I’m sure it’s nothing to do with Plus membership other than that I don’t know!!
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I guess it’s still a work in progress, tbh I didn’t really notice the gift guide thing but now that I’ve been doing more searching for my Folksy Friday boards the gift guide is beginning to grate on me. I know, I KNOW there is no easy and completely fair fix for clumping but it can be done because other platforms do it, so here’s hoping it will be improved here too. We definitely need the shop names back, if only because it’s putting the shop name in front of the potential customer so maybe, just maybe, they’ll start to remember it if they see it often enough - and I think it helps make it clearer to buyers that they are purchasing from small independent businesses and not just generically from the platform.
And I am not even going to attempt my planned cleanup/update of titles, tags and descriptions until we know more about how this new search works, because it doesn’t seem to me to be working the same way as the previous one did and as Kim’s pointed out some ‘tweaking’ will be needed!
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Just a reminder for everyone - this is a completely different search to the one we used to use. We have tried to replicate the main points that the search looks at, but it doesn’t behave in exactly the same way.
There are some things we might not be able to set to work the same, or it doesn’t seem a benefit to have the same (for example the first tag being most important was a limitation of how the old search worked, rather than a choice).
The new search is much more complex, which hopefully means we can get it to give a better set of results, but it also means there are a lot more variables to work out and get right.
Unfortunately with both searches, clumping is a difficult thing to solve because of how the searches work. They score each item individually and put them in order - they can’t simply compare the item to another result to check if that seller has already appeared. We do have some ideas which might help with this though, so this is one of the things we hope we’ll be able to improve on soon.
We will update our guidance for listing and what criteria is looked at, but we need to wait a couple of weeks first to collect a good set of feedback from both sellers and buyers, and to analyse buyer behaviour around search, so we can check if any changes need to be made. Any tweaks we make to the algorithm could change the guidance we need to give, so we don’t want to tell you one thing, have everyone change their listings to meet those requirements, and then change how it all works again the next week.
Thanks for all the feedback so far, both here and through the feedback button. We will be going through it all to check what might need changing.
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My anxiety Kim @kimfolksy is that the new search function is making some makers invisible whilst changes are made and new guidelines provided. For example I’ve just searched birthday cards and the list is exactly the same as it was earlier and on the 7 pages there are only a handful of makers included. I understand that it’s difficult to over come clumping but thinking as a new buyer on Folksy I’d think that these items were all that were on offer. Also I mentioned earlier that I searched retirement cards which I have again looked at and page one has a card happy Father’s Day and then over 100 happy birthday cards featuring cars. How can this be a good experience for buyers?
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Kim @kimfolksy . On many of the searches I entered, the items returned were not what I would have been looking for e.g. candles returned candle holders, boxes for candles, pottery and cards with candles on them and a few candles, I would have gone to another site! and when I did that when I typed candles in there I was given various options, when I stuck with candles it returned candles at the top and other items only appeared afterwards. I also just compared your search to the one on my own website which returns lots of options. The search you have is really very poor compared to the one on etsy and my own website. The shop search is poor as well you would need to know the name of the shop you were searching for. Sorry to be so negative but at least I now have more insights as to why items are not found on Folksy!
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If the old search is no longer valid and having the search words at the beginning of the title is no longer used then how does it choose what to put first because every search i made didn’t bring the results I expected.
Teddy bears… pages of teddy bear cards before actual bears
Dolls… similar results,
If i was a customer i would stop looking.
Please can Folksy tell us what it looks for now if keywords arn’t applicabie as we need to change all of our listings to stay up to date otherwise we won’t get seen.
I dont like the fact it brings up one page of selkers only when using the search for shops, if I wasn’t a seller I would think they were the only shops to choose from. It should at least mention there are others on Folksy.
I do realise it is all work in progress
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Kim @kimfolksy, I know it’s probably too late now but wouldn’t it be worth going back to the old search function and then bring a focus group of both sellers and buyers together to continue creating the new search in the background? It would save a lot of the anxiety this has created
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I’m really disappointed about the 7 page maximum pages on item searches. I’ve just done a test on my tea cosies, with the search term tea cosy and only 2 of mine show up in the search, I sell more than 2! If someone doesn’t like those 2 colours, how will they know I sell others? 7 pages definitely isn’t enough, all items should show up. It’s hard enough to get sales on here as it is. I’m not going to test on my other items, it’s annoying me too much. I’ve been on here since 2011 and have seen a lot of changes, but with this and the other issues mentioned above, it’s really not good. I’m just glad I didn’t renew my Plus account for the year in January, as I feel my money would’ve been wasted.
