#EtsySellerNews
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Etsy Fourth Quarter Earnings 2023 - Still Banking on Improving Marketplace Sales, But Not Revealing Many Plans
Slide 23 from Etsy's 4th quarter 2023 earning report, © Etsy. it shows what percentage of sales each major category has, with performance in the quarter.
Etsy’s fourth quarter results for 2023 were as uninspiring as expected, but despite revealing few plans, the corporation is convinced it can increase gross marketplace sales through its gifting and other initiatives. There was a lot of interesting information for shop owners, though, so let’s get right to it.
First, here are the resources that you should read/watch yourself, if you want to know more:
the press release
transcript of the conference call
slides from the conference call
video of the call (click on “Webcast” under “Latest Quarterly Results”)
my summaries of the fourth quarter 2022, and the third quarter 2023 for comparison
Then, the basic numbers (covering October to December 2023, compared to the same period in 2022):
Sales on Etsy were $3.6 billion, down 1.4% year over year
Total sales for all 3 marketplaces (Etsy, Reverb, and Depop) were $4.0 billion, down 0.7%. [Elo7 was officially sold in mid August; its numbers were still included in the comparison totals of 2022]
Etsy’s revenue (including all 3 sites) was $842.3 million, up 4.3%
Seller service revenue was up 9.4% to $226.5 million, while marketplace revenue was up 2.6% to $615.8 million
Net income was $83.3 million, down 24% (mostly due to the layoff costs of $27 million in the quarter)
Active buyers on Etsy alone stand at 92 million, a third consecutive all-time high
Active sellers on Etsy alone are now 7 million, the fourth large jump in a row compared to the previous quarter; numbers had been stagnant through the end of 2021 and all of 2022 [Note that “active” means one charge or transaction in the past 12 months; many “active” shops currently have nothing for sale.]
Sales where the buyer and/or the seller was not in the United States were 45%, up from 44% last year, but down from 47% in the previous quarter
Sales on mobile are 68%, up from 67% last year [this includes both the buyer app and mobile browsers]
As always, I am reporting what Etsy’s representatives said in the main text, with my commentary in square brackets.
Etsy Search
At the moment, Etsy’s search algorithms aim to show shoppers things they are most likely to buy. They are currently working on changing that to showing what buyers are most likely to love after the purchase. They refer to items that consistently get high reviews, have good photography, and whose shop owner provides good customer service, has quality return policies and ships on time, as “quality” items, or, “the best stuff.”
This is all a work in progress, so search may not change drastically any time soon. Past calls and interviews have related this to the increase in Etsy Picks assigned in the past few months; they plan on using those Picks to train the algorithm to find “quality”, especially quality photos. The items staff identify as “quality” convert twice as well as other listings, so there is obvious benefit to Etsy showing them higher up in search results.
Etsy has added some of the features in its “neural ranking model” to non-US searches; previously it was only in the US searches.
Advertising
Offsite Ad spending was down 4% in the quarter vs. 2022, in part due to competition bidding higher than Etsy thought was worthwhile. At the time of the call, that spending was back to normal. Per slide 21, money from Offsite Ads fees covered about 35% of what Etsy spent on the ads during the quarter.
CEO Josh Silverman explained why the performance marketing (Offsite Ads) spend can be unpredictable.
“So performance is dynamic on a, really, hour-to-hour basis depending on the ROI we're seeing on every dollar we're spending. And we've got pretty sophisticated algorithms that work on, is this bid -- is this click worth this much right now and how much should we bid. And so to the extent that CPCs rise, we naturally pull back, or to the extent that CPCs lower, we naturally lean in.
The other thing, by the way, it's not just CPCs, it's also conversion rates. So in times when people are really budget constrained, we see them actually -- we see conversion rate across the industry go down. We see people comparison shop a lot more. And so we are looking at all of that. And not humans, but machines using AI are looking at a very sophisticated way of what's happening with conversion rate right now, what's happening with CPCs right now.”
Etsy also does testing twice a year where they stop running ad such as Google Shopping ads in part of the country, and then compare with the areas still advertising to see if the buyer still would have bought. Silverman admitted that the data shows “often the answer may be yes.”
Overall marketing costs went up 7% in the year.
The Gifting Initiative
Etsy is now aiming to brand itself as the place to go to buy gifts. Gift Mode is just the start of this campaign. Their surveys report that more than half of US gift giving is based on personal occasions that occur year round, such as birthdays, or “just because”. People in the US spend an average of $1600 a year on gifts, but Etsy’s US buyers only average $38 spent per year on gifts from Etsy. They estimate that less than half of Etsy buyers in 2023 used the site to buy at least one gift. There is obviously an opportunity to do better.
The percentage of US residents thinking of Etsy as a good place to buy a gift is now down to 10%. [Previously, the company reported it was 12%, and I commented last quarter that I’d like to see a more recent survey to judge if they have used this knowledge to improve.
“Only 12% of buyers will name Etsy top of mind as the place to shop for gifts.” They don’t seem to have any updated numbers showing how they’ve been improving that situation. [It’s time to go after that “enormous opportunity”, Josh!]”
So despite wanting to grab a bigger gifting share before now, Etsy has managed to lose ground. This is my biggest fear about the gift push: the market was there before now, and Etsy’s own research demonstrated that. Are they only going all in now that they have run out of other ideas?]
There were 6 million visits to Gift Mode in the first 2 weeks. [I am not really impressed, given that they promoted it very heavily, and I was personally responsible for over 100 of those visits while researching my Gift Mode blog post.]
Other plans to bring in buyers
Silverman stated “[o]ur focus will be to make Etsy even more Etsy”, and to differentiate the marketplace from sites that sell everyday needs. The following quote deserves to be read in full:
“Most other players are competing head-to-head to sell the exact same merchandise, focused on selling at $0.02 cheaper or shipping it two hours faster, and this has resulted in the commoditization of the entire experience. But that's just not Etsy.”
[This seemed to be a completely unironically-intended comment, with no recognition of the fact that he actually discussed speeding up shipping times in the same presentation, nor of the well-known fact that so much on Etsy these days can usually be bought cheaper on Aliexpress or Shein.]
He also said that the “special” aspect of Etsy is what sometimes holds the site back, as buyers might consider Etsy limited to specific items, or might “worry about the post-purchase experience”. Bringing people back more often is a goal. [They’ve been saying that for years now, though.]
