportunity to preview the Most Relevant option in recent search-focused sessions in the Virtual Labs. We have another search Virtual Lab coming up next Tuesday, April 21. Anyone who is interested in testing different searches will be given access to a special area on Etsy to try out new search features and discuss the future of Etsy Search with us. Join us Tuesday, April 21 at 3:00pm EDT (check when this is in your time zone) in the Virtual Labs to talk search.

As we noted in March, improving the item listing process is central to improving the quality of Etsy's Search, and we’re hard at work on improvements in this area. We will share more details about listing process improvements as they near completion.

There’s much more to come, so keep the detailed feedback coming and stay tuned. We will continue to communicate our progress in this area here on the Etsy Blog, in the Etsy Forums and to the Etsy News email list.

We've closed commenting on this article; please join in this Forum thread to discuss your questions or comments about these improvements to Etsy Search. Also, be sure to mark your calendar for our next special Virtual Lab session on Tuesday, April 21 at 3:00pm EDT.

P.S. If you would like to receive breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens—delivered straight to your email inbox—then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Seller How-To: Optimizing Your Etsy Shop for Search Engines

2009-04-29T17:01:00-05:00

UPDATE: Please see the most recent information on this topic in our Help section. Click here!

We've been making some changes around the site that we hope will have a big impact. Over the past several months, we've implemented a series of changes to improve Etsy's SEO (search engine optimization). Improved SEO means that it's more likely Etsy pages will be found by people searching with sites like Google, Yahoo and other search engines. While we've done a lot of the work behind the scenes, Etsy sellers can also help maximize the impact of Etsy's SEO on their shop and item pages.

Meta Data: Understanding the Components

Much of this SEO work is done through meta data, which is part of a website's code that is read by search engines. Meta data for SEO has three main components: page title, meta description and meta keywords.

ABOVE: In this screenshot of the Jewelry Category, the meta page title is highlighted in orange in the web browser title bar.

The page title is visible on the site in the top bar of your web browser window. This also shows up when you add a web page to your browser's Favorites or Bookmarks. Ever wonder how a search engine gets the text for the link that is shown in results pages? That's right: it's the page title.

ABOVE: This screenshot shows how Google displays the meta page title and meta description for Etsy's home page in search results.

Both the page title and the meta description are displayed on search engine results pages. Search engines display just a short bit of text for the description, between 140-180 characters depending on the search engine. Meta keywords are generally not visible to someone viewing a web page, but they are used by search engines to help rank relevancy of pages in search results.

We’ve updated the meta data for many of the pages on Etsy: Category and Subcategory pages, the shopping features (like Treasury and Pounce), Etsy shop and item listing pages. Certain pieces of information you control for your shop and item listing pages can impact your shop's SEO. Below we'll explain how you can boost your Etsy shop's SEO.

Your Etsy Shop Pages

ABOVE: This diagram of jenniferladd's shop home page shows how Etsy uses parts of your shop text for the page title, meta description and meta keywords for your shop page.

The page title format on shop pages is: "[username] on Etsy - [Shop Title]"

You can partially control what appears here by using your Shop Title wisely. Your Shop Title is the text that appears in bold just below your banner in your shop. To edit your Shop Title, go to Your Etsy > Appearance. We recommend using this Shop Title to briefly describe your shop and the items you sell so search engines will pick it up more readily. You may also want to include your full name or your business name in your Shop Title if potential customers are likely to search for you that way.

The meta description is the short blurb that appears on a search engine result page to help people quickly learn what the page is about. For your Etsy shop page, the meta description is the first part of your Shop Announcement. We recommend you use the first 1-2 sentences of your Shop Announcement to describe your shop (what kinds of items you sell) and use welcoming language that will entice someone to explore your shop further.

Meta keywords are a less critical component to SEO, and various search engines use them differently to help rank relevancy of a page in search results. For Etsy shop pages, we have automatically pulled the Section Titles for the shop to be used as the meta keywords. We observed that many sellers use basic terms for their sections that translate relatively well into keywords. For example, it's common for jewelry shops to have Section Titles such as: bracelets, necklaces, rings, earrings. To edit your Section Titles, go to Your Etsy > Sections.

Your Item Listing Pages

ABOVE: This diagram of an item listing page from FriendlyFairies shop shows how Etsy uses parts of your item listing text for the page title, meta description and meta keywords for your item listing pages.

On individual item pages, the page title format is:

   • For handmade items – "Handmade [Category] on Etsy - [Item Title] by [username]"
   • For vintage items – "Vintage on Etsy - [Item Title] by [username]"
   • For supplies – "Craft Supplies on Etsy - [Item Title] by [username]"

Once again, you can partially control the information that appears as the page title for your listing pages. You create your Item Title on the first step of the listing process. (To edit an Item Title, go to Your Etsy > Currently for Sale, and click the edit link by the item you wish to edit. Make sure to click "finish" to save your changes.) We recommend you clearly describe your item in the Item Title so search engines will understand what the page is about.

For listing pages, the meta description is taken from the first portion of your Item Description. You create your Item Description on the first step of the listing process. (To edit an Item Description, go to Your Etsy > Currently for Sale, and click the edit link by the item you wish to edit. Make sure to click "finish" to save your changes.) Remember: search engines only display the very beginning of this text, just 1-2 sentences. We recommend you use the first part of your Item Description to draw in potential shoppers: describe your item briefly and use engaging language to encourage them to want to find out more.

Meta keywords on item listing pages are taken from the listing's tags. You tag your listing on the second step of the listing process. (To edit the tags on a listing, go to Your Etsy > Currently for Sale, and click the edit link by the item you wish to edit. Make sure to click "finish" to save your changes.) If you're using your tags wisely for Etsy's on-site search already, then most likely you'll be in pretty good shape with your tags for SEO. For more help with tagging, check out Guidelines & Tips: Tagging on Etsy.

These are a few easy ways you can help bring more targeted traffic to your Etsy shop from search engines by improving the SEO of your shop and item listing pages. Search engines are complex, and there are several other factors that contribute to how high your pages rank in search engine results. For more insight on some of these other factors outside your Etsy shop and item listing pages, you may want to read Shop Makeover Series: Google PageRank Tips for Your Etsy Shop.

Seller Handbook | Shop Makeover Series

P.S. These exercises are also published in the Etsy Success Mailing List. Sign up here to get helpful tips delivered to your inbox twice a week!

Guidelines & Tips: Tagging on Etsy

2009-03-25T14:20:00-05:00

Tags are keywords sellers attach to their items in the item listing process. When searching for the perfect handmade or vintage item or supply on Etsy, a shopper will browse Categories, or more often, use Search to find their items. Since tags are keywords for Search, and they are also used to organize items in Categories and Subcategories, it's important to understand how to tag your items correctly and effectively so that buyers can find them!

The step-by-step guide below will give you 13 ideas for good tags to help buyers find your item and help it get featured. If you are having a hard time thinking of tags, look in your title and description for keywords.

Please see special rules and help for Art, Bags and Purses, Bath and Beauty, and Clothing at the bottom.

TAGGING SUGGESTIONS AND IDEAS

For your first tag, choose a main Category from the drop-down.

