I’ve read everything I can on the blog and have checked on the forum here but since the webinar my views have fallen off a cliff 
I checked a few searches again yesterday after I’d tweaked a few things yet again but I’ve disappeared into a black hole now, there were items in front of mine that were not titled with the search term and said barely anything in the description but had the search term as the very first tag, yet others where my first tag was identical to the search term yet my item was on page seven of the search results……. all of my items had the search terms in the title, the description and the tag but there were pages and pages of others in front again, some of which didn’t have the search terms front and centre as it were, were back to clumping too it seems, thought that had been addressed? I know it’s not supposed to matter to the algorithm how new a listing is but can anyone tell me does being a Plus member make a difference?
I just tried ‘snowdrop greetings card’ and three of yours were in the first three rows.
Can you give us an example or two?
No, being a plus member doesn’t affect the results. This was mentioned at the webinar, and I have a few items myself that will appear before plus members’ items.
I did a quick search with “snowdrop card”, “card with snowdrops” and “abstract art” and you come up in the first page, but of course it will depend on the search term people will use.
They were changes to the “search” just before the webinar, that improved the accuracy of the results that come up, I would imagine there is always room for more improvement, but seems to be working better now.
Also, since the webinar, a lot of us have been doing the same, so there will be a lot more items that reach the “top scoring” point, in which case there is nothing you can do to change the order of the top scoring listing’s appearance. Could that be the case for your listings dropping? As Helen said, a couple of examples of your search terms might help, as it will make it easier for the Folksy people to identify the problem if there is one. x 
Thanks both, I was searching more generic terms, hand painted card, blank card, greeting card, floral card etc.
Maybe I’m not being specific enough, good to know I’m there at least and thank you for having a look.
I searched ACEO and one of your listings came up first.
The problem we all have is that no one can really predict what the customer is going to put in the search bar or what they are looking for all we can do is describe our items to the best of our abilities.
I find even at craft fairs people don’t “search” as such, not sure how to describe it but they see but don’t look.
My craft stall is a variety of hand knitted and sewn bags, gifts and baby items much the same as my shop on here. BUT a lot of people who pass my stall say “oh dear, I have no babies to buy for” even though in front of them is a big stand with bags, purses and zipper pouches on it.
You have to just try to think like a customer and try to predict what they want, which is not easy unfortunately, if only we all had a crystal ball.
I think there will be other things in the search algorithm that rates things like how many sales / favourites a shop has overall, how quickly they post, what feedback scores they have, how long they’ve been on Folksy etc. If that’s right, all of that will also be thrown into the search order mixing bowl to produce an item’s position in the results too.
I’m sure that all the work you’ve done on refining your listings was absolutely the right thing to do and a great use of your time - it’s another tick in the list of stuff to do to get your things to sell here and I feel your pain / frustration - it’s a long road! 
I hope you are wrong on that one Debbie, I mean if that’s correct then no point being here other than my own stubborn determination to not quit! 
While my feedback is always positive, I’ve not been here long really and I don’t get many sales so I’d be right down the back of the queue.
There would be no new shops showing up in the searches either if that were the case.
Anyway, I shall continue to tweak a bit and hopefully shop visits etc may improve.
Onward and upward and all that.
I know what you mean, If I ask friends and relatives what search terms they would use they nearly all come up with something different to what I would use.
I think you’re doing the right things it may be a case of there being a lot of similar ranking items in the cards categories. I don’t know the figures but there are many cards on here, it seems to be a popular category. It would be lovely if we had a subsection for handpainted/hand drawn cards that are unique and one off, rather than having to put them in the blank cards section which is massive.
Thank you Emma, I love the idea of a hand painted original section to the card department, although I did see several sellers use ‘hand painted’ in titles etc but when you look at the descriptions they’re actually prints, which can be quite confusing. 
and is in my opinion quite misleading from a buyers point of view.
I think I’m probably right that there will be other factors involved that we’re not aware of, but whatever they are, they will also be weighted against the overall result in some way I think, so don’t despair! 