The company is currently doing buyer loyalty program research, but gave no further details. He also cited “shortening our estimated delivery dates this year by at least 2 days” as something that buyers should like, but it is unclear to me reading this if the work done last year (the year discussed in this call) already shaved 2 days off of delivery dates, or if the statement is this year’s goal. I think it is the latter [but the only ways to do that are to improve the accuracy of their tools - and I am not sure that they are currently 2 days longer than reality on average - or to pressure sellers to ship faster. Since Etsy is once again updating shop settings to add weekends to shop processing times without notifying us, I guess we can assume the latter? UPDATE (Mar 19): Silverman clarified at a recent talk that "we think we can cut shipping times on Etsy by at least two days this year."]
Other things sellers need to know
Etsy Ads now involve some localization outside of the US, which increased conversion rates. [If your ad performance changed in non-US countries during the quarter, this is the most likely reason.]
Neither sales or Etsy’s revenue are expected to increase until the second quarter, and they expect revenue to grow faster than sales this year. [Revenue is almost certain to increase, as the corporation has been surveying sellers on what they would be willing to pay more for.]
“In 2023, we removed approximately 140% more listings for violations of our Handmade Policy than in 2022.” [No word on how many of them were removed erroneously, though, as we know the “Temu” bots pulled a lot of truly handmade items that had photos stolen and listed on other sites.]
Silverman promised “innovation planned to improve the predictability of shipping costs for both buyers and sellers”, but provided no details. [I am not sure what would make my personal costs more predictable, given they change every single week with Canada Post’s fuel surcharge right now. Is it going to be forcing people to use Etsy Labels with calculated shipping? Or is this more calculated shipping options for countries outside of the US, and for new carriers? Restricting the amount a listing can charge for shipping? I really have no idea, but I hope all those people they hired for “fulfillment” jobs a few years back are coming up with something that is actually useful.]
Miscellaneous
Depop had a decent quarter in sales and revenue.
Reverb sales were flat. “The Reverb team made some organizational changes late in the year” which are expected to be profitable [i.e., they laid off over 30 people in October].
The Etsy layoffs in December were referred to by CFO Rachel Glaser as “our recent workforce realignment”. [At least she didn’t call those former employees churn.] The call provided no details on the restructuring they previously said would be done by the end of this quarter.
October sales were not good, but November and December improved. January “was a little bumpy.”
Outside of the US, sales in Germany were mostly steady, while the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria improved.
The upcoming $15 fee for newly-opened shops will largely go to paying the costs of the technology for vetting sellers; it is not expected to result in much profit.
My thoughts: this is going to be a rough year for many Etsy sellers
As I discussed last quarter, Etsy’s upper brass didn't seem to think they were responsible for the lackluster sales performance of their marketplace, and this quarter that extended to not admitting they overhired since early 2022, and not acknowledging that Etsy’s reputation as a gift site actually dropped over the past few years. The last one is particularly galling. Why keep talking about how there was great room for improvement in Etsy brand recognition for gift buyers and then fail to improve even a tiny bit? What were these folks doing the past 2 years?
It’s clear they think bravado will get them through this, including the bold move of claiming everything will improve in the second quarter and throughout the year without revealing any real details. No wonder the stock dropped yet again.
That said, they likely have some reasons for thinking that revenue will pick up at least, if not sales. As mentioned above, they have been extensively surveying sellers about raising fees and/or charging us for things we currently get for free (or mostly do not want). Possible downsides for Etsy include the fact that the Indie Sellers Guild and the Artisans Cooperative (among others) are likely to get more negative press for Etsy if fees are raised yet again, just as happened in 2022. It does not help that Etsy didn’t really follow through on improved services the last time they raised fees.
And the more I think about the comment on shipping costs, the more I believe they are considering making Etsy Labels compulsory for at least some in the US, with set shipping charges sellers won’t be able to change. Bonanza did this last year, charging its US sellers $2 per order extra if they didn’t use Bonanza labels and didn’t get an exemption from the program. Most Etsy sellers using the labels and being forced to show that price as the shipping cost for buyers is the only way I can think of making shipping prices more predictable for buyers, other than capping shipping charges outright (and that sounds like a nightmare to implement). eBay does it, though. Am I missing something? [UPDATE Mar. 5, 2024: Etsy is surveying buyers about how much they like cheap shipping.]
Perhaps more importantly, the planned search changes have the potential to disrupt the status quo a great deal. We know that Etsy frequently takes a lot longer to develop these types of technologies than they expect, so it may not happen this year, but the work on promoting “quality” listings will continue, and that is already affecting some shops that used to do better in Etsy search. Do everything you can to make sure your images are "high-quality". If you rely on internal search to get most of your Etsy sales, this is a very good time to follow my usual advice and diversify your traffic sources.
Etsy’s branding pivot to being the place to get gifts could also have a big impact on some shops and categories, if it is successful - and that is a big “if”. I’m not thoroughly convinced Etsy can manage this change in consumer consciousness, considering that the site’s reputation continues to be hammered by controversies around scams and non-handmade items. Kitkats, anyone?
Many other comments do not bode well for most shop owners: a continuing push for discounting, emphasis on faster shipping times, and financial restrictions/impositions on “newly-opened” shops all indicate that traffic may flow away from small business owners who choose not to comply, or are unable to comply.
Last quarter I said “[d]on’t be surprised if there are major site changes in 2024”, and I appear to have been correct. But really, anyone reading these reports over the past few years could have seen it coming.
Stay well informed, everyone! It’s the best weapon we have.
Reminder that you can sign up to receive my Tumblr and website blog posts via email.
UPDATED March 19, 2024
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Etsy Sellers In At Least Some EU Countries Can Opt Out Of Offsite Ads
...but Etsy doesn’t want you to know that
When Etsy announced their Offsite Ads program in 2020, one of the biggest complaints was its compulsory nature for some sellers. Anyone who had grossed $10,000 USD or more in the previous 12 months is automatically enrolled for life. The few sellers who consulted legal experts at the time were told the program was legal.
Turns out, that apparently isn’t true, at least in some parts of the European Union. Although no one I’ve talked to can cite the actual legislation, some EU sellers just need to mention the fact to Etsy staff if they want to be removed from this advertising due to EU law, and that has been going on for a few years now. Here’s one older post on Reddit explaining what to do, and here is a much more recent thread from the Etsy forum. So far, we know that sellers in France and Germany have been able to opt out permanently. If you are in another EU country and are not allowed to remove yourself from the Offsite Ads program, please let me know.