If the item is handmade or hand-altered by you, your first tag can by any category but vintage.
- Don't use the tag commercial.
- Handmade crafting supplies? Your first tag can be supplies or another appropriate handmade category.

If you're not sure, go to the Categories page, and see if your item is a Subcategory of any Category. Or, do a search for like items and see what Category most of the items are listed in. Eg. Does an apron go in Accessories or Clothing? Doing a quick check will help you find apron listed under the Accessories Category here.

If your item fits in two categories (eg. Children and Clothing), you may pick which one you use for your top category tag. Try to decide where might a shopper look first.

Only select vintage if the item is 20 years or older. See more on vintage items here.

Now you will choose your remaining 13 tags.

The order of them does not matter. Related tags will pop up as you add tags, remember these are only suggestions that *might* apply to your item. You may choose any that accurately describe your item.
You may also create your own tags based on what will be most accurate for your item. Here are some helpful questions to ask yourself:

1. What is it?

Tip: Don't pick any words that are related, but not what it is. Eg. Don't tag bracelets with "earrings".

Tip: If the word describes what something is, don't use that unless your item *is* that. Eg. Don't tag a tote bag with "clutch", even though you can clutch it in your hand. Don't tag anything but a dress with dress. Eg. Don't tag cookies with "tea" or "coffee", even though you can eat them with these drinks.

2. What is it specifically? What type?

Eg. Hoop (for earrings), v-neck (for sweaters), long sleeve (shirt).

3. Who is it for?

Tip: You may pick as many correct ones as you want. Eg. women, men, baby, children, boy, girl, adult, pets, dog, cat.

4. What is the main material?

Tip: Add the major material to your tags, if it is something you think a buyer might search for to find your item. Add minor materials or component materials to the "materials" box on page 1. Eg. leather, cotton, canvas, felt, metal, 14K gold, sterling silver, glass. If there are two words to describe a material, use them both, as separate tags. Eg. cotton, canvas. metal, 14K gold. mahogany, wood. merino, wool.

5. What is the main color?

Tip: Buyers are not likely to look for minor colors in your piece, so stick to the main color(s) or important color combos! Eg. white, black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.

6. What method or technique did you use to make it? Only relevant for some items.

Eg. hammered (for metal jewelry), burned (for woodworking), appliqued, embroidered.

7. Where will the item be used? Only relevant for some items.

Eg. kitchen, hair, office, beach, garden, car, nursery.

8. What size is it?

Eg. small, extra large, 7mm, 18in, 8x10.

9. What style is it?

Eg. goth, victorian, hippie, punk, impressionist, post-modern, feminine, sophisticated, southwestern.

Eg. sweet, spicy, salty (for bath and beauty and food items).

10. Imagery or motifs that are on the item.

Eg. owl, landscape, nature, Marilyn Monroe.

11. Are there synonyms?

Tip: Use these if the word means exactly the same thing as the tag you already used, it is accurate for your item, and you think it will be an important search term that buyers will look for. Eg. Infant for young babies, handbag for purses and clutches, toddler for children 18 months - 3 years, drink for coffee, trousers for pants.

12. Mature content items must have the tag "mature".

Mature content is defined as: sexual activity or content, profane language or graphic violence. Artful representations of the nude human figure do not need the tag "mature".

13. Don't tag with potential uses for the item.

Eg. Don't use "stocking stuffer" or "gift" as tags. Do not tag a messenger bag with "backpack", even though you can wear it on your back. Don't tag a blank book with "poetry".

14. Don't put multiple words in one tag box, unless they are a phrase.

Eg. Do tag with "sterling silver". Don't tag with "silver earrings", these should be two different tags.

Helpful Tips

Feeling stuck? Look to your item description for keywords to use as tags.

Check out this list of colors to inspire using more than just a simple "blue" tag. What about "Cornflower Blue", instead?

Use a second browser window to navigate through the Categories and Subcategories that pertain to your item. This way you can be sure to include tags for all the Subcategories that relate to your item.

If you sell similar items in your shop, it is helpful to create a listing template on your desktop with your most commonly used tags. This way you can quickly pick and choose which ones are appropriate and just copy and paste them into place.

Using Google's Keyword Tool or Yahoo's Keyword Selector Tool will help you generate a list of the most popular related search words and phrases. This involves a good amount of time and research, but can be a valuable tool to help create a list of the most commonly searched for words to use as tags.

You do not have to duplicate words found in a compound tag. Eg. "sterling silver" does not also have to appear as "sterling, silver".

Common Definitions of Tags by Category

Art: All 2D artwork is either an original or reproduction, but not both.

Original: for original 2D artwork only.

Reproduction: for copies or reproductions of your original 2D artwork.

Bags and Purses:

Only tag your bag or purse with the correct terms (as defined below) so buyers can find what they are looking for. Almost all items should only be tagged with one of these.

Backpack: primarily meant to be worn on the back. With rare exception, has two straps that are worn over both shoulders at the same time. Messenger bags and tote bags are not backpacks.

Clutch: small (sometimes medium sized), usually flat bag primarily meant to be carried in the hand. Usually does not have straps. Wallets and simple zip-top cotton pouches are not clutches.

Diaper Bag: a large bag with multiple interior and/or exterior pockets. Main purpose is to be used to carry diapers and baby items. A messenger bag or backpack is not a diaper bag. A tote with no pockets is not a diaper bag.

Laptop Bag or Sleeve: A padded bag designed to snugly fit and protect a laptop.

Messenger Bag: A medium to large sized bag with one wide, long strap that is long enough to wear crossing the chest, over one shoulder, to waist.

Pouch: a small to medium sized bag, usually with a zipper. Not worn as a woman's handbag or "carrying bag"- usually holds items within a larger bag.

Purse: a women's bag with 1 or 2 straps or handles, worn over one shoulder, or carried in the hand.

Tote: Bag with two long straps, that is meant to be worn over the shoulder.

Wallet: Primary function is to hold money and credit cards. Not worn as a handbag or carrying bag — it goes inside another bag. A simple pouch with no inner dividers is not a wallet.

Wristlet: A bag with a looped strap that is wide enough to wear on the wrist.

Bath and Beauty:

Body Wash: liquid, gel, or other non-solid body wash. Solid soap is not body wash.

Fragrance: perfume, cologne, eau de toilette. Not scented lotions or soaps. Use the tag scented instead.

Oil: for products in oil form. For products containing oil, list the name of the oil as a tag, but do not use the tag oil by itself. Eg. jojoba oil.

Vegan: contains no animal products, or products directly produced by animals, even if the animals are not harmed. No honey, no milk, etc. See this how-to on tagging vegan items.

Clothing:

Dress: means an actual dress, not formal wear.

Plus Size: size 16 (USA) or larger.

Sweater: an actual sweater, not scarves or other things made of sweater material. The name for sweater material is knit, or knitted or sweater knit or "crocheted." Not a sweatshirt.

If you notice a seller misusing tags, you may report it to flagged@etsy.com.

If you would like to share any of your own tagging tips, or have questions about how to tag your items, please ask in the forums. Check out our other tagging how-tos for more help.

