Etsy Adds New Search Ranking Practices

Etsy added provisions to its Search & Advertisement Ranking Disclosures policy on September 15th:

• Frequency Capping: to limit the number of times the same listing or shop appears at the top of results for a specific user or keyword.
• Etsy may highlight a cross-section of shops or listings organically, above or alongside primary search results, based on some or all of the factors above.

Etsy also published new legal Terms of Use on its “Our House Rules” page that that go into effect next month.

Etsy did not publish any announcements about forthcoming changes, but sellers noticed the new terms and spent time trying to determine what exactly was changing, as we noted on an EcommerceBytes Blog post on Tuesday evening.

We sent an inquiry to Etsy asking about the new Terms and whether it had notified sellers.

We also asked if Etsy’s practices around limiting visibility of shops, listings, or ads described in the new section “c. Your Seller Account and Etsy’s Terms” was new, particularly the following provision:

“In the event a shop sees an unusual spike in orders, particularly in a high demand category, a shop may see an increase or decrease in its search ranking. Often, if a shop sees an increase in fulfilled orders and good reviews, this may result in higher visibility and search rank. However, sometimes a rapid increase in orders can reduce visibility.”

We’ll update this article if and when we learn more. In the meantime, weigh in on the comments below or on the EcommerceBytes Blog.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.