Etsy has begun rolling out a new search analytics tool for sellers to provide them with insight into how their listings perform in search; note that Etsy is keeping the existing Stats feature.
Etsy said Search Analytics lets sellers see which search terms shoppers used to find their listings using Etsy’s search engine, and which searches resulted in sales. Knowing which of their items appear in search results can help sellers optimize their listings, the company explained.
In June, Etsy had committed to giving sellers more tips and advice on optimizing for Etsy search. In addition to releasing the Search Analytics tool this week, Etsy published a guide to search last month. And Etsy has been sharing data on shopping search trends.
On October 1st, Etsy published a guide to 2018 holiday trends, and on October 10th, it published a guide to 2018 holiday decorating trends, where it revealed that searches for holiday decor start spiking in October.
For example, the latest trends guide identified a “boho holiday” trend (think bohemian decor featuring items with macrame, embroidery, and pom-poms). “Over the past three months alone, Etsy has seen a 67% increase in searches related to “boho holiday” (compared to the same months last year), indicating that the 70s-inspired style isn’t going anywhere.”
Other trends: so far this year, there have been over 1.3 million searches related to “neon” on Etsy, while searches related to “modern farmhouse” have spiked 142%. Some shoppers are more traditional: Etsy also reported seeing over 7.7 million searches related to “rustic.”
The value of learning about search trends may be finding valuable keywords to use in titles and tags. And the new Etsy Search Analytics tool may help sellers figure out how helpful those keywords are when sellers use them.
Sellers kicked off a discussion of Search Analytics on the seller boards, with a mixed review. One seller suggested her fellow sellers keep in mind that the new tool only looks at Etsy searches, not the source of all traffic the way Stats does. “It does not reflect external searches from Google etc, or outside searches from sources such as social media,” she said.
Etsy also published the transcript of a podcast on Wednesday in which two employees busted some myths relating to search optimization.
Update 10/11/18: We just noticed Etsy announced this afternoon that it has taken the tool offline to do more work on it.
I want to see How Many VIEWS per Item, not visits.
Too much to ask, I guess….