Hello
I thought I would start searching jewellery for Christmas presents on Folksy. I typed in “Earrings” and saw that on here there are over 14,000 listed but when I started to browse what was on offer I got very frustrated. The first 5 pages where basically just a handful of shops and 1 page was nearly all of the same designer.
I then tried necklaces and I found that the same shops were also listed first. There must be such a diverse range of jewellery on Folksy so this cant be fair. I then looked on the best selling shops and many of the shops where on there too, so being seen so quickly by the search engine must help enormously.
I don’t sell jewellery but this must be an issue for those that do.
Does anyone know what the criteria to be first in searches is or is it just the fact that this shops have very good tags and SEO on their listings.
Unless you select otherwise then I think the most recently listed items show up in the search first. With a plus account you can relist items every day, bumping them to the top of the search. Probably only for a brief period as someone else will soon come along and do the same. Some shops relist their entire stock in one go which is why they will briefly dominate the search. I tend to only relist a few items at a time and then only if I remember to do it!
Hi Roz
Thank you for this explanation, having a plus account seems to be a very affordable way for always getting your items seen. If you relist everyday and re list at the time most people are likely to browse it is a useful way to get seen.
I will narrow down my search to the type of jewellery (or price) I want for my pressies.
I sell jewellery and wish I knew the answer to this.I understand that most people searching usually find what they want or give up after the first 5 pages so I did a search for pearl earrings to see where mine might come, the same person’s item comes up first every time, not the newest listed, or the one with the most favourites, I checked the tags and they are pretty much the same as mine so I am no wiser. I just keep plugging along hoping to get seen at some point.
Yes, I agree with #beguiledbythebead. I feel rather discouraged. I sold three items when I first opened my shop then nothing. eventually I stopped bothering but I’ve just started trying to add something to my empty shop every day to see what happens. I also did a search on my leaf earrings and despite having leaf earrings in the title of my leaves I was only on page three. It seems to be very hard to get into the first couple of pages. Any advice welcome
I did another search tonight on silver earrings and the same names came up, even though I tries silver, pearl, handmade and a few price ranges. So if it is the newest listed these shops must have a lot of stock and relist several times a day on a rota just to get their name to the front.
Once again as I buyer I got fed up as I wanted to see a range of the 14,000. I would love to know the answer to this and apply it to my shop.
I seem to remember doing an experiment once - it was several year ago so may be out of date now - to try and find out what (apart from frequent relisting) brings items to the top of the search. It seemed to be a combination of having the keyword that is being searched for in the title, description and tags - helps to have it at the start of the description and repeated as often as possible. So if you were looking for pearl earrings the listings with the phrase “pearl earring” at the beginning of the title, beginning of description (and repeated several times throughout the description) and in the tags will be at or near the top of the search. However, despite trying to out tag everyone else I never was able to get my item to the top of the search so there is something else going on too!
I make jewellery and it is very difficult to get seen. I have just tried a search and I am no where near the first few pages! I have a plus account but only realist when the items are ready to expire. May be I should relist more frequently but not sure if this is the right thing to do?
Think jewellery is saturated on all platforms. You need to search more specifically. Like shape or colour? The shop you see is a top seller I believe. Maybe that’s why it shows up first? I have a plus account, I have pearl earrings and searched but couldn’t see them. But if I search dog bandana, I’m there on first page. I don’t renew everyday, and don’t renew all my listings. But I do renew every now and then. Tbh, I seem to bring in my buyers and I don’t think I’m found via search anyway, which is why I don’t bother renewing all the time.
@OrchardFelts I believe if you search by typing into the search box then the results default to relevancy, but if you just browse a category it’s recently listed.
Relevancy has completely baffled me though. Obviously it must take a lot of things into consideration, but I would have thought what’s in our titles, descriptions and tags would be a big factor. However a couple of weeks ago I was doing a search for an animal I’ve got 3 paintings of, there were only 9 pages of results and the first time I showed was half way down page 3. That’s fair enough if all the items above seem more relevant, but mine all had the animal name in the title, multiple times in the descriptions and multiple times in the tags. The first item in the results was purely titled with the animal name, but it wasn’t mentioned at all in the description or tags (there weren’t any tags at all).
I did wonder if recency might also play a big part as I only renew when something’s about to expire, but one of my items got renewed this week and is still around the same position, and there are still older items with much less mention of the search term on the first page.
I am currently experimenting with searching. I am listing everyday as an experiment, but still, even searching using the tags that I have put on my listings leaves me at best at page 3. It is a bit disheartening but I shall press on until Christmas and then decide what is best.
I always believed that having a plus account helped in getting to the top of searches, but I had the plus account for a couple of months and hardly earned the outlay back. Perhaps it’s time to join Plus again. I’m disappointed because my shop was really popular at one time. I really don’t know…
I don’t think that the recency of listing/re-listing has an effect on relevancy. If I do a basic search for something I sell I can see items of mine that are shown before other items of mine that are more recently re-listed.
The repetitiveness of search results probably has more to do with how those sellers are titling, describing and tagging their listings. If someone sells a lot of the same type of item (earrings for example) and uses similar titles, descriptions and tags in each AND they also rank high in Folksy’s search algorithm for that simple search then their items are more likely to be repeated.
Folksy could counter this by programming their algorithm to only repeat sellers items x number of times per page but then that runs the risk of ending up showing less relevant items in front of more relevant ones … its tricky.
Relevancy in a very broad search like ‘earrings’ is a bit of a misnomer as how do you decide which earrings are more relevant than other earrings when they’re all earrings?
No one really shops from searching the most basic descriptor of a thing. We might want earrings, sure, but what we actually want are some simple silver studs or some black hoop earrings. It’s better to worry about being relevant for more descriptive searches than really basic ones and that is something that we as sellers can definitely have control over by using the title/description/tag combination to our product’s best advantage.
Unfortunately for me I know people will do vague searches just on a type of animal, and the title/description/tag combination doesn’t seem to be enough to get me higher up the results.
@coatimundi I don’t think the plus account comes into it, I’ve had it for a year, but I can still see a fair amount of results above me without a plus account.
It seems to me the top results quite often have a very short title, a very basic description and few tags… then I wonder if you only use a single word for your title/description/tag, but that word is the searched term, it makes you a 100% match, which would mean me trying to use all the space in the title to get lots of keywords in is actually pushing me down the results for some important terms. But then a few results later there’ll be a really lengthy one with a full set of tags.
Then I wondered if sales history might come into it, but I can also see results above with less sales or no sales at all. I just can’t work it out. Maybe I need to try a few super simple titles.
I think you’re right regarding the simplicity element. It kind of makes sense I suppose; if an item is targeted towards only one search term then it must be super relevant for that search term.
The potential problem with aiming items at only one search term is that they are then unlikely to be anywhere near as relevant for any other search terms which might also apply to them.
I might test on a couple of items where I’ve got multiple listings on the same theme, then I’ve still got others to come up under the rest of the terms. I’d be happy to just have one item nearer the front on that sort of vague search.
i think that if a shop has listed several hundred items, they are more likely to come up in a search result than shops with only a few items as well.
I guess the best thing when looking for something to buy is to make search being as specific as possible like
18ct gold ring with ruby
or
sterling silver drop earrings with gemstones