Hello Lynn
Like others have said it depends how people search.
When searching for Tulip card neither of ours showed but when I searched Tulips card we were both on the front page.
The only other thing I remember which gave extra points was using at least 250 characters in the description which I sometimes struggle with, and am not going to waffle on unnecessarily, and the order of the words. So someone who had Tulip greetings card should score higher than Blank card with Tulips, as long as they also included it in description and tags like you said.
There are so many different ways of searching too some might type in a search if looking for something specific. Others might use the categories and narrow it down with filters, or even use the gift guides. My mother in laws favourite flower were poppies and so id definitely search poppy cards. Linoprint is my most popular search term and not much else. X
What the search considers is listed in this blog post (which has been updated with all of the recent changes) - How to write a listing that gets found in search results
It doesn’t take anything like Plus or basic or how long someone has been on Folksy into account.
This did include changes to help reduce clumping, but it’s hard to completely remove and if too strict measures were put in place, it could affect the quality of results.
It can be hard when you’re searching very generic terms because there are so many items that are a match, and you can have pages that all have the same score. This means you might have one item showing in the first spot and one item showing on the third page which could just as easily have been the other way around, but the search has to put them down somehow.
In the past the search would have put the items of the same score down in whatever order and it stayed that way. Now it gives them a shuffle every hour, so that the item that had been on the third page could get the top spot the next hour (that was only introduced after the webinar so it wasn’t mentioned then).
Just how much difference that makes can depend on how vague/popular the search term is, but I would imagine something like ‘blank card’ has a lot of equally highly scored results.
Thank you Kim, sorry if it sounded like I was having a grumble, I totally understand that you can’t ever please everyone.
I also realise my search terms were very generic and that cards in general are a huge category.
I just found it really odd that up until this last few weeks I had a lot more views than I am getting now and almost all came from Folksy rather than external sources and I used to find myself regularly when I did search but now I can’t.
Shuffling the order of equally ranked items in search every hour or so is brilliant - thanks so much for introducing that. We can’t all be at the top all of the time ( as much as we’d like to 
) and this seems such a totally fair way to distribute the benefit of that first page 
I didnt realise they shuffled the listings either, I also think it’s a great idea
Has anyone searched using the simple term “mirror”. Only one mirror in the first 16 shown. Gave up . Shopped elsewhere.
PS I did want a mirror.
Sorry there was a 2nd, a pocket mirror, missed it ,
It says there are 173 Joy @JOYSofGLASS . Haven’t checked if they’re all relevent though.
I used the filters homeware then decoration and mirrors are an option., but nothing looked relevent just searching mirror, which seems odd.
I remembered it being theme of the day a while back so knew there should be more than 2
It just seemed very odd that the real mirrors don’t come anywhere near the top of the search especially after all those instructions we had recently about how to get to the top.
Archives Crafts have gorgeous mirros, I know as I bought one for my daughter and admire it whenever I visit but they are way down in the search and I don’t think they will mind me using one of theirs as an example. .
I checked one at random :
Title : Dragonfly bathroom mirror
so Mirror is pretty important in that 3 word title.
The first two words of descriptipn are Wall mirror
It is tagged mirror pewter mirror bathroom mirror
and it is categorised
Homeware / home decorations / mirrors
So why on earth does it appear on the bottom line of the 2nd page ie at no. 38 after lots of mirror knitted things which lovely though they may be are not mirrors and i am 100% sure that any customer seeing them in a mirror search would be as puzzled as I .~
Makes no sense logical or otherwise.
And certainly makes no sense at all that listings with the word Mirrored not Mirror, my actual search term, are appearing in front of a listing with the actual word Mirror word in the title.
I’m only part way through watching the webinar thingy on listings so I may be wrong but could it be because the knitted items have Mirror as the first word of their title ?
If so I can understand it as it is how the search works however, a customer coming to Folksy might not look past the first page as they might expect ‘Mirrors’ to show first, I wonder how many visitors use the search categories facility on Folksy, I know we are use to it as we have shops.
It’s a difficult one getting this search thing right isn’t it.