Seller Handbook | Shop Makeover Series

Talking Tech with Etsy CTO Chad Dickerson

2009-03-09T17:15:00-05:00

When I wrote my last update in September, the days of summer were retreating and I was sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of my new Brooklyn apartment, waiting for my household goods to arrive from California, and more importantly, quietly begging for the summer heat to subside. I got my wish, and was rewarded with one of the coldest winters in my personal history. On my frigid walks to work in the morning past Brooklyn brownstones, my two key accessories have been a scarf I bought on Etsy and a messenger bag to carry the tools of my trade (a laptop). The ritual of wrapping the scarf and putting my laptop in the messenger bag each morning reminds me of how special Etsy is and how important it is for me and my team to deliver a stable, high-performing web experience for the buyers and sellers who pour their passions into their work and our community every day. While we are continually making improvements and our work is never done delivering that experience, we have made progress on many fronts, all while Etsy has continued to grow rapidly and welcome lots of new talent into the Engineering Team.

Monitoring and Communication

I realized early on that the Engineering Team needed to communicate more transparently with the buyers and sellers on Etsy, and that we needed to improve our systems monitoring capabilities so that we had an immediate understanding of the nature of core problems when issues did arise and could communicate them appropriately and reliably. When I arrived at Etsy, the systems for proactively monitoring the site were very limited and the approach was primarily reactive. After a lot of hard work and planning, we rolled out a sophisticated monitoring system in November that today enables us to keep an eye on 700 services running on over 170 pieces of hardware, including servers, network gear and storage systems. When there is an issue with one of our systems, our engineers are proactively alerted. The monitoring system performs over one million automated checks every day — about 12 checks per second — and notifies us of any problems 24x7. The end result is that we know about systems problems faster and typically fix systems and networking problems before users notice them.

Occasionally, we will experience a new problem that we haven't seen before, so we add detection mechanisms for those problems to our monitoring system when we see them. The monitoring system has become the central nervous system for Etsy's site operations team and improves every day as we make it smarter. We also use a third-party service from Gomez to proactively measure page load times for Etsy at various points around the world. Gomez (which is used by 14 of the top 15 most visited sites on the Web) is an incredibly rich information source and tells us how fast Etsy's home page is loading right now in Los Angeles, or last week in Madrid or the average for the world last Tuesday.

While we have made strides in monitoring, sometimes our various monitoring systems indicate problems that can't be fixed immediately and cause inconvenience or disruption for you, so we have been posting updates to fix.etsy.com to keep the community informed. We use fix.etsy.com because it is hosted separately from our main site. In the event that our main site is unavailable and we need to update the community, we can post updates there. We will continue to use fix.etsy.com as a place to post about issues that affect large numbers of Etsy users.

In some cases, the issues we discover as we rearchitect Etsy's systems, database, network and hardware require disruptive maintenance to correct. We know that downtime without warning is disruptive for both buyers and sellers, so we announced monthly scheduled maintenance times for the rest of 2009 in late January. I am hoping that this approach makes it much easier for buyers and sellers to plan. While we may still need to take the site or particular services offline in emergency scenarios, we will do our best to limit any disruptive maintenance to these windows. When we do have to take functions offline, we will always provide the most possible notice given the particular situation. I would like to thank you in advance for your patience in those situations as we make Etsy better. I watch services like Twitter very closely during our maintenance windows and know the sense of withdrawal that even planned downtime creates, so we take downtime very seriously, planned or not.

Performance and Scalability

In Maria's most recent Talking Shop update, you might have noticed that site performance was in our list of priorities. Site performance is not a product per se, but is fundamental to user experience on the Web. We consider site speed a critical feature of Etsy. In order to make and keep the site fast, we are constantly tuning our systems to seamlessly meet the increased demand on them. As a site grows, what worked well in the prior six months may not work well or even at all, now. In technology circles, you often hear engineers talk about the word "scalability" along with performance. In simple terms, a scalable Web site is one that can maintain its existing performance as the number of users, transactions and page views climb. In Etsy's case, our performance as measured by our own systems and Gomez has vastly improved in the past six months even as site usage has grown considerably. In other words, the changes we have made to our systems and approach are demonstrating scalability. The numbers from Gomez, our third-party measurement service, tell the story in clear measurable terms. Our home page now loads 2-3 times faster in most locations around the world compared to October and as much as nine times faster in some places. Our average home page load time over a 24-hour period as measured by Gomez in the US in October was 4.6 seconds and today it is 1.5 seconds. Singapore? From 18.6 seconds in October to 2.2 seconds today.

We achieved some of these improvements by using the services of Akamai, a web infrastructure company. Akamai directs 25% of the world's Web traffic using 40,000 servers in 70 locations around the world. When you load Etsy.com in your browser, the images and other pieces of our pages are served via Akamai's worldwide network from a server that is nearest to you. For buyers and sellers on Etsy, that means Etsy is now almost as fast in Paris, France as it is in Paris, Texas.

Taken all together, all of the changes outlined above are helping make Etsy faster and more stable for you as our traffic continues to grow. These improvements were especially evident during the holiday shopping season, and I was very pleased that our site was fast and stable during this critical period for buyers and sellers (this was not true for other Web sites). I would like to thank the Etsy Engineering Team for its efforts to make this possible.

Search and Developer API

When I arrived in September, Etsy’s search function was unacceptably slow, plain and simple. As I wrote in that update: "Some searches are taking as long as 60 seconds to return results and others are timing out altogether." We began work on Search immediately. You should have noticed speed improvements in search and across the whole site beginning in November as we improved existing search and eventually migrated the backend entirely to a widely used open source platform (Solr) in January. Today, search on Etsy is faster than ever and we have measured 8-30x performance increases since October based on our Gomez measurements. We have solved the Search speed problem. There is more to come with search, as described by Sean Flannagan on Etsy’s Product Team.

As I wrote in early February, the Etsy API has also been released to a small group of developers and a public beta launch will follow soon. I'm looking forward to letting developers outside of Etsy access the infrastructure that we are working so hard to build.

Looking Ahead

While I am pleased with some of the progress we have made on infrastructure, we still have a lot of work to do. (Of course, the engineering team is only partly about infrastructure – we have been working closely with the Product Team to develop a number of new features, but I am going to leave it to my colleague Sara Hicks to tell you about that in an upcoming article.) Looking ahead, our goals in the Engineering Team are very simple: to continue to refine Etsy's technology architecture towards a high-performance and scalable model, and to deliver the new features to buyers and sellers in the areas described in Maria's update on Etsy's priorities for 2009. The Engineering Team at Etsy and I are really excited about the rest of the year, and we look forward to continuing to make Etsy even better for all of you.

P.S. If you want to get the breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox, then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Tech Updates: Improving Search

2009-03-09T13:00:00-05:00

Today, we rolled out some small improvements to the search experience on Etsy. In addition to explaining these improvements, we want to share with you more about our approach to improving Etsy’s search function. Improving search on Etsy is an ongoing, collaborative effort involving the entire Etsy community.

First, what’s launching today?

