In this thread, RevolvingDork describes some new improvements to Etsy’s search functions.
RevolvingDork says:
Hi all,As a step towards making the search feature easier to use, we’ve fixed a few bugs and have added some more search options.
:: Please note that these changes affect only the default “tags, titles” searches ::
You can now use quote marks to search for exact words or phrases in listing titles and tags. For example, if you wanted to find items that used the exact phrase “far out”, you can now enter “far out” in the search bar to get exact results. Without quotes, you’ll get every item that uses both the word “far” and the word “out”. Quoted and non-quoted search terms can be combined, such as in “far out” pillow.
You can now also reliably use the option “NOT” or the minus sign “-“ to exclude terms from your search. For example, if you wanted to find jewelry that was not silver, you could enter jewelry -silver . If you wanted to find jewelry that was not silver and not a ring, you could enter jewelry -silver -ring .
There are a handful of other tweaks, such as no longer breaking on certain non-alphanumeric characters ( like apostrophes ). Be sure to send thanks to Jorge, Haim, and Kelly, as they’re the ones that made this update happen!
We hope these modifications make searching easier and more accurate. We’re working on further enhancements to make it even better, so stay tuned!
December 11th, 2007 at 12:16 am
…. but you would only know about it if you hung out in the forum to read it!
It’s great, it’s a step in the right direction I guess but there’s no update to the search hints, no grand announcement (tho why would a site advertise that it had a crap search function anyway so i’ll concede on that one i guess) unless there’s summat lurking in strop
hey ho
December 11th, 2007 at 1:02 am
It is a GREAT improvement but it is a little buggy.
I searched “rose gold”
I only want to see items made of rose gold, not roses made of yellow gold, or gold-colored fabric with a rose print on it, etc..
results: 266 items, not all of them are rose gold.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=8388263
does not contain the phrase “rose gold” in tags or title.
does contain “rose” and “gold” as SEPARATE tags, separated by comma.
The item is correctly tagged.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=5315845
does not contain the phrase “rose gold” in tags or title.
does contain “rose” and “gold” as SEPARATE tags, separated by comma.
The item is correctly tagged.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=8347727
does not contain the phrase “rose gold” in tags or title.
does contain “rose” and “gold” as SEPARATE tags, separated by comma.
The item is correctly tagged.
If you list the tag “gold” immediately after the tag “rose”, i.e. in separate tag boxes but in sequence, it is counted the same as entering “rose gold” in a single search box.
However if you list the tags “rose”, “chain”, “gold” in that sequence, then it will not show up in searches for “rose gold”.
two sequential, individual tags are being treated as a phrase.
December 11th, 2007 at 1:57 am
I always assumed the search was boolean. Guess I’m not as careful about checking my results as JB! I tend to drill down by category, enter a few search terms, and the sort by most views (trust the masses).
December 11th, 2007 at 2:47 am
Yep JB, they seem to have done this on purpose… according to revolving Chris,
“RevolvingDork says:
Yes, this is indeed part of the design. Words that are entered next to each other as tags are considered to be part of the same phrase. Many people enter multi-word phrases as individual tags, and this is built to facilitate that.”
December 11th, 2007 at 4:46 am
Of course they did it on purpose. Every bug that is reported, they say, “we meant to do that”.
But these tags aren’t entered “next to eachother” they are entered in separate boxes, on separate lines. On top of eachother.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Well, I totally agree. If they really did it in purpose, it is totally misguided. As usual, it’s a ‘We did this silly thing totally on purpose’ just like we have heard about the ridiculous category ‘bleed’ for a year or so.
I hope they change it now, because if they don’t, it will be that way like……. forever.
December 11th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
I wanted to add this link here since it’s been closed…interesting examples in it from sever Admin…
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5365838
December 12th, 2007 at 1:51 am
very interesting examples - they also seem to be in disagreement with each other too about how to use the tags the way etsy wants you to use them
so now i have to think about where i put tags adjacent to each other in case it results in mistagging that way
December 12th, 2007 at 1:54 am
They closed that thread? How lame.
Theres just no legitimate reason to shut down a civil discussion about technical issues.
Of course, this same behavior has been going on at Etsy for years now, so What do I expect!