UPDATE (August 4 2023): Etsy has allowed a few shops in the United Kingdom to opt out.
(September 7, 2023): Etsy Support now says that sellers in the UK can opt out of Offsite Ads as of February 2024, due to the Digital Services Act.
UPDATES (March 15-April 19 2023): Etsy Support told a seller in The Netherlands that only "Germany, France, Austria, and Italy" can opt out, but that hasn't been confirmed by an independent source.
Per Etsy Support, sellers in Spain are allowed to opt out, but sellers in Ireland are not.
Etsy Support is now allowing sellers in The Netherlands to opt out, despite previous denials. A seller in Belgium also now reports a successful opt out.
A seller from Greece was told they could not opt out.
Poland is now confirmed as the 8th country that can opt out.
Greece and Bulgaria are the 9th and 10th countries that can opt out, despite Etsy Support previously telling another Greek seller they were not eligible.
Now adding Croatia, Portugal and Switzerland to the list.
No one will be surprised to learn that Ireland can also opt out.
Received an email adding Slovenia to the opt-out list.
How To Opt Out Of Etsy Offsite Ads In The EU If You Sold Over $10,000 In 12 Months
Contact Etsy Support, through chat, your dashboard, or this link: https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?segment=selling#issue_sell_offsite_ads-contact_select
Tell them that you wish to opt out of Offsite Ads as allowed by European Union law.
Most sellers report being removed almost immediately. One even reports getting a month’s worth of Ads fees back after complaining that Etsy should have disclosed this option.
Is There A Downside To Opting Out?
There could be, if your shop currently gets a lot of sales from those ads. Those orders won’t automatically be replaced by orders from elsewhere for all shops. In the summer of 2021 during the Facebook boycott, some sellers who were able to leave Offsite Ads for the month were shocked to discover that their sales really dropped, as the orders from the ads were at least partially carrying their shop momentum. [Etsy also removed my shop from the program for one month, at my request. At the time, I was getting around 15% of my sales from these ads. When Etsy reinstituted my participation after the boycott, those sales dried up for many, many months, although they have more than rebounded now.] Note that some lost no sales at all; it really depends on a shop’s traffic sources and momentum.
You may think that you will do fine without the program, but there is no way to be sure until you try. If you find you prefer using Offsite Ads after all, re-enrolling may not bring those orders back. So think carefully before acting!
If you know more about which legislation allows this, or what countries are permitted to leave Offsite Ads, please contact me here, on Twitter, or via email with the information.
I will update this post as needed.
Updated: September 7, 2023
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ETSY REMOVING SOME LISTINGS THAT WERE SYNCED WITH CERTAIN SHOPIFY APPS
Not sure what to make of these reports, so I have been investigating them for almost a week now.
Several Etsy sellers report they have had multiple listings deactivated on Etsy, and cannot get the corporation to reinstate them. The items cannot be reactivated or even copied; some of them had been available on Etsy for years before this occurred. See the Etsy forum thread here: https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/Etsy-to-Shopify-Migration-and-Integration/td-p/143741960
Etsy sent an email to most, informing some of the shops that the apps they were using to sync their Shopify sites with their Etsy shops were breaking Etsy Terms of Use and "violated our Intellectual Property Policy". This link was included for the API Terms of Use: https://www.etsy.com/legal/api/#:~:text=You%20grant%20Etsy%20a%20non,you%2C%20including%20but%20not%20limited
It highlights the following incomplete passage: "You grant Etsy a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, sub-licensable, perpetual license to use, display, edit, modify, reproduce, distribute, store, and prepare derivative works of any information you provide in connection with the API to enable the API to Etsy members and you, including but not limited..." - so, not very informative.
There are multiple points in the API Terms of Use that may have triggered this, but the app owners themselves aren't publicly identifying any possible issues, except again the mention of intellectual property. Some of the apps may have been using Etsy's marks and other material inappropriately, or possibly even the text and images belonging to the small business owners who used the apps. We just don't know.
At least some of the affected shops are clearly handmade, and appear to be using their own images. It is possible that some of them had their photos stolen and used elsewhere, triggering an image bot on Etsy, but it seems odd to hold the app responsible for the shops being accused of copyright infringement if the shops are being told they can just make new listings.
Another problem is, Etsy doesn't identify which apps (some shops tried more than one). In a few examples, it appears the app was disconnected before Etsy deactivated the listings.
Etsy Offers No Suitable Solutions
Etsy Support staff have provided no help to the affected shops. Business owners who have complained have been told they can just "create a new listing" to replace any that were deactivated in this sweep. Of course, this means the entire listing history is lost, harming the shop's search ranking, removing the reviews on that product, and making bookmarks or favourites for that page useless. Right at the beginning of the holiday shopping season! For older listings, the seller might not have the images available any more, and there is no way to copy them on Etsy.
This is an extraordinary punishment for people who don't seem to have knowingly done anything wrong. There simply doesn't seem to be any reason to permanently remove certain product listings from Etsy just because they were syncing inventory with another site. Removing temporarily, yes, but not permanently. This might make sense if the apps were adding things to Etsy listings that shouldn't be there, but we have no evidence that was the case, and the deactivation could be reversed if the listing were fixed. Letting shops off with a warning seems like more than enough action, especially since there is no way to know which apps are approved by Etsy and following Etsy's rules at any given time.
Not surprisingly, some of these business owners feel that Etsy is punishing them for trying to run their own websites instead of just selling on Etsy. While that is far from the most obvious answer to the puzzle - most known inventory apps were not involved in this set of takedowns - it's understandable that sellers might feel this is retaliation instead of rule enforcement. Any reputable site enforcing rules so harshly would need to be transparent about that risk beforehand, right?
Please contact me if you have more information on this situation, so I can update the seller community.
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Etsy's new Gift Mode is a real embarrassment for the corporation - did you know they are suggesting dangerous gifts for infants?
That said, I also give sellers some info that will improve their chances in appearing in Etsy's latest toy. Please give it a read!
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RECENT ECOMMERCE NEWS (INCLUDING ETSY), March 2024
Since I wrote so many articles on Etsy in the past 2 months, it took longer than usual for me to get the full ecommerce update out. Sorry about the delay, but here it is!