Search dropdown menu choice has been made persistent. Previously, when performing a search under Vintage for example, the search dropdown menu would switch back to Handmade after clicking to view an item in the search results. Your dropdown menu choice is now persistent when searching under Handmade, Vintage, Supplies or All Items—until you change it. We’ve also made it easier to return to your search results from an item listing page—just look for the “Search Results” link in the breadcrumb navigation below the Etsy logo.
Search result sort order has been made persistent. Similarly, if you like to sort search results by price for example, Etsy will remember your preference and allow you to keep sorting search results the way you want to for the length of your session on Etsy.com, until you decide to change it (or open a new browser window and start a new session). This is another small way to help make Etsy more searcher friendly.
A price filter has been added to search results for Materials. You can now set a price range for search results under Materials—look for the price filter under Search Tools on the right.

We’re working on a lot more that we want to tell you about.

Where We Are

Etsy’s search is faster and more active than ever. After replacing Etsy’s search technology with Solr—an industry-leading, open-source search system—we’ve seen significant increases in search speed and volume. Etsy engineer David aka davidgiffin led this work, which has led the way to all-time highs in the number of searches per day on Etsy.

Improving the speed of search on Etsy is part of a larger initiative aimed at making Etsy’s search simpler and more effective on the buyer side and more intelligent on the seller side. When we talk about the “buyer side of search,” we are generally referring to the search bar, dropdown menu and search results. When we talk about the “seller side of search,” we are referring to the item listing process, especially tagging. The listing process on the seller side directly impacts the search experience on the buyer side.

Here’s what we’re working on now:

Simplifying the Search Dropdown Menu
The current search dropdown menu is a confusing experience for many. For starters, there are too many options. In addition, we’re asking users to work too hard when we ask them to think about things like tags, titles or descriptions when they search. Most buyers or browsers don’t think in such a nuanced way when searching.

The default search option on Etsy is “Handmade Items: tags, titles.” The majority of searches are done with this setting, which excludes the description field for handmade items. The description field is also excluded from the search options for Vintage, Supplies and All Items. Many Vintage and Supplies sellers on Etsy have expressed concerns about this (there is an option to include the description field for Handmade items). We understand that concern and agree that the fields available to be searched should be consistent across Handmade, Vintage and Supplies.

We believe that including the option to search item descriptions will improve buyers’ chances of finding unique items that delight them. So we will be including an option to search descriptions for Handmade, Vintage, Supplies and All Items on search results pages, and making the search dropdown menu exactly that: Handmade, Vintage, Supplies, All Items. The other existing search dropdown options such as “Materials” and “Sellers: usernames” will still exist, as will the search dropdown options available from other areas of the site.

This is the first step in a gradual streamlining of Etsy’s contextual search dropdown menu.

Improving Accuracy
Currently, Etsy’s search results default to a reverse-chronological order display, with most recently listed items first. Item fields like tags and titles are weighted equally, which doesn’t always help buyers find what they’re looking for, particularly when item titles are written in a playful but non-descriptive way.

There will be no immediate changes to the way search results display on Etsy. Our goal is to give browsers and buyers an option to sort search results by relevancy, in addition to recency, to help them find items of interest.

Our current work on relevancy involves weighting some item fields more than others. What do we mean by weighting? We mean the importance attributed by the search engine to the types of fields being searched. For example, to return quality search results by relevancy, we may find we need to give item tags slightly more precedence than titles and significantly more precedence than descriptions. This would be due to the nature of the data: tags are usually more specific than titles, and descriptions need to be processed appropriately to determine relevancy. The recency of listings is also an important factor in returning quality search results on Etsy and will continue to be weighted highly.

We will continue to communicate our progress in this area. Improving search on Etsy is by its nature a collaborative community effort, as everything listed on the site comes from the community. Sellers need to understand how Etsy’s search function works in order to list items effectively and have their items be found.

Redesigning the Listing Process
That’s why we’re focused on redesigning the item listing process, which is really where it all begins when it comes to search on Etsy. Our search index is updated constantly by thousands of sellers around the world, all of whom have different ways of describing their items. We’re working to make this listing process more structured, intelligent, understandable and fun, and the steps we’re taking are all done with the search experience in mind.

We’re taking a thorough look at Etsy’s category structure and our current use of tags. Incorporating more structure here will ultimately enable category-specific filters on search results pages, allowing users to narrow down their search intuitively. It will enable multiple ways to shop: for example by category, by recipient, by material or by technique. Better data collection during the listing process could enable buyers to filter search results by location or by shipping preference. Making tag entry more intelligent and social will also help improve the Etsy search experience. We’re exploring a variety of ways to provide more direction and clarity during the listing process so that it’s easy for sellers to list items in such a way that the right people will find them.

As Etsy CEO Maria Thomas mentioned recently, we have Sep Kamvar, “one of the world’s brightest minds in personalized search,” working with us on this area in particular. Expect improvements throughout 2009. Details will be announced here on the Etsy Blog, in the Etsy Forums and to the Etsy News email list.

Come Try It Out
Improving search is an ongoing, iterative process involving continual testing and evaluation. We’ve been busy testing search adjustments with users here in Brooklyn at the Etsy Usability Lab as well as remotely, and we’re about to begin a series of Virtual Labs where we’ll give anyone interested access to a test area to try out different searches and discuss the future of Etsy search with us. The first of these sessions will take place this Friday, March 13 at 1:00 pm EDT (check when this is in your time zone). Save the date and join us!

Where We Want to Go

Search enhancements we’re actively exploring include things like links to related searches on search result pages, spell-checking functionality to suggest searches for misspelled words, advertising options for search result pages and many more features we’ll discuss as they near completion.

We’re excited to partner with you to make search on Etsy better. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when you find that perfect, one-of-a-kind item on Etsy and we want more people around the world to experience it.

We've closed commenting on this article; please join in this Forum thread to discuss your questions or comments about these improvements to search. Also, be sure to mark your calendar for the special Virtual Lab session on Friday, March 13 at 1:00 pm EDT.

Shop Makeover Series: Google PageRank Tips for Your Etsy Shop

2009-01-09T19:00:00-05:00

The following article on Google PageRank was originally written by Aprilrobin for TimothyAdamDesigns' blog (a great resource for Etsy sellers!).

I've seen the question so many times on the Etsy forums, "Why isn't my Etsy shop showing up in Google when I search for XYZ?" While that is actually a very complex question, in a nutshell: to get seen, you need to optimize your Etsy shop for Google and increase your "PageRank".

Google's PageRank is the designation from 1 - 10 of an algorithm that assesses how important your website is (10 being the most important). Here's the kicker: it’s machines making this determination. You may have heard these machines referred to as "spiders" or "robots". I prefer to think of them as robot spiders merely because it amuses me. These robot spiders crawl the web hunting for information and bring it back to the Googleplex. This is known as indexing. If your information is good and full of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the robot spiders will come back often and give you a higher PageRank, therefore greatly increasing your chances of top search results.

PageRank for any website can easily be viewed by installing the Google's Toolbar. How do you get this PageRank?

If you search the web for SEO techniques you'll find plenty of them — too many. Unfortunately, a lot of the information you'll find is either not applicable to current versions of the algorithm, spam techniques, or not applicable to Etsy. Etsy is not the same as your regular personal website and I'm not going to suggest you obtain a personal website today either. Baby steps.

