Please note that this post was written June 15th 2009. Things have changed since that date!
Etsy is an online marketplace launched in 2005 for buying & selling all things handmade, vintage items, art and supplies were added later. Etsy was a pioneer in sustainable social marketing concepts. To quote CEO Maria Thomas
“(We) wanted to go back to a time when markets meant personal interaction — when you knew who you were buying from.”
Etsy now counts 1.8 million members in 150 countries, and 2 million listings.
Sometime in mid April Etsy upgraded Search Engine Optimization site wide. The process was explained in this Storque article. Unfortunately, either a bug, glitch or human error added a ‘handmade’ tag to all Etsy shops home page meta keyword data.
All Shops
Not just the shops which sell handmade items. Sellers of Vintage items had the word handmade inserted in their metatags as did sellers of Art (who searches for handmade art?) and supplies.
The inevitable result; meta tags like these
<meta name=”keywords” content=”handmade vintage dresses, handmade vintage jackets coats, handmade vintage suits, handmade vintage sweaters tops, handmade vintage skirts pants, handmade vintage lingerie, handmade vintage shoes, handmade vintage accessories, handmade gift certificates”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”handmade vintage shaving vanity, handmade vintage jelly jars, handmade vintage snuff jars, handmade vintage coffee jars, handmade vintage canning jars, handmade vintage destash, handmade vintage” >
generated charges of keyword stuffing in shops’ home page meta data from search engines and consequent exclusion from search results.
Sellers have also reported noticing a sharp drop in views and sales following each bi-monthly scheduled site maintenance. This is not normal and suggests Etsy may be on a suspended or watch list with the search engines.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword Stuffing is repeated use of the same word or use of irrelevant words in the Meta Tags data line, it produces inaccurate search results and is both forbidden and penalized by major search engines. Google’s guidelines suggest no more than three repetitions of a word.
Etsy sellers say views and sales are down, by as much as 75% and still declining despite Etsy management’s statement June 11th
“The tech team has released a fix that resolves this issue. As I stated before, this was a flaw in the logic specified to generate meta keywords for shop pages from shop Section Titles. The word “handmade” was being appended in a way that did not make sense. It was inaccurate for Vintage or Supply shops, and was overzealously being used on each meta keyword.
With this fix, no longer will “handmade” be appended to meta keywords for shop pages. Your shop Section Titles will still be used to generate the meta keywords for your shop pages, so you still retain some control over this aspect of your shop’s SEO.”
Ongoing issues with SEO
Despite all assurances to the contrary on June 11th somebody in Etsy’s SEO department who does not know what they are doing is still pfaffing with the SEO!
Just go to Etsy and look at the titles. Any title! Wonder why they are all truncated? If sellers have 60 or so characters and spaces for a title why would they be using titles like “100 Year Old Antiqu”? Here is a screen shot of my good friend Sparkklejar’s listings. Her title is actually “100 year old Antique Cottage Chic Light Green Mason Jar Shabby Roses”.
The meta tag for the title is “Handmade Glass on Etsy - 100 year old Antique Cottage Chic Light Green Mason Jar Shabby Roses by sparkklejar”
By inserting 25 letters and spaces in front of the seller’s title Etsy has left the seller 19 searchable characters to sell the item and corrupted the whole listing. This is not handmade glass. Etsy also stuffed the words handmade glass in the keywords for this item together with many other keywords which do not even appear in the listing and have absolutely no relevance to it.
Hopefully Etsy will fix this, soon. Etsy needs to admit that their wonderful idea to load every listing with site promotional keywords in every meta tag is regarded by search engines as blackhat SEO and the outcome is penalization by exclusion from search.
Auntie May says “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” and it sounds like Etsy needs to listen to her!
There are limits to how long sellers can survive without sales. How long can Etsy continue these unethical practices before permanent irreversible damage is done to their previously excellent reputation?
Y’all come back!
Related posts: 6/22/2009 - Etsy Responds to Seller SEO Concerns
This whole situation is a huge mess - I hope Etsy can get it fixed, or like you said it could do permanent damage, which would be so sad to see at this stage of the game, with Etsy growing at a nice pace like it has been… Keep your fingers crossed for all of us Etsy sellers out there!
