The other two items in the Lino search I mentioned have also gone. So it looks like theyve been working on empty shop items showing up.
I think ive done my bit in highlighting problems with the search, as have you Joy along with everyone else. But its got me so disillusioned i need to leave it alone now. Im going to my happy place, pot on some plants prepare for planting my sweet peas and listen to the birdsong
It would be great if it all got sorted before the next weekend 
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Not holding my breath on that. The problem appears far too wide reaching / severe for a quick fix and pretty sure it is far too late now to back out even if backups are taken before changes are made. Who knows.
I will do the same as you once I’ve packed my lovely order from my other shop and get out there in my garden with the birds bees butterflies and blossom..
And just to prove it here is Baby Black waiting for food from Mum.
Far more productive watching him with my camera than making glass for my shop here.
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https://seranking.com/blog/ecommerce-site-search/
I found a few facts on this website. We have every reason to be extremely concerned. My sales have also dropped of since this disastrous search alteration was made by Folksy. I think they should be giving every single seller a refund for the period of time it’s being ineffective and upto the point we have a good functioning search facility for our potential customers.
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M&S have had a cyber attack last week. If someone was going to attack a large company wouldn’t they probably try first with a smaller company, could Folksy be that company? Or have I been reading too many detective novels lately? 
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It’s in Folksy’s hands now to decide whether they want to keep their sellers or not.
A hacker would probably feel sorry for the mess we are already in and leave it alone. They are very smart people who challenge themselves every step of the way, and I cannot personally see any challenge here…
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Lots of people became disillusioned with a certain large site when it a) allowed mass produced printed items, b) plastered its pages with " their" gift guide c) favoured high selling items, ie those that could be quickly made in bulk or remade at the expense of one of a kind items that would never ever sell more than 1.
Folksy was a welcome change. But people would only stay as sellers if they got buyers. So unfortunately many sellers do not stay long. They may boost the number of sellers for a while, making it look good, but have no long term positive effect for the site.
So, I can see the need to focus on buyers. If you get buyers then the sellers will stay and word will soon get out attracting more sellers. But a focus on buyers must not be at the expense of care of sellers, another attribute that Folksy was so good at and made it stand out from the rest.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - there is such opportunity for Folksy to stand out above the rest, not afraid to be different, and be the really best handmade selling site for the UK, and to make itself known as such.
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Those of us who have been with Folksy have said the same thing time and time again. They just keep failing to make opertunity of it!
I hate seeing horrible mass produced mugs, bags etc with inappropriate wordings on them by applying transfers. Perhaps Folksy consider applying transfers by hand deems them as hand crafted products! Does this mean genuine hand made products are inferior! These products belong on eb–your, A–zon and the likes, not a genuine handmade craft website.
I challenge Folksy to close these shops down ASAP!
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Hi Folksy Sellers,
We wanted to give you an update on the recent changes we’ve made to search on Folksy.
Firstly, thank you to everyone who’s shared their thoughts with us – we know search is something many of you care deeply about, and we understand that some of you are feeling disappointed or frustrated right now. So let’s explain what’s happening, why we’ve made these changes, and what we’re doing next.
Why we made changes to search
The old search system on Folksy was built on outdated technology. It simply couldn’t deliver the improvements we needed in order to showcase your products more effectively or evolve with the needs of your customers. So to future-proof Folksy and build a better experience for buyers (and sellers), we’ve migrated to a new, much more powerful search platform.
This change is a big one behind the scenes - and while that transition means some teething issues, it opens up far more opportunities for us to improve search results, ranking, and discoverability long-term.
What the data is telling us so far
Search is important, but it’s currently used by only a small percentage of Folksy shoppers. Most customers browse directly via your shop pages, through categories, tags, or our curated themes. That said, for those who do use search, the new system is already showing encouraging results:
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Click-through rates are up, meaning people are engaging more with what they find.
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Conversion rates are tracking level, so the changes haven’t caused a significant drop which we are aware has been a concern amongst sellers.
So while we know the current experience may not feel perfect from your side, and we have a list of kinks from our side we want to iron out too, it’s reassuring to see that for customers, it’s not disrupting sales.
We’re listening - and still improving
This new system is still in its testing phase. That means we’re continuing to make improvements, test tweaks, and use both your feedback and customer behaviour data to refine how it works. We will be sharing an update later this week in the newsletter which will cover search more fully and show you some of the changes we’ve implemented since going live.
Your input really matters, and we are listening. We’ve already implemented some changes based on seller suggestions and we’ll continue sharing updates as we go.