Inside Your Etsy Shop

The best thing you can do on Etsy is provide good titles and descriptions and use all of your tags. When writing your titles and descriptions, think of key terms. “Key terms” in this sense simply means that you are using descriptive language that includes words and terms buyers might use to find products like the ones in this listing.

If you were searching for items such as yours in Google, what kind of language would you use? Put yourself in the mind set of the searcher and write accordingly. Keep in mind that Google likes change. If you re-list the same items again and again, change your titles and descriptions up every once in a while. Try some slightly different verbiage and new key terms each time.

Outside of Your Etsy Shop

Link, link, link! As in, get people to link to you (inbound links/ IBL). To start, use links to your Etsy store in your signature on any blogs, forums or message boards you belong to.

One of the biggest factors in boosting your rank is inbound links from sites with a high PageRank. Not only is Google more likely to index these high ranked sites quickly and repeatedly, but you're more likely to get click though traffic to your site and more people linking to you. Site click through rate (the people following these IBL to visit your shop/CTR), is another important factor to determining your PageRank. Inbound links from a low ranked site won't necessarily hurt you, so don’t freak out on your friend for linking you from his low ranked site. Ignore reciprocal link services and engines that litter the web. These are spam and Google hates spam.

Relevant Links

There is some argument among web developers on the topic, but many, myself included, agree that your IBL should be “relevant” whenever possible. Relevant refers to the relevancy of your IBL to your store.
An example of relevant IBL: If your Etsy shop containing crocheted face scrubbies is linked to by a cage fighting website, Google is going to see that and be sort of “Ok, what the...?” If your Etsy shop containing crocheted face scrubbies is linked to by Martha Stewart, Google is going to see that and be all “WORD!” Your store is now associated with high-ranked information on crafts and handmade goods. You’re also bound to attract higher click through traffic. Consider how relevant IBLs are to your shop before investing time pursuing them or paying to advertise.

Hyperlinks

A hyperlink is when you use words to link to your Etsy store instead of graphics, or in addition to graphics. Remember, the robot spiders can’t see pictures, so do not rely solely on graphics when you link to your shop. Use descriptive key terms in your hyperlinks. Creating a link to your shop that says “buy handmade crocheted face scrubbies” is going to be more valuable than a link that‘s your shop’s name. “Daisydoodle’s Boutique” might be the perfect shop name for you, but how the heck is Google supposed to figure out that has anything to do with handmade crocheted face scrubbies?

Tips

1. Don't try to trick Google.
Google’s main purpose is to weed out spam and garbage content and organize legitimate content. Google also carries a grudge. Even though we’re dealing with robot spiders here, they’re a lot smarter than you may think. Filling descriptions and links with nothing but irrelevant key words and trash can get you on the blacklist or “sandboxed”.

2. Be realistic and don't obsess.
Get this through your head right now. Say it out loud… “I WILL NEVER RANK A 10”. Say it again and believe it. PageRank is global compared to all other websites in the world. At the time I’m writing this, Etsy’s homepage has a PageRank of 7 and Amazon ranks a 9. Those would have to be some very magical face scrubbies for your shop to have a PageRank like that!

Find other Etsy shops to look up to and compare yourself to those. Figure out what it is that they’re doing right. Your ultimate goal might be a 4. That’s completely OK and likely very appropriate. As part of my business — I run very popular statewide real estate websites — if I can rank a 5, I’m over the moon.

3. Be patient.

New shops might take a while to be indexed at all and jumping an entire number is an enormous job.
Keep up with ethical SEO: write organically, be thoughtful, network for relative IBL, DO NOT SPAM, and in time you’ll get there. The cream always rises to the top.

4. Keep your eye on PageRanks.

Download Google's Toolbar to find out the PageRank of any site your browsing (including your own!) Learn more about this here.

Seller Handbook | Shop Makeover Series

Tech Updates: Feed Enhancements, Google Base and More

2009-01-08T17:45:00-05:00

UPDATE 11/25/09: Google Product Search no longer supports submissions from individual sellers on marketplaces like Etsy. Etsy is partnering with Google as a participant in the Google Product Search Marketplace Partner Program. Learn more about Etsy's Google Product Search Syndication feature.

We've rolled out some small but important improvements to Etsy's RSS feeds. (What is RSS? Check out this post for an introduction.) These enhancements are designed to make Etsy's feeds more discoverable, useful and visible.

What's changed?

1. Shop feeds now include thumbnail images! They're also much easier to find. Previously shop feeds could only be found on shop pages. Now, in addition to shop pages, every item listing page on Etsy includes a link to that shop's feed. Look for it below the "Bookmark and Share" link under "Page Tools":

2. We've also made Favorites feeds easier to find. Did you know how easy it is to keep up with the latest items from your favorite sellers, or your friends' favorite sellers? All public Favorites pages now include a prominent link to the associated Favorites feed:

3. RSS autodiscovery has been implemented throughout the site. This means Etsy feeds will be easier to discover by both people and search engines. If you use the Mozilla Firefox web browser, you'll know you're on a page with a feed when you see the little RSS icon in the web address field. You can click it to access the feed.

4. Shop feeds now come pre-formatted for easy upload to Google Base! Uploading items to Google Base is a great way for sellers to help Google — specifically Google Product Search — find their items. Shoppers will then be able to find sellers' items via the 'Shopping' link on the upper left of any Google search page.

ps
If you want to get the breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox, then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Tech Update: Improvements to Search

2009-01-07T13:01:00-05:00

UPDATE: Our new Search system is now live! Please post in this forum thread with your comments.

This week we are replacing Etsy’s existing search technology with Solr, an industry-leading, open-source search system. Solr is currently in use by major consumer sites like Netflix as well as important e-commerce sites like Zappos. We believe it will provide Etsy the foundation to scale in terms of both speed and functionality.

You may recall that Maria Thomas, Etsy’s CEO, recently mentioned that we are going to be focusing on Search in 2009 and that we intend to orient Etsy’s search function more to buyers’ needs. This first phase launch of Search is the first in what we expect to be a series of improvements to Etsy’s search function throughout the year.

For this initial launch we primarily focused on improving the speed with which search results are returned on Etsy. We believe you’ll notice immediate and significantly faster results, though specific return times will vary based on your location and type of connection.

In addition to speed improvements, the Solr technology is smarter than our old search technology in how it handles certain queries. A specific improvement worth mentioning is the way in which the new system handles searches containing compound words. In our old system, a search for “notecards” would bring up items containing “notecards” in the tag, title or description field, but items containing only “note cards” (two separate words) would not show up in results. With our new search system, searches containing compound words like “notecards” or “hairbows” return all associated items.

There’s no need to make any updates to your item descriptions and tags to accommodate these improvements but this launch is a great time to remind sellers about the importance of accurate tags, titles and descriptions. You can find more info on how to best tag items in these tagging how-tos. We will be holding a Tagging Workshop in the Virtual Labs on Wednesday at 5pm (Eastern).

Future phases of Search will include upgrades to the relevancy and ranking of the results. The way current search results are displayed (ranking) is based on chronology (most recently listed items first). We believe that Etsy buyers will be better served by a system that takes into account both ranking and relevance in a way that helps them find items they’re looking for according to various criteria by category. And, for those buyers who may not know what they're looking for, we also hope to introduce later in 2009 tools to foster discovery based on all the hearting and curating that takes place across the Etsy community every day.