Posted by Mitzi on June 15th, 2009.
Etsy just needs to backtrack to how it was. With no changes, it worked and there was no reason to even mess with it. It is seriously disasterous now, etsy risks permanent relationship damage with Google if they don’t fix it asap, and no one wants Google on their bad side. Maybe give a few techs the axe as a gesture of good faith.
Posted by Lisa on June 15th, 2009.
Thank you, Henrietta, for this information. I was just about to list some of my vintage items on my Etsy account, and you’ve saved me some valuable time.
Meanwhile, i’ve had THREE SALES this past weekend on Bonanzle, after none for two weeks prior, so I’ll list there, instead.
Etsy has truly been a perfect site until now. I hope they fix that SEO immediately, because they’ve done so well, and been such a trusted site!
Posted by Cali on June 16th, 2009.
I am keeping my fingers crossed, I really like Etsy, although my product doesn’t fit the site I have no trouble spending there! :-o
Posted by Henrietta on June 16th, 2009.
For several weeks my views & sales on Etsy were uncharacteristically low. After some overhaul of listing titles & tags, there has been some improvement. However, like so many others, I believe, there was nothing wrong with the way things were before some of these changes were made. My shop will close for the summer & I will assess things later on to see if I will continue if things on Etsy remain as current situation.
Posted by Ally on June 16th, 2009.
Very clearly written, thanks. I am tweeting a link to this blog post for anyone that doesn’t already know/understand this issue.
Posted by tina of forrestina vintage on June 16th, 2009.
I’m pretty unhappy that this has been done, and doubly with the silence from etsy.
Posted by OhFaro on June 16th, 2009.
Now I know why my views are down. Thanks for explaining. Maybe it is time to find another venue to sell.
Posted by cjswoodlandshed on June 17th, 2009.
I’ve probably read 100 posts on etsy about this mess in the past few days, but this one I finally understand. Thank you. I’m also going to tweet it (I found it via twitter).
Posted by catniplover on June 17th, 2009.
Thanks for the clear explanation. If etsy is not getting the traffic, then I really have to re-think.
Posted by Theresa on June 18th, 2009.
Thank you, NOW I understand - BUT what is being done to fix this - my sales are really down - and so am I!!!!! : (
Posted by Pauline on June 19th, 2009.
Wow, great info. I never understood what was going on and this explains the low views. I have overcompensated with Twitter and that’s how I get views.
Posted by Ldy Steel on June 19th, 2009.
Thanks for the clear post!! I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened to etsy sales. According to GA I have 32% fewer page views! Quite a chunk of missed business opportunity!
Posted by Cathy on June 19th, 2009.
Thanks for this info. I had no idea & I was getting quite down about the drop in views/sales. This helps!
Posted by samsstuff on June 20th, 2009.
Thanks. My Etsy sales came to a halt in early May - could not figure it out.
My only Etsy sales lately have been through http://www.HagJewels.com/woj.html, which is a Facebook link to vintage jewelry sellers on Etsy, not through Etsy itself.
I love Etsy, and hope they figure this out.
Posted by blisstiques on June 22nd, 2009.
Thank you for this article. I am really trying to decide if I will stay will etsy. With no sales sing April it is getting really difficult to sell my items. I have to be in a place where I and many other shops are visual enough get sales. There are tons of shops that are making sales and some that are not. I just don’t know at this moment, but I will have to make a decision to go somewhere that is more profitable.
Posted by Renaissance Austin on June 23rd, 2009.
Etsy is very proud of hiring an SEO expert in JULY, after the debacle! With the number of sellers they have, you THINK they would have done this prior to “optimizing” our shops and sending us down the tubes and up the creek without a paddle. listinghttp://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6211827
Posted by Carol on July 9th, 2009.
Here’s the link again.
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6211827
Posted by Carol on July 9th, 2009.
When all of this first happened I was quite new to the whole etsy selling thing so didn’t really noticed anything had happened. But since reading various forums and posts I agree with Carol, wouldn’t it had made more sense to hire the experts first!!!
My mum is an SEOer and she says at least it seems Etsy have learned from their mistakes and hired someone good, apparently SEOmoz are very well respected in the SEO community.
Posted by paperclayjunkie on August 15th, 2009.