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I know this has been said before I wanted to contribute anyway.
The search is much faster now which is great.
I am in agreement with others about the picture sizes and find it less uniform and distracting. With regard to the gift guide please move it to the end of displayed pages. Again, as others have pointed out if you didn’t know you might stop scrolling at that point and given the guide only includes selected sellers, means a lot of makers could potentially become invisible.
The ‘clumping’ is an issue and the search results returned are totally out of sync with what is entered. Also, is there a limit on the number of page results returned? I searched a general term which should have returned a lot more pages but 7 was the maximum and featured only a handful of sellers. I repeated the search on other selling platforms and this was not the case so this is a little challenging especially if you are seller who has also not been included in the gift guide.
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I’ve just had a quick search. I’m really not a fan of the look. The red price tags on the images really detract and distract from the photo’s and makes everything look a bit cheap. I also think having different size images is off putting. Having shop names visible is important. When I look at my stats my name is the most frequent search term used.
I was happy with the look of the old search.
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I have tried various searches
I searched for a shop using the word Daisy as I know of two makers who have Daisy in their title neither showed up although others did with no mention of daisy. It appears the search recognises spaces which it didn’t before as Daisywings and Lilacdaisy are all one word which I hadn’t remembered.
I then searched Lino as this has always been the most common word in my search items again it appears it differentiates between lino, lino cut and linocut it will depend on the potential buyer using a space or not.
There was a lot of clumping.
But the most annoying thing was the No1 result was unavailable, had only two items in the shop, and a direct link to their own selling site through their blog.
I feel all the time and effort spent trying to get my titles and tags correct as advised in how to get seen in search results has been a waste of time.
I’m just glad I haven’t started listing any new items yet
I also agree that putting the gift guide among the search results is off putting and if need be should be at the end
As a buyer I like that the price is featured in the image and like how they are displayed. I’m also a fan of the gift guides but not in search results
Also the items on the search page haven’t changed all day. Will it be the same sellers featured all day tomorrow too?
My faith in Folksy is dwindling
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Please can I politely request that we go back to the old search as quickly as possible until the fundamental flaws in the search results (which are affecting both buyers and sellers) are ironed out? I think it needs a bit more than just tweaking.
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I have just done a search on ‘trays’. We have different style trays on the site.
One of ours came up on page 3. I scrolled right through to page 7 and found 14 images of decorations (Autumnal & Christmas) from the same shop! I then went on each image and found the tags ‘tiered trays’. What the heck ‘tiered trays’ has to do with the above products defies explanation.
So at least we got one shown but what about the other 13 shops that should have had an item shown instead of the same shop being repeated over and over with a item that isn’t even a tray!!
I’m missing something here. Unless this changes then we’ll be saying goodbye.
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As a small crumb of comfort, whenever I look at the search click-throughs on my shop stats I am amazed by the apparently completely irrelevant things people have typed in to arrive at my items, but something must have caught their eye in the search results so they clicked on my item anyway… so I guess it’s swings and roundabouts!
Ah but if you search for ‘tray’ (singular) then two of yours are on page 2 at least. It seems the search differentiates between singular and plural so maybe it’s worth using both as tags?
I would guess that “newest is best” may be part of the clumping issue. Many Plus members renew batches of listings together, and if the search is using listed date as a default then those listings will be shown together.
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I’m not sure this is the case, I relisted items earlier and they still didn’t appear in the search at all when they would have previously
Ok thanks 
My search brought up 69 items from the same shop 92% of their 75 shop items. The same shop appeared in 6 of the 7 pages of results.
Approx 20 % of the 336 search results were from the same shop
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I’m sure Kim can advise, but unless they have specifically (or accidentally) changed it for this new approach, Search doesn’t look at latest listing date. Some Plus members do relist every day, but we have been told this won’t influence position in the main Search feature.
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