While our main goal with Search is to help buyers find what they’re looking for, we are mindful that sellers want various options to promote their items on Etsy. Redesigning the search function and creating new ways for sellers to advertise on Etsy are two important initiatives that are in the works for the first half of 2009.

Our new Search system will be launching later this week; we will update this post when it’s actually live. We look forward to your feedback. Please post in this forum thread with your comments.

ps
If you want to get the breaking, vital Etsy news as it happens — delivered straight to your email inbox, then sign up for Etsy News Alerts emails. Read more about it here. Expect this as an Etsy Alert email in your inbox if you already subscribe to the list.

You can also get an RSS feed of all TechUpdates here.

Tech Update: More Info on Search & Categories

2008-09-24T13:12:00-05:00

Last week Etsy's new CTO, Chad Dickerson wrote an honest account of some of the technical challenges Etsy.com is currently facing, specifically in reference to the search function. In that article, Chad mentioned some new hardware and "other tweaks" to improve things. Many of you may be curious about what we're working on, how it's helping and how it will impact your ability to shop and sell on Etsy. So let's get right into the nitty gritty ...

New Hardware

Without getting into too many technical details, last week we added some new hardware with the goal of improving speed. We're happy to say so far it's helped, and some of our slowest queries more than doubled in speed. This is a great improvement, but still below our internal goals — which means there is more work ahead. The Engineers are continuing to monitor search speeds and page load times.

Simple Searches Redirect to Categories

Many shoppers use simple one-word searches, such as earrings or purse. Since there are several thousands of items that will match such a simple query, the current system gets bogged-down in an attempt to return all the possible results. To help alleviate that demand, we've begun automatically redirecting several one-word searches to the corresponding category or subcategory pages.

[ ABOVE: Screen shot of the Art category page. ]

As you may have noticed, we've already done this for terms like jewelry and art, and we will be adding more redirects as necessary. From a category page, shoppers can easily narrow the results by clicking subcategory links or searching within the category.

Limited Number of Search Terms (or "My nots are not working!")

Just as one-word searches can cause problems, too many terms in a search can be taxing on our current search structure. Therefore, we've limited the maximum number of terms available in a single search to seven. The current search system will return results based only on the first seven terms in an inquiry and simply ignore the rest.

[ ABOVE: Screen shot of the search results page for women dress -green -doll. ]

Unfortunately, "not" is counted as a term, so if you try to exclude several terms from a search, you are likely going to find that some of your "nots" weren't effective. The good news is that we've enabled the use of the minus sign (-) to work exactly like "not" in a search. The minus sign (-) does not count against the seven-word limit. For example, these searches should now produce identical results: women dress not green not doll and women dress -green -doll. We'll be updating our Search Tips sidebar and Search Help Guide with this info.

Batch Loading in Search and Categories

When you list an item on Etsy, there's a note that says it may take up to 24 hours for your item to appear in category and search pages. New, renewed and relisted items are posted in your shop immediately, but they are not added to search results and categories in real-time. Instead, Etsy adds items at regular intervals in batches to the category and search pages. This is a function of the mechanics of the master-slave database system Chad explained last week. Once loaded into the master database, items are replicated to "slave" databases. It takes some time for the data to be replicated; the technical term for this is "slave lag." This system is generally good for overall site performance (i.e., speed) and stability, but not so great for the instant gratification of sellers who want to see their items immediately appear at the top of their chosen categories.

Category pages and search results pages currently default to display the most recently listed items first. When there are many items being simultaneously listed, relisted and renewed it creates a traffic jam in some of Etsy's more populated categories. There could be dozens of items in a batch, however, each category and search result page on Etsy shows 21 items. This means some items could make their first appearance in a category on page two, or even farther back. Listing, relisting and renewing will place your item toward the front of a category, but not necessarily on page one and not instantaneously.

What Does This Mean For Sellers? (or "How will shoppers find my items?")

It's critical that sellers tag their items correctly. This will ensure that your items appear in the correct categories and subcategories. It will also make it easier for shoppers to find your items when they use specific multi-word searches. If you have items that fit equally well in more than one category, try placing some items in each category. For example, a potter could list one handmade ceramic bowl in the ceramics and pottery category and another one in housewares to have greater cross-category visibility. The articles on tagging in the Seller Handbook will help you determine the best way to tag your items so shoppers can find them.

So, is renewing for exposure worth the $0.20 if you don't land on page one each time? Ultimately, that's up to each seller to decide. While your item may not appear on page one for jewelry, it may be on page one of specific search for blue flower earrings or steampunk cufflinks or a specific subcategory page (like necklace within the jewelry category). Also, items still appear in other browsing features that function independently of the batch loading system, such as Time Machine 2, Recently Listed on the home page and Shop Local.

There are many ways to promote your Etsy shop on the site (Promotions Forum, Virtual Labs, Showcase) and through off-Etsy methods (blogs, advertising, etc). The best way to get customers into your shop is to target your own marketing. There's a wealth of information on advertising and marketing linked in the Seller Handbook. As an alternative to renewing to hit the top of a category, sellers may want to consider purchasing a Category Showcase spot. This is a one-day paid advertising spot displayed on the top of each page of a main category. To learn more about Showcase, check out 13.5 Questions about the Showcase and Showcase Deconstructed.

Looking Ahead

Chad and the Engineering Team are working on longer-term solutions to our current search issues. We don't want to disrupt site performance during the holiday shopping season, so in the meantime, the above measures are aimed at the goal of ensuring people can find and purchase the many incredible items available on Etsy.

We've closed commenting on this article. If you would like to comment, please join the discussion in this Forum thread.

Tech Update: An Honest Beginning for Etsy's New CTO

2008-09-16T17:15:00-05:00

Chad Dickerson joined the Etsy team on September 2, 2008 as our first CTO (Chief Technology Officer). Below Chad shares his personal account of his first two weeks at Etsy as well as some important information about the site, search functionality, and looking to the future.

Welcome to Etsy ... Now Get to Work!

I just completed my second week at Etsy, and I wanted to give you an update from the technology trenches. As Etsy's first CTO, I realize that it might not be entirely clear what a CTO does, so explaining my perspective on this new role at Etsy might be helpful. The CTO role is not simply about technology, but the relationships among people, process and technology. Success for a CTO goes far beyond choosing the best technologies. In many ways, the people and process parts of the equation are more important than the technology used. The people part is obvious, but process might seem opaque. Process is all about how you build services, test them, roll them out, monitor them and communicate internally and to the community, whether it's a feature rollout or a bug. Above all, it's about communicating well, which is why I am writing this now, sitting on the floor of my new apartment in Brooklyn among stacks of boxes that just arrived on Sunday from the West Coast.