For fresher and more frequent updates, please follow me on Bluesky or on LinkedIn, or become a member of my Patreon.
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
Etsy’s fourth quarter 2023 financial results came out February 21; I did a deep dive into all the announcements here. In short, there are a lot of new things coming, and some changes that may have affected some sellers already, including:
plans for more predictable shipping costs for buyers and sellers (what does that mean?)
Etsy Ads are now localized outside of the United States
search will be shifting to boost "high quality" items, going from highlighting what shoppers are most likely to buy to what shoppers are most likely to love
a buyer loyalty program is coming
the goal of “shortening our estimated delivery dates this year by at least 2 days”
This recent post on Bluesky indicates that Etsy is surveying buyers on what they would pay for shipping, which could be related to the “predictable shipping costs” mentioned.
A recent Etsy presentation at an investor conference provided a few clarifications on points discussed during the 4th quarter call, and in previous interviews and announcements.
“Our research showed that 10% off is a waste in this market. It's not enough to drive an incremental conversion, so all you did is give up margin. So recently, you've seen us both change the default and talk to sellers about how if you're going to put something on sale in this environment, it needs to be at least 25% off.” [my emphasis] Silverman has previously mentioned that buyers want discounts these days.
Since the information sellers provide when listing (i.e., titles, tags, descriptions, attributes) “is not always very reliable”, Etsy uses image recognition to classify items as well
They are working on improvement for international fulfillment
Most orders on Etsy aren’t impulse buys; 70% involve 2 or more visits, and 50% involve 4 or more visits
“only one out of every three women in the United States bought something on Etsy last year…. only one out of every 10 men bought something on Etsy last year.”
Etsy’s use of AI in places such as Gift Mode is not in-house. (We already knew they used OpenAI’s GPT-4 for Gift Mode.)
eBay increased the transaction fee from 30 to 40 cents as of March 15, for all orders over $10.
An Etsy fee increase of some sort is likely coming soon, as Etsy has surveyed sellers on which options they would most prefer. While I was not picked to take the survey, a few people who did have contacted me with screenshots and details, which I wrote about in some detail.
Packaging laws are becoming quite onerous for some ecommerce microbusinesses, but fortunately the Etsy forum crew has helped out with a recent summary of which countries in Europe require registration or payment to ship into the jurisdiction. Thanks to Claudia of https://www.etsy.com/no-en/shop/DoceVikaVintage for doing most of the legwork.
ETSY NEWS
Etsy is once again changing some sellers’ processing days, adding Saturday or Sunday into the mix when the shop owner only selected Monday to Friday. Some are seeing a notice on their dashboard, while others received an email.
Remember, in the 4th quarter 2023 earnings report, Silverman said “shortening our estimated delivery dates this year by at least 2 days” was a goal, and unilaterally changing your processing times is one step towards that goal. Please check your shipping settings, as this could mean you need to ship earlier than you realize, and Etsy could put you on reserve, remove your Star Seller badge, and deny you Seller Protection when you ship later than Etsy thinks you should.
If that wasn’t bad enough, some sellers are reporting that Etsy has changed the timing of sending the Abandoned Cart discount to almost immediate, and changed the official Help file on the topic to say the coupon was sent just 2 hours after the listing was carted, down from 24 hours. Others say they can no longer deactivate these coupons, and that Etsy Support told them it was a known bug.
If you want to learn how Etsy's algorithms work and what they favour, the company has added more details on "recommendations" modules we see all over the site to the legal policy page. I've written a short piece highlighting what sellers should pay attention to if they want visibility on Etsy.
Etsy is adding Regulatory Operating Fees to orders in India (0.29%) and Vietnam (1.24%) as of April 1, 2024. On the same day, the Regulatory Operating Fee in Spain will increase to 0.72% (from 0.4%), and the fee for Türkiye goes up to 2.27% (from 1.1%).
The Prohibited Items Policy has been updated in several places, as of March 5 2024. Some of the new sections are covered in this article. As always, the most important parts of these changes will be how Etsy chooses to interpret them, so for the moment I don’t have any further comment, other than to say these types of changes are sometimes driven by law, and sometimes by previous incidents in which Etsy is unhappy with the outcome.
Looks like businesses in China will soon be able to use Etsy Payments, meaning new shops in China may be able to open for the first time since 2021. (It's not unusual for Etsy to beta test new countries before announcing them officially; it’s hard to say if that is what is happening here or not.)
Etsy's forum restrictions - requiring a signed-in seller account to view most posts - will start on March 26. Only posts in the Announcements and Technical Issues sections will still be visible to everyone.
There has been some speculation that this is to reduce spamming of Etsy sellers after they post, but the change will also have the bonus of journalists, investors and others not being able to read Etsy sellers' complaints about the platform.
It’s possible to have your product photos featured on the persona page of Etsy's Gift Mode but not have the product available for sale in Gift Mode. I’ve checked several times, and have never seen that seller’s embroidery piece in the featured listings.
If you missed my blog post on Gift Mode, check it out here. Note that Etsy seems to have made some changes since I originally released the post.
Among other Gift Mode promotions, Etsy employees rang the opening bell at Nasdaq the day after the Super Bowl. Did you know that this year’s Super Bowl was the most watched show in the US since the 1969 moon landing?
Etsy hired Drew Barrymore to promote the corporation's new gifting push, which will continue all year. And the company has also released a new “gift teaser” email that buyers can have sent to recipients, which is useful for last-minute shoppers.
Elliott Management now owns 13% of Etsy shares and options - making it the largest investor - and now has a board member at the corporation. Known as activist investors, they usually force companies to cut costs ; for example they pressured “Salesforce, in which it has a multibillion-dollar investment, to harsh new policies for engineers and salespeople aimed at reducing headcount.”
Newly-opened Etsy shops will soon be subject to stricter ID requirements, a $15 fee, and longer holds on their early sales; I covered the details we know on LinkedIn.
If you use the new listing form, you may see a new pricing tool pop up. (It’s not on the old listing form.) Ridiculously, Etsy calls it an “estimated profit calculator”, when really, it’s just an Etsy fee calculator, and not a good one at that. It includes the lowest processing fee possible (some countries have a range of processing fees) and also excludes taxes you may pay on your fees. I don’t know if it includes country-specific fees such as regulatory fees, as Canada does not currently have those.
Etsy has several sales events coming up, including the “spring refresh” which has already started and continues until April 15.
