It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

So in June many of us were upset by Etsy's meta-tag stuffing, and when upcoming changes were annouced, a lot more of us were thinking "what's that Lucy, a football for me to kick?" (Gilmore Girls reference)

And when our views vanished we were left floundering, frustrated, and wondering what happened. Many Etsy sellers threatened to jump ship, the forums were flooded with angry and upset sellers, myself one of them, but now, I believe the dust has settled and things are back on track. So much so that I am over a month backordered and I had to close down my low selling shops and just keep Etsy open. But I promised to do my Google experiment again, even though I knew the results would be off since my other shops are closed. But I still wanted to see how people are finding me.

So here goes. First I logged out of Google, and then I cleared my cache, browsing history, everything I could think of that would leave a trace on my computer. Not an exact science, but it helps. Then I did several searches. I searched for "pumpkin hat", "knit pumpkin hat", "pumpkin hat boston beanies", "apple hat", "knit apple hat", "apple hat boston beanies". I did all these searches without the quotes, and I only looked at the first 10 pages.

Here are the results:

"pumpkin hat" search
none of my items found

"knit pumpkin hat" search
Etsy-page 1 shopping guide
iCraft -page 2 shopping guide

"pumpkin hat boston beanies"
Etsy-page 1
1000Markets-page 1
Cosaverde-page 1, 2
iCraft-page 1
my blog-page 1
Artfire-page 2 (a review)
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft

"apple hat"
1000Markets-page 6
CosaVerde-page 7

"knit apple hat"
iCraft-page 1 shopping guide
Etsy -page 1 shopping guide, and there was a link under another listing show more results from Etsy, I clicked that and there was my listing on page 1, but how many searchers are going to know to do that?
iCraft- page 4 (a different listing), page 9 another different listing
1000Markets- page 6

"apple hat Boston Beanies"
1000Markets-page 1
CosaVerde-page 1
Etsy-page 1
iCraft- page 1
Shopping Guide had Etsy and iCraft.

So what did I learn? I had no expectations for Artfire, 1000Markets, or iCraft to turn up in the searches. In fact it shows how on top keeping clean their listings Artfire is, as I recall my Artfire listings made it in pretty quickly into the searches last time. Also, Etsy and 1000Markets are now in the searches, in places that I can expect them to be, so this is GREAT news.

The only problem is that to be seen, shoppers have to enter terms like "knit" in order to narrow down some of their searches. I hope they know to do so, or they may be frustrated with their hits. But an Etsy product was always on page one, driving a customer to Etsy, and maybe that person will shop there and try and see what else is available and...

So make a good product, take great pictures, and use helpful, thoughtful tags, and the customers will find you.