Oh etsy. . .

Ok, so I have complained about etsy's search being not so intelligent for AI and I have complained about etsy's "help" not being very helpful so here's what happens when those to issues collided recently.  😕

I opened a "help ticket" with etsy to report the following :

Etsy search regularly returns really bad results. The forums are full of threads about search being broken but I'm not talking about the "Clumping".

I am talking about search returning results that are not what was searched for.

I searched for "chainmaille barrette" and the top of the first page only actually has 1 correct result, the rest are not chainmaille or not barrettes. Seriously, the houston astros bracelets is infringement, the loop deloop hair clip is wire wrap not chainmaille, the toni chain maile tutorial is a tutorial for a necklace (it's not a finished good, it's not a barrette) the rest are scale flowers not chainmaille.

I even provided a screen shot to prove/illustrate the randomness of their bad search results.  Not surprisingly I was disappointed with the response I received in return, also not surprisingly it took 3 damned days to get a response.  

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear that the search is not returning results consistent to your search. I know you have been with us for 6 years so you know how to search for the items you are looking for.

I'm noting your feedback and will be sharing it with the team to consider for a future update. Please know we take comments from the community to heart, and we make many changes to the site based on what we hear.

For legal reasons, I have to point out that any ideas members share with us are non-proprietary to them. You can read more in our Terms of Use. 

Don't hesitate to reach back out to me if I can help with anything else. 

Best wishes,
xxxxxx(name removed)
Etsy Support

So ya' know the typical awe thanks for pointing that out but we don't plan to do anything about it, non-answer reply. Although, this is the first one that has come with this particular "legal" notation.  I, of course, responded and pointed out this is not just an issue from the buyer perspective but from a seller perspective as well. 

It's not just the buyer perspective of not finding what I'm looking for, it is also a problem as a shop owner as I have "search terms" in my stats and clicks for phrases that I do not have a single word of in my listings. :-/

I noticed in the last few weeks I have seen "search terms" in my shop stats such as :
"in a world full of grandmas be a nana"
"beating on a dime"
"mail order hat pattern 3454"
"metal wall art made in israel"

Honestly, the only one of those that makes any kind of sense is the "metal wall art made in israel" as I do sell metal wall art, HOWEVER I am located in the USA not Israel and I do not ship internationally. I turned off etsy ads because of it.

The following day I received the following response :

Hi there, 

Thanks for your response, with more detailed search terms from your shop stats. My name is XXXXX and I'm a Support Specialist here at Etsy. 

First, I'll certainly be passing your email along as feedback for our team that works on Search. This is something we're always working to improve, so it's helpful to see examples like the ones you've provided. 

I do want to note that it's possible that your items were appearing in a buyers "Recently viewed" or "Similar to recently viewed" which appears at the bottom of a search page. If they clicked on your listing in either of these sections, the original term they entered into search would still appear in your shop stats, even if your listing did not appear in the results for these search terms. For example, I've just done a search for "in a world full of grandmas be a nana", and I only saw one page of search results and none of your items were in those results. However, I do still see all of my recently viewed items at the bottom of the page, which have nothing to do with this search term. 

I do realize this isn't ideal, so I'll be noting this in my feedback as well. 

Please do let me know if you have any other questions. I'm glad to help. 

Best,

xxxxxx(name removed)

So apparently, it is possible to not even be in the search results and yet end up with clicks tied to the search term, it makes no sense to me but there you have it, an "etsy explanation" as usual it explains nothing. 

Etsy transparent as Mud.