Is Etsy About To Change SEO Forever? Or Am I Reading Too Much Into A Glitch?

Is Etsy just about to change SEO?

>> [gasps]

[sighs]

>> Here is time for my tinfoil hat. So, if

you're wanting a video that tells you

how to do things, this is not it. I'm

going to do a little bit of speculation,

but speculation

based on something a couple of

somethings real. So, I'll explain.

Earlier on today, someone posted in a

Facebook group "What is this?"

basically with picture. And what that

picture showed was the tag section on

Etsy saying 30 tags, 30 30 characters.

Now, currently, if you're in an

English-speaking place, you're only

allowed 20 characters. This was from a

UK seller, so I thought, "That's very

strange." I went and looked in my

listings, and I couldn't see that

option, but then I realized from their

screenshot they were looking in the

seller app. So, I jumped on my seller

app, and sure enough, there it was, the

ability to

well, it said the ability to add up to

30 characters. When you're filling in

your tags, the ability to add up to 30

characters.

Now,

you can't. When you try and go over 20,

you get a warning saying that you can't

have more than 20, even though it's

saying

so many out of 30.

But this had me thinking. Now, it seems

like Etsy's doing a lot of updating. I

believe it's the 6th of August that the

Q2 financial report is coming out.

And this is the time of the year when

Etsy test stuff, and they really really

drop stuff. Now, they have, and I will

talk about it later, they have been

doing a little bit to offsite ads in the

past couple of days. Have you spotted

that yet? Um which Yeah, I might do a

little speculation video on that as well

cuz I'm speculate I'm in a mood for

speculating.

But anyway, so Etsy's doing some changes

behind the scenes. And with the offsite

ads when actually what happened, people

were seeing a little blue dot in the

marketing area that they couldn't get

rid of. That was just sort of warning

that there was something new, but they

hadn't got as far as to add the new

thing yet. And then when you turn on

offsite ads,

some people were seeing a little

little thing saying new. Um

>> [clears throat]

>> And other people weren't. And then when

I went and looked, I saw the new thing.

And when you look at the new thing, then

all those dots go away. So Etsy were

putting out the warnings for the new

thing without having put the new thing

up yet. So it seems they're making

changes

um

They're not completing the changes.

They're just putting changes up. So when

I saw this, I thought, Now, why would

that be changed to say you can have 30

characters

if they weren't about to give us the

ability to have 30 characters. I could

be very wrong here, but

it kind of makes sense to me. So if

they're updating things,

why would they want to give us more than

20 characters? I think there's a really

good reason for that because in the

latest SEO update that Etsy did, not

updates, updates to their guidelines,

updates what they were telling us to do.

In the past, they've talked about if a

keyword too long for a tag, you can

split it up, but they've been very

clearly mentioning

put into a tag what you would expect a

buyer to type. So they were moving away

in their advice from the mix and match

tags that were clearly a jumble, just a

jumble of words.

So, that was interesting. Now, it wasn't

a big change in SEO because I know

plenty of people that just do mix and

match tags. They just put random words

in and let Etsy sort out. But, in the

developers blog, they have been talking

about semantic search, which is using

all the information that you're giving

Etsy in the listing to feed to the large

language models

um to

for them to [clears throat] understand

the meaning of your listing. And that

did make me think. It's made me think a

lot about the SEO, what changes could be

coming.

And actually, yeah, I'll get into this

cuz I saw a change last week, and I was

going to I was going to do some work on

it, some research on it, but the change

went away.

But, it was an interesting one. I

noticed someone in the Etsy forums had

said um

that they had a very specific term in

their title of their listing, and when

they searched, they absolutely weren't

seeing it

anywhere in search. And when I went and

checked, you could see it in places like

eRank.

So, it was showing up on the back end,

but they were quite right. There was

like one page of search results, and

their item wasn't it. So, that was

saying that it was matched in the first

stage of Etsy

um in in their algorithms, but then it

was completely removed.

And I checked with a few of my items.

Now, I have I done a test a while ago,

changed a lot of my tags to a nonsense

tag. So, I searched for that, and

rightly enough, none of my listings were

showing up. So, that was strange. And

then I searched for some other things. I

searched for my name, and some of my

listings were showing up. I searched for

my shop name, some of my listings were

showing up. So, I was like, "Okay." This

is in a cleaning incognito browser, by

the way.

Um

So, then I searched for my name and my

shop name and keychain cuz I've made a

few keychains, but they've never sold at

all. So, what happened there?

None. None of my items were showing up,

which was very, very strange. I searched

for my shop name and felt dog, and yes,

my items were showing up.

So, it almost felt like the large

language model or some stage in the

algorithm, let's not get too speculative

latory there, but some stage in the

algorithm was saying, "Okay, you've

searched for this shop name and

keychains, but that shop, she's not

really known for keychains. I'm going to

show you something a little more

relevant, something more important for

keychains." So, that was very strange.

And I was going to do a bit of research

on it, and then the next day I went to

go in and just look at that search

again, and then suddenly everything was

back to normal. I was showing up for

these weird terms.

But it did make me think the large

language model was having a bit of a

nudge. Um

So, then add to this where Etsy are

saying, "Use tags that a buyer would

type into search." So, basically, use

tags that are keywords, not broken bits

of keywords.

What is the thing that's holding many

people back from being able to use full

keywords, full phrases in their tags is

that the tags are too short. You're

unable to do that.

Now, if they're looking to have the

large language model understand

what your listing is from your title and

tags and what's in your photograph.

If you have mix and match tags that

don't really make much sense, that would

be confusing for a large language model.

It'd be confusing for anyone to know

what it's exactly relevant for.

So, this could be a change.

I might be completely wrong. It might be

a a glitch. I've no idea how that would

happen that someone typed 30 into

into that area so people see 30. It

could be a mistake, but if it's not kind

of weird typo, that suggests that Etsy

might be moving towards wanting us to

have very understandable tags. And that

would absolutely make sense because

that's what tags are like everywhere

else on the internet. This mix and match

thing's not been a thing for years. Um

if you're building a website or a

YouTube video or whatever else, you're

not limited by the number of characters

in an individual tag. You put in the

keyword. So, interesting. Now, that's

just my speculation. I could very much

be wrong. I saw something. Does it mean

we need to change anything? Absolutely

not. Does it mean though that we need to

be aware? Firstly, be aware of the

change the the things that Etsy's

mentioning. They're not changes they've

made yet, but the things that they're

mentioning like changing the large

language model and semantic search.

Putting using keywords in your tags

rather than mixing and matching them.

Definitely worth being aware of and it's

something to be testing if we're testing

different things in our listing. It's

not a change. Plenty of shops don't do

that and they're not being penalized for

it. They're still getting good traffic

and stuff.

But, I would definitely have my spidey

senses tingling if we're allowed 30

characters.

So, let me know what you think. Do you

think that this is a possible

deliberate change that Heat C is having,

or am I just in speculation city as as

the sun cooked my brains and I'm just

speculating nonsense?

Let me know in the comments.