There are reports of Etsy now advertising its commercials in Canada, which is a first as far as I know.
Struggling to update your tax information on Etsy? One tip is to use a different link to enter the updates. Another is to use a pdf or png file, not a jpg, when uploading documents, and to combine multiple documents into one.
If Etsy is asking your LLP/LLC or corporation to upload ID, I’ve had multiple people report that personal ID should work, even if the wording of the page says it won't.
If you are frustrated by the recent Etsy test removing the total number of items in a search, I explained here how to determine the exact number of results if there are less than 16,000 listings. Also, you can just try another browser or device because it is a test (I do not have it on desktop).
Remember when The Smiley Company sued tons of small sellers for trademark infringement, and asked for damages? Some Etsy sellers fought back - and won.
Who is removing Taylor Swift-themed items from Etsy - the artist, or the marketplace? Swift has sent cease and desist letters to Etsy shops in the past.
The articles about Etsy being awash with non-handmade and counterfeit goods never end. Here’s one from Australia. Here’s one about Etsy sellers publishing fan fiction that is already free on the web and charging a huge amount.
And the media attention to deepfake porn on Etsy also continues. AI use is also subject to media scrutiny.
TikTok’s push to attract more sellers apparently involves approaching Etsy shop owners. [soft paywall; Modern Retail]
Josh Silverman has sold off most of his remaining Etsy stock.
I did a short report on who Etsy laid off in December.
The scammers advertising a fake Etsy customer support phone number on Google are catching buyers too - why can't this be stopped? "Anyone looking to contact Etsy for customer service issues should be aware that there is no phone number to contact for Etsy support." It’s a big problem that Google seems unable to control, given this study on other fraudulent Google Ads.
Speaking of scammers, there is a new version of fake copyright takedowns affecting numerous sellers; the person who files the DMCA then offers to remove it for a fee, or even file takedowns against your competitors for a bigger fee. Etsy did fix the first round after 3-4 days, but the perpetrator then filed new DMCAs from a different email address.
ECOMMERCE NEWS (minus social media)
General
Michael’s Makerplace is beta testing selling third-party items in Michael’s brick and mortar stores. “Michaels says that MakerPlace garnered interest from thousands of sellers during its initial beta period, mainly through word-of-mouth. The company declined to disclose how many sellers are on the platform currently and is now focused on growing customers for those vendors to sell to. Buchanan says the next month will be "critical to make sure [the platform gets] some mass engagement from a buyer perspective."
Some Depop sellers had issues with deposits recently, with the money never being sent to their bank accounts, and instead the deposit was continually rescheduled for the next day. This may or may not be related to similar issues on Etsy.
Depop is also immediately scrapping seller fees for the UK (as long as the account sells in GBP), but is adding a 5% fee for buyers in the UK as of April 15. Clearly the site thinks it has more UK demand than UK inventory, and that at least some of those buyers will pay for the ability to buy second-hand. Depop press release.
Beni is a new “secondhand search engine” that pulls up used apparel from multiple different marketplaces such as eBay, Poshmark, and ThredUp. It offers an app and a Chrome browser extension.
Temu is subject to a class-action lawsuit claiming that the company’s app is highly intrusive and can read "literally everything on your phone." Also, businesses in the United States can now sell on Temu.
There are many different platforms and marketplaces to sell digital products such as ebooks, templates and courses; here are 20.
Amazon
If you sell on Amazon, make sure you have 2-factor authentication set up, as it will be a requirement starting March 28th. Users will need a mobile number or authenticator app.
Amazon is using generative AI to create new listings for merchants who enter a link of the product on another site. “The goal is to help sellers reduce the time it takes to bring the product from a different website onto Amazon.”
If you don’t use at least 3 images per product page, Amazon will now add in photos from other merchants on the site.
Amazon had a strong fourth quarter in 2023, beating all estimates.
Amazon Lending has been discontinued, but existing loans do not change until the term ends.
eBay
eBay agreed to a $59 million settlement in the US Department of Justice’s case regarding the selling of tools to make counterfeit drugs. The company must also modify its restricted items policies.
eBay joined the layoff race on January 23 when it let go 9% of its staff (~1000 people). Those layoffs were spread throughout the company, including plenty of engineers, legal and PR staff, and several recruiters, as well as authentication staff. The company also made upper-management changes.
eBay’s 4th quarter financial results were up a bit, but active buyers keep dropping.
Jewellery sellers in the UK faced an across-the-board fee hike as of March 7, adding 2% to the final value fee. This appears to be related to covering the authenticity process, which only applies to certain items above £500.
Be careful when you confirm your Promoted Listings Standard campaign on eBay - a few sellers report accidentally upgrading to a far more expensive Advanced Cost Per Click campaign.
Walmart
Walmart is offering discounts for new sellers, covering part of fees for up to 90 days.
If you sell on the Walmart marketplace, beware of the new rules on making authenticity claims.
Payment Processing
Klarna is now offering a monthly subscription to be able to use it at brick and mortar retailers without additional fees. The Verge speculates this may be related to Klarna’s rumoured pending IPO. The company has also employed an AI chatbot to do the work of 700 customer support employees.
A US study reports that at least 20% of US consumers have used buy now, pay later options at least once.
PayPal joined the tech layoff trend, getting rid of 9% of staff in January.
Venmo settings are public by default; here’s how to change that. [Washington Post gift link]
Shipping
Is “free shipping” becoming less common? It appears so. [soft paywall: Business Insider]
Apparently USPS has significant delays in the Atlanta area, leaving packages in limbo for weeks. (Strangely, I had a shipment held up in Atlanta in late January even though the new processing centre did not open until February 24, and that package was finally delivered last week.)
Good basic post on return policies (from a Canadian perspective). Note that half of those surveyed say that return policies affect their purchase decisions.
Canada Post has sold its logistics and IT companies as it struggles to become profitable, and may be looking towards more ecommerce options.
UPS will be laying off 12,000 employees this year, to save around $1 billion.
The company is also starting to deliver to homes on Saturdays in major Canadian cities by March.
That's it for now! I hope to have the full SEO & marketing report out next week.
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That Etsy Seller Survey Everyone Is Talking About...
Some Etsy sellers are getting worried about a survey the corporation sent out to some shop owners, asking them what they would be willing to pay for different tiers of service (like Etsy Plus, but with many more options). The key point that was most publicized was a potential listing fee increase to 40 cents USD from the current 20 cents, unless the shop purchased a higher tier of service per month. That was far from all that was covered, however.