The experience of coming in as a new CTO is like opening a door and walking into a room full of devices with random wires and blinking lights. Very quickly, you have to determine which ones are doing good things and functioning well, which ones are benign and which ones are ticking time bombs. For the ticking time bombs, you have to decide which ones to try to defuse first, and once you make that decision, you're looking at a tangle of often unlabeled wires. Sometimes a seemingly positive or benign device is wired into one of the ticking time bombs, so you have to trace all of the wires in the room and understand the relationships across all of them. While those bombs are ticking, you have to get to know your team and their capabilities in real-time. Who on the team knows how to defuse this particular type of bomb? (Oh, and what is your name again?) This scenario is true of Etsy, and it's been true of my early days in other CTO roles. It takes a little time to get a sense of how things work in a new place regardless of your past experience, but you also have to be prepared to make some quick decisions.

Learning About Etsy and Learning From the Best

I also want to give you a quick glimpse into what I have been doing in my first ten days on the job. I started on September 2, and we spent my first week in an Engineering meetup at the Etsy offices learning about how Etsy works at a very fundamental technology level. In those sessions, we discussed who currently does what, how those things are done, and the nuts-and-bolts technology environment at Etsy (again — people, process, technology). We closed the meetup with a visit from my former Yahoo! colleague Rasmus Lerdorf, a top-notch technologist who is best known for inventing PHP, the programming language that powers a large chunk of the web. Rasmus took us through his Simple is Hard presentation, which provides some very practical tips on how to tune PHP-driven web sites like ours for performance. Bringing in people like Rasmus to visit with the team illustrates another key part of the philosophy that I bring to Etsy: it is impossible to know everything, so when you need to learn about something, learn from the best. I feel very fortunate to have worked with some of the best in my 10 years in the Bay Area, and I plan to seek their counsel as much as possible in order to make Etsy a better place for you.

Aside from the technology discussions in the Engineering meetup, one of the themes I discussed was "intellectual honesty" and how important it is to a well-functioning team. To me, intellectual honesty is about admitting when something is not working so you can work together to figure out how to fix it. It's also about measuring your successes and failures so you can properly reward for excellent work and learn from your failures so you can strive to never make the same mistake twice.

Intellectual Honesty: Search

As an example, search on Etsy is not working well in overall performance and speed. While I'm going to focus on search since it is a pressing issue that everyone can understand, it is truly emblematic of a lot of the challenges on the technology side. Building Etsy up to this point and keeping it running was a huge undertaking that took intense commitment, and I appreciate the passion that went into it. It is no small feat to build something like Etsy. That being said, the Etsy technology operation is in a state of transition that I think is very positive, but like all transitions of this type, there are growing pains. I am examining and evaluating the entire operation (again — people, process, technology) to make sure that Etsy will be able to handle current growth and the growth ahead. This is all happening against the backdrop of my very recent arrival and significant changes in the technology team just before I arrived and real day-to-day issues that need to be dealt with while I'm learning in real-time.

But back to search specifically ... The performance of search is indirectly related to other issues, like the perceived delays in the posting of listings and many other site functions related to Etsy's master database of listings and its replication out to our "slave" databases. In relative layman's terms, the "slave" databases are copies of the master database that are synchronized periodically to the master database to distribute the computational load for services like search across more hardware. To be explicit about the search issue, some searches are taking as long as 60 seconds to return results and others are timing out altogether. I've seen the issues myself by using the site and I've heard from all of you in the forums, direct messages on Twitter, in blogs, etc. For some time now, band-aids have been applied to the problem for short term performance gains. I strongly believe that the underlying technology and architectural approach for search on Etsy are reaching their limits. We need to look at different approaches while we actively deal with the current issues.

In the short term, you're probably thinking: "what is the schedule for fixing search now?" The honest answer is that after ten days on the job, I don't have a firm timeline yet on the longer-term fix. But we are taking action in the short term. The existing search has been built and hacked on since the beginning of Etsy's existence, so it is an ingrained system that can't be ripped out and replaced overnight without potentially significant disruption. To mitigate the current performance issues, I pushed through an order for a batch of new hardware that we will be putting in place that should increase performance soon. We are looking at some other tweaks (too many to list here) to help in the meantime.

For the longer term, I have mobilized the Engineering team inside Etsy, and I have connected the team here to engineers working on search at some very large and successful sites that you probably know, use and love. I'm finding that a lot of those people love Etsy in the same way that led me to make the jump.

There are issues to address now and there will most certainly be bumps on the technology side as Etsy grows, but I want all of you Etsians to know that it is an honor and a privilege to be serving the Etsy community as your CTO. If you can give me some time and understanding here in my early days at Etsy, I hope to make you proud.

For more information on the business and the people behind Etsy, be sure to read The Long View: Rob & Maria from Etsy founder Rob Kalin and CEO Maria Thomas. Here's our first post about Etsy hiring Chad Dickerson.

We're closing commenting on this Storque post so we can follow your comments on this forum thread.

Etsy News Alert: 4 Month Listing Extensions for Vintage and Commercial Supply Sellers

2008-06-29T19:38:00-05:00

Update:
Please get your items in the proper categories!

Original post from June 23:
Back in February when Etsy announced upcoming changes to the way search would work, we made a promise to our Vintage and Commercial Supply sellers that we would extend the life of their item listings by four months, for free.

The search changes took effect May 5, and we are now ready to honor our promise. We intend to start rolling out the additional four months beginning on June 30, 2008.

The four month free extension will apply only to Vintage and Commercial Supplies sellers.

Here's the Plan for the Four Month Extension:

Only properly tagged listings will get the four month extension, so this is a great opportunity to make sure your Vintage and Commercial Supplies items are properly categorized. In other words, make sure the top tag is "Vintage" or "Supplies." In the case of Supplies, items should also be tagged with "Commercial."
On June 30, Etsy will capture a snapshot of all Vintage and Commercial Supplies listings on the site.
Immediately thereafter, we will begin rolling out a free four month extension on all of these listings.
The rollout will take approximately 30-45 days from June 30.
We will keep you updated on the progress and will announce when the process is complete.
After the process is completed, if you have any questions or concerns about specific listings, contact support@etsy.com. Please include the following words in the subject of your email: "4 month extension." This will help us target your questions and get back to you more quickly.

FAQs:
Q. What items are eligible?
A. Vintage and Commercial Supplies are eligible. Handmade supplies are not eligible, since these were not affected by the May 5th changes to Etsy’s search function.

Q. What if my Vintage and/or Commercial Supplies listings are inactive/in edit mode on June 30?
A. Many sellers put their listings in "edit mode" when they are going on vacation or otherwise don't want their listings to be active. Have no fear! If these listings are properly tagged, they will make it on the list, even if they are in edit mode. Here is more info about inactive listings and edit mode.

Q. My Vintage or Commercial Supplies listing expired before Etsy finalized the list of items eligible for the extension. How do I get included in this?
A. If you want to receive four free months, renew your items before June 30, the date of Etsy will take the snapshot. Here's how to renew.

Q. What happens if my listings expire during the window between the June 30 snapshot and their spot in the 30-45 day run?
A. We are prioritizing the roll-out of the extensions such that the listings nearest to their expiration dates will be extended first. If you notice a problem after we announce the completion, email support@etsy.com. Please include the following words in the subject of your email: "4 month extension." This will help us target your questions and get back to you more quickly.

Q. What if my items are in incorrectly tagged (and in the incorrect categories) at the time of the snapshot?
A. That's why we're giving you a week's heads up! You must have your items properly categorized by June 30, 2008. If you have extenuating circumstances, email support@etsy.com and describe the details of your situation. Please include the following words in the subject of your email: "4 month extension."

