Hi, can someone explain to me why Etsy and not Folksy appears when doing a Google search for items? When I mention to people that I have a shop on Folksy, they’ve never heard of it!
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Hi - what search term are you googling? Results do vary according to the actual search terms used. For example, if I google ‘textile art for sale’ Folksy appears first, before eBay or Etsy.
I’ve had another go at searching for my items, if I’m very specific my listing will appear. But for example when I searched for ‘seed bead earrings’, Etsy was second and Folksy didn’t appear at all on the 17 pages of results. Maybe the ‘seed bead earrings’ description isn’t detailed enough. I do have ‘seed bead earrings’ in my item heading and in tags so I thought they would appear.
I believe the tags on Folksy are purely for internal search, first few words of title and description are meant to be good for google
“stained glass suncatcher” brings Folksy up first so good for me 
As Heidi says, where Folksy (and individual shops and items) rank on Google really varies depending on the search terms used. For example, when I search for “beaded earrings” on Google we are number two in organic results, above places like Zara and Anthropologie, which is pretty good! This is on a signed-out search and it’s worth noting that people will get different results based on their search history. We also do quite well for “seed bead earrings UK”.
There are lots of other factors that influence a search, such as how many items there are on Folksy in that category or tagged with that specific phrase. Where categories and sub-categories rank is also affected by the titles of the products/listings within that category. For example, if a sub-category has lots of items that are well-titled and include relevant words, Google will read those titles and determine the page as a good match. So for example, if you type “lino cut print” into Google, our Lino Print category is one of the top results, partly because lots of the items have those words (or similar) in their titles.
We are constantly working on improving where Folksy items and categories rank on Google, but there will always be some things that do better than others and positions can go up or down. We do also offer Folksy sellers product listing adverts for free, which you can read more about here http://blog.folksy.com/2018/01/29/google-shopping-adverts-plas
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