Glitch? Policy enforcement crackdown? Etsy sellers have been reporting since early November that their listings are not showing up in Etsy search results and, as a result, they say their sales have nose-dived.
On a thread created on November 8 (“Why are my Listing NOT showing up in Etsy Search Engine?”), a seller wrote the following:
“I noticed my sales are so low that I am rarely getting any sales. As I search items on my shop, I noticed they are not even showing up in Etsy search engine.
“For example my listing for “Artist Bonnie Ann Gruver” does not show up in search engine.
“My listing is the only listing with this artist, so obviously it should show up at the first page.
“Can someone explain why, my items are being ghosted?”
Another seller pointed out that they couldn’t find the seller’s listing when searching Etsy, but found it when searching Google.
In another thread posted on November 7, “My shop is suddenly invisible in searches and sales have tanked,” the original poster wrote:
“We have had the highest sales we have ever had this week. Our business had grown the past few months consistently and this week our sales have been at their highest. Suddenly yesterday about 12pm it was crickets. No sales, no views, no favorites,—-crickets. Today we have had a few sales trickle in with coupon codes from abandoned carts or favorites. Our views and almost non existent. I cannot find our shop itself in searches. None of our listings are coming up anywhere in searches. We are basically invisible. We had listings with “popular now” labels from etsy and literally everything is not showing. What is going on? Advice? Help!!!!”
One seller offered the following advice: “Don’t listen to other sellers there’s def a bug right now. We found the fix. Go on vacation mode for 20 minutes. Your shop will return back to normal within a hour just like ours did.”
In another thread posted 5 days ago on the Etsy Technical Issues board, “Multiple Shops Completely Gone from Search Since Nov 6 – Need Answers from Etsy Team,” the original poster outlined details of what many sellers were reporting.
CindyLouWho2, a seller and consultant, described an issue in which a subset of sellers were “deindexed” from Etsy search on November 6-7. She confirmed that “returning from vacation mode includes reindexing.” But she said some sellers who reported the issue had not in fact been deindexed from search and may have been penalized in search for violating polices.
An Etsy moderator responded to concerns on that thread 3 days ago, writing:
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We’re investigating the issue, and we’ll share an update as soon as we have more information. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this.”
Although the apparent search de-indexing issue impacted a subset of sellers, the comments from sellers describing problems they are having in getting visibility seem to impact many more.