I did not take the survey - which apparently had the usual non-disclosure agreement (NDA) attached - but a few sellers have sent me more information on it. I am not going to publish the screenshots I received, or the written descriptions, as I have too few examples to be sure that Etsy did not send out more than one version. Thank you to my anonymous sources, who will remain protected.
I will, however, reveal a bit more about some of the options Etsy proposed. Let me clear up a few key points, and provide some thoughts on where Etsy is going.
Not everything Etsy surveys us on gets enacted
I am not saying that Etsy won’t raise any fees - they have to find some more money to keep shareholders happy, after all - but we can’t be certain that a listing fee increase will happen, or that it will be 40 cents. Remember when people were concerned that free shipping would become mandatory? What about free returns? There have been lots of scares like this in the past. In fact, Etsy apparently sent out surveys before this particular one, asking what we’d pay extra for, and some of the options do not seem to be included in this week's survey. (And yes, those other surveys reportedly had an NDA attached as well.)
This survey largely seemed to be designed to determine how much they could squeeze us without losing too many sellers.
Not every set of service tiers included a listing fee increase
There were options where no one - not even the free tiers - would see a listing fee increase.
Listing fee increases are not necessarily the worst option Etsy floated
One of the scarier possibilities that came up more than once was limiting the number of listings (presumably including renew sold and renew expired) to a very small number a month unless the shop pays monthly for a higher tier of service. The lowest number of listings mentioned per month was 5. To list more, a shop would need to subscribe to a higher tier, and pay a monthly fee. If you only listed 6 items a month, you’d be bumped to the next tier, and getting ripped off much worse than an extra 20 cents per listing (and in some versions in the survey, they included the listing fee increase in this option as well.)
This would bleed a lot of small shops dry before they could even get going. It also wouldn’t limit AI shops from uploading 1000 items because there were no listing limits mentioned on the highest tiers, which were relatively cheap when spread across a huge shop.
Another possibility would take away the discounting tools, Share & Save, and the ability to be an Etsy Pick/featured seller/promoted shop from the free tier. This would limit some small shops’ development while tricking shops with no chance of ever being featured into paying monthly shop fees they probably did not need.
Laughably, Etsy also floated the idea of including the pricing tool in the paid tiers. Why would anyone pay for that? It was garbage.
UPDATE (Feb. 25, 2024): Ina Steiner published some more details from the survey on the EcommerceBytes website.
Should we be worried?
Some shops should be worried, but not all of them. If you run an Etsy shop with less than a sale a day, it’s clear to me that Etsy doesn’t really want you any more, unless you have very high-priced items. You apparently aren’t paying enough to cover the cloud fees and the Support costs of keeping you open. The corporation wants to charge you more for things you already get for free, without improving your service, even though Etsy is currently turning a profit. New shops are also soon going to be saddled with a start up fee and longer reserve times, making it more difficult to start an Etsy shop if you aren’t already an established business. Additional fees for small shops after they start would just make that decision even worse. As I have mentioned many times, Etsy has too many items, and this certainly seems like one way to reduce the crowding.
If, on the other hand, you sell upwards of 100 items a month and have decent margins, the imposed tier rates could actually work out to far less than an extra 20 cents per listing, as the relatively low set charge per month would be spread across a lot of renew solds/renew expireds. For example, shops selling 1000 items a month would pay less than than 2.5 cents per listing extra compared to now. You’d also have access to additional opportunities and tools which may or may not be worth it, all included in that set charge. Some of these options would also potentially reduce your competition on Etsy, including the competition for being featured. If some of the tools work - and I admit that is a big “if” - you could actually come out ahead. If any of these changes happen, you might end up pleased with Etsy's decision.
Considering all the other changes Etsy is discussing right now, everyone currently selling there should review their business plans and make sure their income is well-diversified. 2024 will be a bumpy ride for many.
Reminder that you can sign up to receive my Tumblr and website blog posts via email.
UPDATED: February 29, 2024
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RECENT ECOMMERCE NEWS (INCLUDING ETSY), January 2024
Welcome to my first commerce news update of 2024!
Now that we are through the intensity of the holiday rush, I plan on getting a few of these out each month. Please follow me on Bluesky or on LinkedIn if you want more timely updates. (New ways to get updates coming soon!)
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
Some Etsy listings now have a link which displays some shop owners' names and home addresses under the seller contact info, which says “Meet your seller”. This may be legally required in some jurisdictions, including within the US if you don’t have a proper location on your shop, but here is how to remove it if you don’t need it. Here’s some of the info on the US INFORM Act which could require disclosure of your information; the EU and UK are other jurisdictions which sometimes may require this info if you sell to them.
Reminder that UK small sellers may end up having their taxable income reported by the platforms they sell on starting for 2024. “The first deadline for firms to report details of transactions is the end of January 2025 – a year after the rules come into force. Bank account details and the cost of transactions made by sellers with sizable trading activity must be reported.” Etsy reminded shop owners that there is no change in taxes owed in the UK; the changes force platforms to report income so that people can’t evade taxes as easily.
In case you missed it, many USPS rates, as well as forever stamps, went up again on January 21. Some label services such as eBay may actually offer decreases in certain categories, however.
ETSY NEWS
Etsy announced 2 (very different) “privacy” changes at the beginning of January: limiting some third-party apps from receiving buyer email addresses, and making the Etsy forum a seller-only site in the near future. Shops will have to log in to read anything other than Announcements and the Technical Issues sections. We are not yet sure if this applies to shops in long-term vacation mode.
Etsy teased a promotional announcement on Jan. 16, which is likely that the site will be launching Gift Mode [post by me with a link to another post with screenshots]. I’ll write more on that once it is officially released, but here is one of my screenshots from today, with lots of infringement. Also, the site is apparently buying a Super Bowl ad. This year’s ads are expected to cost at least $7 million USD. Etsy forum thread discussing both topics here.
Etsy chose not to respond to this article about AI art sold as indigenous creations. “Etsy has a policy that prohibits users from selling items falsely listed as being produced by Indigenous peoples — but only in Northern America, and allows “Indigenous-style” products by non-Indigenous people.”
