I give up. . .

I have never had the best search placement on etsy, no matter how I re-work my SEO, regardless of keywords, location, shop policies, about section, 5 star rating be damned.  😐  Nothing I have ever done or tried has had any real impact on my placement except promoted listings which etsy has now ruined.  They billed me $1.28 for a single click the last day even though I had a $1 daily budget, I had to turn them off.  😠

I have seen a lot of threads in the etsy forums about search being broken.  Honestly, etsy's search is broken in many ways, they killed the "fairness" guideline, they turned loose AI which was not ready, and now they are shoving ads everywhere. First, the fairness guidelines were there to limit the number of times a shop could be on the same page, now there is no limit on the number of times the same shop can be on a single page so you get "clumping" whole pages of the same shop over and over and over and over. . . Second, the AI sounds like a good idea except it doesn't work it still needs to "learn" to be "intelligent" it's totally artificial but not smart as it provides really bad results some times.  Finally, since the new "advertising" crap-ness they are shoving ads everywhere they can, more rows of ads than there used to be and ads for things unrelated in searches with less results. 😕

So I searched for "chainmaille barrette" and this is what came up 

I feel the need to point out that there is only 1 actual "chainmaille barrette" at the top of this search result, see that row of "ads" at the top not a single one, scale flowers on clips are not chain and not barrettes.  See that houston astros bracelet that is infringement and hello a bracelet is not a barrette.  Also as pretty as the loop de loop thing is, it's wire wrap not chainmaille of any kind.  😕  Plus what the ? is with the tutorial for a necklace, it's not a finished good, it's not a barrette, it is not really related to the search "chainmaille barrette" at all except by 1 word.  

You may be wondering why I care, well this is the type of thing that keeps my listings buried.   In the small search "chainmaille barrette" there are only 78 results, I have 11 listings for chainmaille barrettes so you'd think I could get more than 1 on the first page, but nope.  Plus to add insult to injury the one single listing of mine on the first page of that search is in the very bottom row, it is quite literally the very last thing on the page.  However the infringing shop has 3 f*cking bracelets on the first page of the barrette search.

The truly crappy part is it's purely an etsy thing, I know my keywords/SEO are on target because if you do a Google search for chainmaille barrette and select images I am right there in the first row and the third row and the fourth row and even my instagram post is in the top half of the page.  So etsy hates me and buries my listings on purpose.  If you try a larger search like chainmaille earrings which has 6,500 results my first appearance is 1 listing on page 4 and 1 on page 5 and 1 on page 8, in spite of the fact that I have 20 earring listings and set them for free shipping which was supposed to get priority placement.  😕

In light of all that it is probably no surprise that I have become rather disillusioned with etsy in the past couple of years, unfortunately the new A.C.Moore marketplace seems to be really slow taking off so I'm stuck with etsy but I have cut promotions and the etsy plus subscription.

P.S.  I have no changed the barrette listings over to free shipping and miraculously 10 out of 11 are now on the first page.  😏