I knew it !!

I have finally discovered a way to prove that etsy is lying it's lying A$$ off about the number of shops on the site.  I had been daily tracking the number of shops out of curiosity for a while when I noticed one day it nearly doubled over night back in July. 
1,448,089 shops found for 7/09/2019

2,845,072 shops found for 7/10/2019
Now, I knew immediately that something was very fishy with this but I wasn't sure what exactly they were trying to pull.  

One has(had) always been able to type a blank space in the etsy search bar and then select find shops containing " " and that is/was supposed to pull up all "Active" shops which previously had been defined as shops with at least 1 listing for sale, you know actively selling.  

I knew that it was not actually possible for over a Million shops to magically open overnight.  😐 I suspect that etsy has done this to appear more popular/occupied/active/valuable than it truly is, I highly suspect that they are pumping the numbers to dazzle the board and shareholders.  However, I have for months now thought that it was incredibly suspect but I had no way to prove it so speculate as I might all I had was a theory.

I have been busy moving house, remodeling a house, vending at events, you know living my life, but in the back of my mind I have continued to think about and be bothered by what I consider to be fraudulent representation by etsy of the number of shops active on site.

This morning after doing my regular number check I used the "sort by" option and after changing from relevancy to recent to alphabetical I had the Ah-HA moment and proof.  Right there on my screen when I switched to alphabetical it shows empty shops, as in shops with nothing for sale, a lot of them.  On the first page alone of the 10 shops shown 6 of them are empty and after clicking in and looking at them they are looonnnggg empty like last review 7 years ago, or only ever 3 sales years ago.  😕

I still have no exact reason for etsy's pumping up the numbers but I do at least now have proof that they are falsifying the number shops on site and I know I'm not crazy they are lying.  On the second page out of 10 shops listed only 3 actually have items for sale. 😐