Some shop owners from Turkey claim their shops are being shut down at a high rate, with no explanation. At least some had issues with items that cannot be sold on Etsy, and there appeared to be some with ID or financial anomalies. I am still interested in hearing more, if anyone knows anything.
EcommerceBytes covered the Etsy problems with the domestic pricing tool charging some international buyers domestic prices, which have been going on since May 2023. While some sellers have managed to get refunds from the company, others report no such luck.
ECOMMERCE NEWS (minus social media)
General
The Indie Sellers Guild is running a virtual convention in April; read the panel ideas here.
Amazon
Amazon product pages now have a link to get AI-answers to your questions. Expect to see a lot more of this on many types of sites.
There are several keyword tools that can help you optimize your Amazon products; 5 are discussed here, but note that some may be pricy.
The latest layoffs at Amazon include people working for the “Buy with Prime” department.
Amazon’s difficult-to-navigate system for suspensions and other punishments has led to entire law firms dedicated to supporting shops that have been closed or have had listings removed.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce sites can now have a marketplace component, meaning that a single business site can now have other sellers on it.
eBay
eBay had to pay $3 million over its behaviour in the cyberstalking case against Ina and David Steiner, owners of EcommerceBytes. The Steiners issued a victim impact statement; the civil lawsuit in this matter goes to trial in March 2025.
eBay’s discounted Tracked Packet rate from Canada Post has been extended to March 31, 2024.
Buyers and sellers are getting annoyed with long delays in product authentication.
eBay called a few sellers and pushed them to offer cheaper shipping rates, based on the discounted rates for eBay’s labels. (They seem to have forgotten that they charge fees on those shipping rates.)
Poshmark
Poshmark’s recent policy changes included a class action waiver. Changes are effective February 5.
All Other Marketplaces
Depop released its first Trends Report, similar to those put out by its parent company, Etsy.
Bonanza is introducing a combo website builder/inventory integration and accounting platform called Vercado. Price will be $99 a month, so I strongly suggest investigating what - if any - advantages it provides over its competitors.
Payment Processing
PayPal and Venmo are teasing some big ecommerce plans for this year, to be announced on Jan. 25. It involves use of AI, and the possibility of improving engagement rates.
Shipping
There have been numerous reports of major USPS shipping delays, especially in Texas.
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RECENT ECOMMERCE NEWS (INCLUDING ETSY), Early April 2024
Welcome to my coverage of all the important Etsy and other ecommerce news that microbusinesses need to know! It's been a few weeks since my last update, so there is a fair amount to report.
Want to get the news more often and in a more timely fashion? Please sign up to support my Patreon site, where among other features, I will soon be starting periodical live chats on important topics. (I promise there will be one the day Etsy announces a fee increase)
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
Etsy has made changes to how processing times and estimated delivery dates work; I covered everything you need to know in this post.
Etsy seems to be sending more Messages to the spam folder, so you may miss a real message. After reading that thread, I checked, and there was one from another seller needing help from just 5 hours ago. Etsy did say engineers are looking into it.
UPS has won the USPS air cargo contract, currently held by FedEx. It kicks in at the end of September. “As of May 31, 2023, FedEx counted the USPS as the largest customer of its Express unit.”
ETSY NEWS
Etsy is rolling out a new seller pricing tool, and it is just as useless as the old version. I posted some early thoughts (with screenshots).
Some shop owners are struggling to cancel Etsy coupons, while others are not having the same problem. Support says the company is aware of the issue.
If you still can't access most of the Etsy forum after the changes on Tuesday March 26, post in this Technical Issues thread so that your account can be fixed.
Periodically, some shops suddenly stop getting deposits. If your shop has recently had a security warning, you may want to check to see if your bank account is still verified with Etsy.
Looks like Etsy has an issue with misrepresenting how many items are left for each listing on the app; I wrote about it here.
Canadians getting harassed by Etsy to sign up for TurboTax should know that the company has told a seller that it doesn’t import Etsy data into your tax return for you; that is only available for Americans. [If you can’t import your info from your various platforms, my suggestion is use a free online program to file instead; I’ve used Wealthsimple for several years with no issues filing small business taxes; the T-2125 is part of the program.]
Etsy’s activist investor seems to think that the marketplace can “…add more buyers and increase the amount of money they spend on the platform”. But “monetization opportunities” were also mentioned.
Etsy is yet again called out for allowing AI-generated porn on the site. “Several of the available listings also appear to violate existing trademarks — TheStreet identified listings that sell NSFW (not safe for work) AI-generated, suggestive images that appear to mimic Rapunzel from Disney's "Tangled," Princess Jasmine from Disney's "Aladdin" and She-Hulk from Marvel's "She-Hulk."
Etsy has been talking a lot about "image quality" lately, but doesn't really define the term anywhere. While I agree with those that say it is more than image size - Etsy would not have humans curating images to train its AI if "quality" could simply be measured by pixels - note that Google Shopping Ads describe image quality as size. “The resolution of your product images determines its quality. Google considers images with more than 1024 pixels as high-resolution images.”
Apparently Etsy CEO Josh Silverman likes to make “unorthodox, downright risky career decisions” that often involve a ton of responsibility. [Link to podcast in article; I haven’t listened to it]
ECOMMERCE NEWS (minus social media)
General
Patreon’s live chats are now accessible on the web (instead of just the app). A creator can assign moderators, and have chats for different categories of members.
Canadians: beware that new tax rules requiring digital platform operators to report their users’ income to the Canada Revenue Agency are expected for 2025. These laws would make Canada similar to the United States and the United Kingdom, among others.
Amazon
Amazon is struggling to verify the VAT status of many UK sellers, and the fact the company holds all funds until the process is complete means many sellers are without income.
eBay
eBay is offering 3 free “express payouts” to select US sellers by email only, available until June 30th. Money is paid to seller debit cards and can take a half hour or more to receive. (The usual cost is 1.5%.)
If you use eBay For Charity, you may want to check to see if the charity is getting paid, as some apparently are not.
If you advertise on eBay, or just list inconsistently, you may be interested in the marketing trends calendar for 2024. It shows you when certain types of searches peak.
Michaels Makerplace
The landing page for Makerplace sellers doesn’t provide a lot of hard details; some of the actual policies appear once you begin to sign up. Here’s how they define handmade:
Thanks to Bluesky user Brushfeather for the info.