Q. I think I did everything right, but I can't find my listings!
A. If you see inconsistencies in your shop or disappearing listings, first take a look at the Inactive and Expired listings in your shop. (These links only go to your shop if you're logged in so you don’t have to worry that others will see in your shop!). If you still think there’s something wrong with your shop, contact support@etsy.com.

Q. What are the dates of eligibility?
A. Any Vintage or Commercial Supplies listings that are active or inactive (but not expired) on June 30, 2008.

We're closing the commenting on this post so we can get all your general questions and comments in one forum thread.

If you have questions or concerns you'd like to keep private please email support@etsy.com.

We thank you for being patient while we researched the best solution for implementing this gift and above all else, we hope you enjoy!

Want the vital, breaking headlines from the Etsy News section of the Storque — delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for the Etsy News Email Alerts by clicking on the envelope here or on the Etsy homepage. Read more about the Etsy News Alerts here.

Tech Updates: Prompt to Switch between Searches

2008-06-26T13:36:00-05:00

Since we launched separate drop-down searches for Handmade, Supplies, and Vintage items, we've been getting a lot of feedback from buyers and sellers. Thank you to everyone who let us know what you think of the changes — we're listening!

We wanted to make switching your search between Handmade, Supplies, and Vintage a little easier, so we've added a little prompt to the top of the search results page. If you search in Handmade, links to perform the same search in Supplies and Vintage will also appear. Searches in Supplies will show links to Handmade and Vintage, and searches in Vintage will show links to Handmade and Supplies.

We hope these changes makes searching on Etsy a little easier for you! You can see comments in the Forum thread too.

p.s.
If you are a Vintage or Commercial Supplies seller, you should read this post!

A Vintage Dinner Party with Kate Moss (The Dog)

2008-06-02T20:30:00-05:00

Last week we had a chance to interview Kate Moss (the dog) about a dinner party she was planning. It turns out that she loves to search the Vintage section of Etsy to find fabulous items. In this video she shows some of the items she's thinking about buying and then gives a short video tutorial to help you shop for Etsy Vintage.

MP4 | Youtube | Blip.tv | HD | Subscribe in iTunes

In the video, she checks out books from uncommoneye's shop, a carafe from domestikate's shop, placemats from michellebrusegaard's shop, and an apron from solanah's shop. Then she does a search for a vintage dress using Etsy vintage search.

This is the second video that focuses on the styles of our furry friends. The first one was with Dottie. Feel free to leave a comment and tell us what you think!

Want to watch all the Etsy videos? Subscribe in iTunes and get them downloaded automatically when they come out! - Link

Vintage and Supplies, deux: Community Chatt, May 23, 2008

2008-05-27T17:57:00-05:00

Hi there Sellers!

Last Friday's Virtual Labs' Community Chatt with Matt was about Vintage and Supplies. The first half was answering questions left over from last week's Chatt, and the second half was getting your suggestions about the future direction for these marketplaces.

Please see the minutes of the Vintage and Supplies Chatt to see what we talked about!

This Week's Chatt with Matt & Michelle

Time and Place: 12 noon, Eastern US in the Treehouse Room of the Virtual Labs. Times on the Virtual Labs Lobby are displayed in your local time.

Topic:
Reaching The Press

Join Matt for a discussion about getting media coverage for your small business. Let's learn from each other. What has worked, what has not?

Agenda:

- Tips for creating a press kit

- Press Release, friend or foe?

- Pitching to the media: getting attention without being annoying

- Telling the bigger story

- What can be done online?

About Community Chatt With Matt:
Each week Etsy admin Matt invites you to join us for a live, online discussion of topics of interest to the Etsy community. Our intention is to give buyers and sellers alike the opportunity to speak directly and candidly to Etsy Admin. We listen, take notes, and make sure that everybody who wants to gets a chance to speak. We can always be reached at community@etsy.com with more ideas and suggestions.

You can view minutes from past meetings HERE.

Vintage and Supplies: Community Chatt, May 16, 2008

2008-05-19T10:26:00-05:00

Hi there Sellers!

Last Friday's Virtual Labs' Community Chatt with Matt was about the new default search and its effect on Vintage and Supplies.

Please see the minutes of the Vintage and Supplies Chatt to see what we talked about!

This Week's Chatt with Matt

Time and Place: 12 noon, Eastern US in the Treehouse Room of the Virtual Labs. Times on the Virtual Labs Lobby are displayed in your local time.

Topic:
Commercial Supplies and Vintage: Your Ideas about These Marketplaces

We would like to get input from the community on how the Supplies and Vintage marketplaces should be organized. In this workshop, we will be brainstorming with you on your ideas for these marketplaces. We will also be taking subcategory and sub-subcategory suggestions that we may be able to implement immediately!

Agenda:
We'll ask questions about how to organize the Vintage marketplace.

We'll ask questions about how to organize the Supplies marketplace.

For both of these, we are looking for info on who you think your customers are and your opinions on the most important ways to break your category down into "sections."

Vintage Supplies: do you think they belong in Supplies or Vintage?

We will take suggestions for subcategories and sub-subcategories that can be added under Supplies or Vintage immediately.

You can view minutes from past meetings HERE.

Etsy Sellers & Employees: Community Chatt, May 9, 2008

2008-05-12T15:04:00-05:00

Hi there Sellers!

Last Friday's Virtual Labs' Community Chatt with Rob aka Rokali (Etsy's founder) was about employees for your Etsy businesses.

Please see the minutes of the Employees Chatt to see what we talked about!

This Week's Chatt with Matt
Topic:
Commercial Supplies and Vintage after the Search changes.

After the separation of handmade items, supplies and vintage in the search bar, commercial supply and vintage sellers are worried about exposure for their items. We'll share stats on the effects of the separation, as well as brainstorm ideas for promoting commercial supplies and vintage on Etsy.

Agenda:
Matt shares some Statts (er, stats, sorry) on commercial supplies and vintage pre- and post-separation.

Polls about your sales, views, and hearts. Up, down, or about the same?

Share your ideas about the supplies marketplace on Etsy.

Share your ideas about the vintage marketplace on Etsy.

Do you have any ideas about how Etsy could promote commercial supplies and vintage?

You can view minutes from past meetings HERE.

Tech Update: Changes to Search and Categories are Live!

2008-05-05T14:01:00-05:00

Today, we launched some exciting changes to Etsy's search engine. These changes were requested by the community and we think they help improve the shopping experience on Etsy.

We've separated item search into three new searches: Handmade, Vintage, and Supplies. The default is Handmade, with Vintage and Supplies available in the drop-down. You can also select "All items" to search Handmade, Supplies, and Vintage all at once.

Consequently, it is critical that sellers categorize and tag their items correctly in order to place them within the proper search. Last week, we posted some information that will help you with that process. You can read the initial heads up here — Tech Updates: Upcoming Changes to Search and Categories — and its companion, follow-up article here — Upcoming Changes to Search: Your Questions Answered.

Thank you for helping us with these site improvements! You can also sign up for Etsy News Email Alerts to have breaking news delivered to your inbox.