Etsy has acknowledged a problem users are having with its search engine, a problem we described a week ago in this EcommerceBytes Blog post. After entering a search term on Etsy, users find that one shop dominates the search results. One seller dubbed the problem “uber domination” of search results, others call it a problem of “clumping.”
Several sellers emailed links to discussion threads where Etsy has acknowledged the problem. One seller started this thread on the Etsy boards, writing, “I just made a search with the words “Labradorite necklace” to see where my item would show in the search and I noticed that, except for the first page, the 5-6 first listings on each page (looked up to page 20) are from the same seller. I thought the listings should be randomly placed to gives everyone a chance to have their items seen and I think it is a bug.”
An Etsy moderator named Matt Quirk jumped in on October 19th to write, ” Hi all, Just wanted to acknowledge that we are aware of and working to fix the search issues reported. Sorry for the trouble!”
In response to similar complaints on another thread, Quirk wrote, “We now have enough examples of this and we are investigating. Thanks for all the reports. I’ll try to get you an update soon. Thanks!”
He posted that response on October 20th.
An Etsy moderator named Audrey also confirmed the issue with search on October 21st. In this thread, she wrote, “I’m sorry to hear several of you have been struggling with traffic and sales. I checked on the status of the search results issue you’re describing and confirmed it is being investigated. Sorry I don’t have anything more to offer there, but rest assured it’s a known issue.”
And moderator Marie Kelly wrote on Wednesday afternoon, “Our tech team is still investigating this issue.”
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