Thanks for bearing with us as we build something better - we’re excited about what this new tech unlocks for the future and how it can help your products shine.
With thanks,
James & The Folksy Team
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Thank you, James - it’s good to know that conversion rate is unaffected. I’ve noticed a rise in the number of search clickthroughs this week and encouragingly most of them are from actually relevant search terms and not just random words (for once the list of search terms isn’t making me go ‘huh?’ or even ‘wtf?’). I’m also encouraged that more people seem to be finding me NOT via the onsite Folksy search (it’s usually a very large proportion of my hits, this week it’s only about half of them), but are finding me on Google or clicking through from my Insta, so I’m hoping this means that more traffic is coming from people who aren’t already Folksy sellers and the word is spreading! Anyway I’m optimistic and looking forward to seeing more improvements (and the reinstatement of shop names on search results, PLEASE)
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Thank you for the update, James.
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A better response might have addressed the specific and legitimate concerns raised by many of your “customers” (that’s us!).
To name but a few of these concerns:
Clumping, shop invisibility, holiday mode issues, search promoting older stock at expense of new, removal of shop names, garish red stickers, gift guide banners, items from empty shops appearing in search, queries as to whether tagging still works…
This is not an exhaustive list. It’s not really acceptable to be patted on the head and told to wait and see as to which of these issues are being addressed and which aren’t.
An apology would have gone a long way to placate many of your customers I’m sure but it doesn’t look like we will get one.
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Did you search in the shops section of the search box? I put Carolee in the shop search box and only your shop came up.
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Very few people know about Folksy. It’s the longest running on line market place that’s the least known.
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Good to have an update but of the increased number of searches I expect the majority are from sellers both when signed in and not signed in, I know I have been on searches without being signed in and I am sure I am not the only one.
My Stats are down.
I didn’t feel like the update told us anything other than to sit and wait a while longer and go reassure sellers that something is being done. I see our shop names still don’t appear, also if customers are more likely to come direct to our shops that confirms that the majority follow us on socials and don’t actually use Folksy to browse as it still isn’t reaching a wide enough audience.
The clumping is a major issue still and we have no idea how to get our products seen as tags, titles and descriptions no longer work.
I don’t feel very reassured to be honest, it would have been good to see that one of the issues at least had been improved or fixed. I will await the update later in the week.
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Yes, I thought the statement that the majority of buyers don’t use the search facility was very telling. If I’m looking for something on Amazon, for example, I will go to the search box and get a list of generated results that equate to at least 90% of what my search terms requested.
If Folksy buyers aren’t using search, they obviously don’t use the site to browse in this way. Therefore, they must be finding us through socials and external links (provided by us!).
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That’s how I read it Chris, however, regardless of how many actually use the search we still need one fit for purpose and currently it obviously isn’t.
I didn’t feel like our questions had been answered and I havn’t noticed any significant changes to make it better over the past month, I am looking forward to reading the newsletter at the end of the week and hopefully an answer to the question we have all asked in ‘how do we now ensure our items come up in searches’ when the old system clearly no longer applies. I had hoped we might have been told how it works by now.
As far as I see it, we are also customers on here and if the search is showing us pages and pages from one seller and items that are not relevant then it is also showing the same to non Folksy potential customers.
It seems strange then that a lot of sellers on this forum have reported a downturn in sales since this started, yet Folksy reported that “it hasn’t disrupted sales”.
I also think it is fair to say we have encountered more than “teething issues”. Now all we can do again is sit and wait.
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Again repeating something I have said before - stats can be misleading.
Number of sales may not have gone down. But if the new search has resulted in, for example, 100 sales of clumped rude mass produced printed tote bags, as opposed to 100 carefully handsewn individual tote bags, then the stats will indeed show there has been no drop in sales, however there will be 99 genuine sellers who have lost out plus Folksy’s reputation as handmade badly damaged.
Not saying this is the case, but just something for Folksy to watch out for when looking at stats.
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I have been looking at the Best Seller list of late and it is amazing that on a site ‘with between 3000 - 5000 sellers at any one time’ you can now get easilly get onto the end of the list with sales over a week of less than £60 (oh and that includes postage )
So sales don’t look to be too good across the site to me. Looks like either nothing or peanuts for all the other sellers.
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Well mine has been nothing Joy but I havn’t really promoted this month as basically lost the will and couldn’t be ars.. and as Folksy have mentioned which we already knew, most of the sales don’t come from searches but from our own promotion across social media. That being the case a website may be the way forward, cut out the middle man and the sales on the website will only incur charges from PayPal or stripe. A lot to think about.
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