I’ve just searched doll and not a single doll from my shop appears in over 200 things - including quilts and paintings. I only make dolls - so a bit worrying!
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Martine, I’m glad I’m not the only one, if I type in hanging decorations no results show up, I have 16 hanging decorations and 8 hanging baubles. If I type it in the singular 7 show up but no baubles. One of my best sellers are the hanging decorations. Also my round pocket mirrors and badges are cropped and look ugly.
Yes Sue, I think this needed to be pointed out - I didn’t mean just to focus on myself but, if someone was searching for a doll, they would never see any of mine, so they wouldn’t know I was even there. I’m sure it must just be a blip but I thought I’d better mention it.
Also, I do wish there was a section for dolls - dolls are in homewares and I would never think of searching there for a children’s toy or a collectible doll. It seems a strange place to put them.
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Thank God for that.
(I’m testing a theory here)
@MaisyMuffin
When I run a search for dolls the items I see at the top of the search have the word doll as either the first or second word in the title, you have the word doll as the last word in your titles of the dolls (and not in the title for the dolls clothes). Could you try putting the word ‘doll’ at the beginning of a title and see if that improves your position in the search results?
(We’ve gotten used to an algorithm that puts a priority on the tags and I’m wondering if we need to get used to an algorithm that puts priority on the title)
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I applied some more filters to my doll search and managed to get it to show me yours - there definitely seems to be a bias to the search results based on where the search term is in the title.
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I was wondering if the bias was how many listings you have and how often you list them. Does this affect how high up in the search your items come? If so, that’s hardly fair and hopefully this has been addressed. When I search for items, I tend to go to the back of the search list because often it’s been the same seller at the top of the search for pages and pages.
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Thanks for that Sasha - you’re a star!
I’ll try changing them x
I’ve changed one of the doll’s titles so that doll appears first and I’ve relisted it so that it’s a new listing but it hasn’t appeared yet - maybe there’s a time delay. I’ll give it a while to see before I change any more.
It’s working now but the pictures are cropped, as Sue said - my pictures are all the required size.
@VioletFlameGlassArt Quick search with a fairly niche term (fordite) would indicate that no there is no clustering based on how many listings a shop has or how new the listing is in this iteration of the search algorithm. The ordering definitely seems to relate to where the search term is in the title - first items being shown have fordite as the first word in the title, then the listings with fordite second word in the title and so on. The listings shown at the end are the ones where fordite is used in the description and tags but not in the title.
Thanks Sasha explains why some of my items turn up near the beginning of the search results and some further down.
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You are welcome - if I can get my head around it then it will help me with my titles etc. I’m still trying to figure out what is going on with @SueTrevor and the hanging decorations - I can’t see the pattern or logic in that one yet.
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@SueTrevor I’ve applied enough filters so I am seeing your hanging decorations in the search results but I’m still not understanding how the algorithm has decided to rank them (I’m searching for hanging decorations but yours are appearing below some listings that don’t have hanging decoration in the title or description which doesn’t make much sense (everything I’m seeing does have hanging decoration in the tags)). Could you relist your 2 pomegranate hanging decorations please? I want to see what effect relisting has on the order I’m seeing. (the rainbow leaf is second in the results I’m seeing whilst the others are in a cluster much further down)
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When you say the required size do you mean in terms of file size? (eg 5MB or under which is what Folksy has specified) What I see in the search results is a change in image dimensions which is different to file size (Folksy has never actually specified preferred image dimensions). Previously things were shown as square (so we all got in the habit of cropping them to square) now instead of being square they are slightly rectangular so we might need to get into the habit of cropping things to slightly rectangular.
(Although for ease of flinging stuff onto instagram I might stick with a square crop but leave a slightly larger margin so that when it gets cropped to rectangular nothing gets chopped off)
I meant the 1000 x 1000 size that I use for my pictures.
I think Folksy still want us to have square main images for inclusion in newsletters/ social media etc but the search results might start showing things as rectangles (like they are now) so increasing the amount of border around the item to take into account any cropping could be a good idea in the future. Since we are looking at a beta version of the search that is still being tweaked it might go back to showing things as square so I wouldn’t make any changes to your images yet.
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From what I can see, not all items are shown in the initial search…for example:
I did a search for ‘handbag’. 200 results came up…lots of which were not handbags but handbag charms, or handbag cards or other ‘handbag’ related items.
If I then used the ‘filter option’ on the left hand side and selected ‘clothing & accessories’, then ‘sleeves & bags’, then ‘handbag’ I got 677 items, mostly handbags. This is similar to if I had used the menu tabs at the top of the home page which brings up 667 items under ‘handbags’.
This means that a crossbody bag which I have in my shop, which has the word ‘handbag’ as the seventh word in the title, does not appear in the initial search but does show when I use the ‘filter’ option and when I use the tabs on the front page.
So, if someone was just looking for a handbag and wanted to browse the whole range as they weren’t sure exactly what they wanted, then they would miss lots of them if they only did the initial ‘search’.
Maybe there should be something to prompt people to use the filters for more results.
Currently the search is showing the thumbnails in two different views, with the dimensions different on desktop and mobile, so if you’re seeing a bad crop, it may not be the same for people viewing on other devices.
While you might want to make a few changes to your listings to work with the new search, please remember this is still in beta and not the final version. We will be going over all of your feedback and the data at the end of August, and following this there may be some adjustments made to the new search, such as changes to the algorithm or thumbnail size if something doesn’t seem to be working as well as it could. Because of this, I wouldn’t spend hours/days making any major changes to your entire shop/photos just yet (and don’t forget to use the feedback button if something doesn’t seem to work well).
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Thanks Sasha for your hard work.
Pomegranates relisted. The rainbow leaf I changed the title and tags earlier today with hanging decorations coming 1st in the title as well as the green leaf, I put hanging decoration 1st in the title and thats now higher up for me, I perhaps need to redo all my titles and tags.
My baubles seem to 1st in the search if I put Christmas baubles, so I’ll leave them be.
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