Etsy Glitch Impacts Visibility in Search

by: Louise

They keep tinkering, and problems with Search keep happening. Unfortunately, it affects people's livelihood.

by: LeeLoo

And they're presenting at a technology conference?
They should get an award for continually stuffing things up.

by: White Rabbit

well someone finally got the logo perfect.. I would sell that to Etsy!

yes...Perfect!  LOL

by: Jerseygal

On some level, Etsy these days is as bad as Ebay when it comes to visibility.   Both have rolling blackouts; Ebay give visibility to their preferred sellers; Etsy has become a pay to play with their promoted listings.  
    I have concluded that the beginning of a selling venue is the sweetheart period with sellers... time ending soonest.... followed by relevancy.... followed by the kiss of death best match.... Get customers, do what you can in the beginning... its a gift.  But never neglect  getting your website up and running and promoting it.  It is the ONLY thing to do.  

by: Ric

So let me get this straight...

An Etsy seller informed the company there was a visibility problem....

The company investigated the problem instead of dismissing the seller outright...

The company worked through a weekend to determine the cause of the problem ...

The company kept sellers informed and even posted specific, detailed information regarding the cause of the problem on their announcement board...

The company completed repairs to their system in less than three days....

Etsy has provided their sellers with excellent problem recovery and in so doing, written a textbook eBay management should read.

At eBay, when issues arise, their corporate response is the exact opposite of everything Etsy got right.

eBay's Cassini search engine has been a failure from the first day it was released.  Instead of tackling the problem head on, the company's response is to cover their a$$ and use their User Agreement to inform sellers their listings may not be visible on the site. Years after it's release, Cassini still does not work correctly.

eBay only investigates problems after their call center if flooded with reports - individual seller complaints are dismissed out of hand..

eBay is slow to effect corrections and would never go public with the root cause of the problems.

eBay does not inform sellers of technical issues unless the issues make headlines, and, eBay never opens the curtain to tell sellers what the cause of the problem was.

eBay management has billions of dollars and tens of thousands of staff members, yet the much smaller Etsy out classes eBay when it comes to resolving technical issues and being transparent with their sellers.

eBay needs to  learn from Etsy the right way to handle seller related technical issues.

Mr Wenig, the ball is in your court.

by: White Rabbit

The problems with Etsy search are not so good but the real issues are the consequences of years of allowing imported factory goods on Etsy. it has slowly eroded the customer base that used to exist and has replaced it with very low end buyers and sellers.

So while the search is a problem as they have set it up.. there is no fixing the downward spiral to the portal of complete junk that Etsy management created.

This is why they fail to make a profit every report due.The sales increase and the sellers increase but the sales are so low value that Etsy makes no income - try searching for items under $5 .. they again lost 4c per share after 3 previous losing reports over a year. The only solution they have the mental capacity to see is to bleed the sellers more by charging them to be seen in search through various means I suggest this was all a big test that as usual went bad and they were busted by the sellers.

by: ebay refugee camp

I feel Etsy has some issues that seem to be cropping up and these same problems are on ebay also but in a much grander scale. The technical issues seem to get fixed on etsy however etsy'd seller protection is non existent and its promoted listing program is just full of it, it is a income generator for etsy and not so much for sellers. At first Etsy was great but I see problems as NYSE bonus' money come into play and those will get worse.
Ebay's problems are chronic and ebay will die if they are not addressed.The seller protection must have teeth and the buyer 100 percent protection must have a real investigation system in place to catch lying buyers which in my experience was 100% of the time.
Moral of the story, Etsy will turn out to be ebay because they have headed down the greedy path.

by: White Rabbit

The search is not fixed as far as the sellers are concerned- 1832 posts as of this morning.

https://www.etsy.com/teams/7720/bugs/discuss/17468255/
page/71

more lies- as usual from Etsy

by: White Rabbit

on top of the search bug.. the old Late processing order bug seems to have re appeared

https://www.etsy.com/teams/7720/bugs/discuss/17477949/
page/2

the moderator is telling the sellers that taking 48 hours to process an order is normal!!!!!

48 hours?  paypal can process an order in 4 seconds!

nothing but lies on Etsy.

by: MainelyVintage

I'm on a big vintage team on Etsy. We had just had a listing blitz to bump up our newly listed and renewed items. So I had a ton of items affected.

My items should have been at the top of search, and instead they were invisible. In fact, I found that all of my renewed items (over 500) were gone.

Like anyone who made a special effort to promote their shop but ended up with no benefit or results, I'm not super happy. But I believe what Etsy said and did.

I do still prefer selling on Etsy to eBay (although eBay does serve a purpose for those items not 20 years old).

I look forward to ecommercebytes informing us what the next great venue for vintage will be!

by: Flying Childers

DW Rabbit as always gets it right when it comes to the constant lies of Etsy. If you read the last report from Chad & Co. they come out and admit that Etsy is now entirely geared to selling and promoting mass produced Chinese goods that are shipped to the doorsteps of waiting US buyers.

Quality and authenticity are no longer valued. I don't care what anyone says, Etsy has become 1000 times worse than Ebay. I am sick and tired of hearing the Etsy shills/ admins telling the sellers how all their screw-ups are really being done to help them. Time for a reality check.

by: Noneya

lets guess, Etsy admins will suggest that the best way to be found again is to simply relist your entire shop. More revenue for Etsy. Problem solved.
Why oh why is Etsy still futzing with search month after month after month? They get it right, sales start pouring in and they immediately mess with it again throwing a spanner into the works for everyone involved.  

by: Writings on the Wall

Some one (AG of NY) should investigate Etsy for fraudulent practices and restraint of trade. On another note, they have the HIGHEST costs to sellers of ANY internet selling site. Don't believe the low listing fees. They want you to byt "promoted listings" to be seen in search. It's pay-per-click. Then they have these goofy "favoriting" games and when people click and "favorite," you get charged. Who is that gullible???