Shopify
Shopify is putting more effort into large businesses these days, despite its core offerings targeting small and medium-sized businesses for years. [soft paywall; Business Insider] The company “...has made a concerted effort over the last 18 months to introduce more software solutions to win over larger merchants. It has enhanced Shopify Plus, a higher-tier subscription with more features, and launched Hydrogen, a more custom framework geared toward retailers with more complex needs...Shopify introduced Commerce Components, an offering that allows merchants to integrate parts of Shopify's software into their existing tech stack. Mattel was its first retail partner for that product, and Everlane has since adopted Shop Pay as a stand-alone component.”
CEO Tobi Lutke recently received almost $200 million CAD in Shopify stock options, “one of the largest compensation packages in Canadian history.” As company founder, he now has around $8 billion worth of Shopify stock.
CIRRO Fulfillment now integrates with Shopify.
Squarespace
Squarespace is rolling out Squarespace Payments to sellers in the United States, and they expect to add more countries later this year. Fees are in line with other payment processors.
All Other Marketplaces
Mercari is following Depop and is ending seller transaction fees while adding a buyer fee. There is now a seller earnings withdrawal fee of $2, however, plus the pricing only applies to items listed after the announcement on March 27th, and sellers now have to accept returns for any reason, within 72 hours of receipt.
I suppose this fee might work for buyers if many are also sellers on Mercari or elsewhere, and are buying stock. If you see a good deal you know you can flip with a good margin, you might not mind paying a buyers fee on top of the listing price. The only other way I can see being willing to pay a buyers fee is if you are so enamoured with the platform and its culture that it is worth paying more for. Or maybe I am just out of touch…
The Mercari CEO basically calls out Etsy for raising seller fees too much [soft paywall; Modern Retail]: “I’m not going to mention them by name, but you have marketplaces that have a lot of makers, a lot of people that create things, and the fees around selling on those platforms have just been going up a lot very aggressively”. [my emphasis] Mercari wants fees to remain competitive while attracting better inventory. Another article on Mercari’s announcement mentions Etsy by name when discussing seller fees.
Mercari might want to consult lawyers the next time the site makes changes, though, as many sellers were furious that their existing balances were now subject to withdrawal fees without any warning, leading some to file complaints with the FTC. That led the company to announce that “On March 27, 2024, Mercari announced that it would begin charging a $2 fee(s) (“ACH Charge”) for all ACH direct deposit requests. Effective immediately through April 3, 2024 at 11:59 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (“Waiver Period”), Mercari will waive the ACH Charge for ACH direct deposit requests made prior to the end of the Waiver Period for all eligible account holders.” Those who already incurred withdrawal charges will get refunds.
And because apparently you can never have enough Mercari news, they’ve introduced a listing importer for eBay and Depop. It uses AI.
AliExpress will now do livestream shopping events in the UK.
Payment Processing
PayPal users in the US will soon have only 30 days after delivery to file a significantly not described claim in most cases. Items not delivered by 180 days will still have the full 180 days.
Shipping
UPS is planning on closing about 200 facilities in the United States, and hopes to save money by instead using more automated hubs. Having fewer employees and consolidating locations is expected to save the company around $3 billion by the end of 2028.
FedEx is continuing to combine its Express and Ground pickups and deliveries, both to save money and to make pickups easier on customers.
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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES AND STUDIES, MID-AUGUST 2023
Welcome to my latest roundup of ecommerce and other online news for small and micro businesses, including Etsy sellers. Usually August is a slow news month, but there is still a fair amount going on.
Want to receive this report and my website blog posts by email? Sign up here: http://bit.ly/CindyLouWho2Blog
With the continuing demise of Twitter being a concern, here is a list of places you can find me, and here is where I am posting news:
LINKEDIN
BLUESKY
REDDIT
TWITTER
I hope to get the next report out before Labour Day, but of course I cannot predict what will happen between now and then. Please let me know if there is anything you would like to see more reporting on!
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
Repeating this from the last update since it so important: Etsy’s latest policy changes brought in the ability to opt out of the binding arbitration clause, but existing members only have until August 23rd to do so. The Indie Sellers Guild has some thoughts on this.
If you are opting out, remember this must be done for each account (buyer or seller), and make sure to include the following information in your email to [email protected]:
your name
the email address for your account
your username
your shop name (if applicable)
Expect a vague email response that does not verify that you are opted out, because this is Etsy and why would they be clear?
If you have anything with images of children in your Etsy shop (including art and figurines), please carefully read Etsy’s new policy on such imagery, as it appears many current photos and other visual depictions will not be allowed as of September 8. I started a thread in the Etsy forum for discussion.
Amazon changed the deposit rules for UK and EU sellers who started on the site before 2016, implementing the “7 days after delivery date” deposit release that newer sellers also face. The UK’s small business commissioner and the minister for small business were not amused, and that led to some money being released early, but with a warning that the new delayed deposits would resume in January 2024.
ETSY NEWS
Etsy has changed the criteria for payment reserves for the time being, but we don’t know much about how, other than the fact most have been reduced to 30% from the original 75%. We still don’t know how they have made “... adjustments for issues that are beyond sellers’ control” such as a lack of cheap tracking, or if they are truly providing better communications to sellers just put on reserve, other than this Seller Handbook article from August 4. That article does admit that most current reserves are about shipping.
I do know that we aren’t seeing many new reserves mentioned publicly, so it appears they have changed something.
A few sellers from the UK have been able to opt out of Etsy’s Offsite Ads, but Etsy is now pushing back and rejecting requests. Reminder that most of the EU and also Switzerland can now opt out.
The Make an Offer tool now lets you choose which listings you will accept offers on, as well as other improvements. (It's still only available to shops that sell in USD, and not all buyers can see it yet.)
To accompany the release of Etsy’s new baby registry, Etsy reported on recent baby and nursery trends. Farm animals are apparently in, as are flowers.
The holiday season trends report is also out; it covers Canadian Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve. “277% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “wooden christmas tree decor” - With sustainability in mind, many buyers are opting for ornaments made of solid hardwood over plastic.” And apparently maxi skirts are back?
The second quarter 2023 report showed stagnation in sales but more new sellers, plus Etsy focussing on telling sellers to discount items. You can read my coverage here. Some analysts are starting to sour on Etsy: “They feel a little bit like Pinterest to me where they have something great but they're not finding the opportunity on it.”
Smiley faces are one of the latest takedown targets - not by Etsy bots, but by the actual rights owner.
SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES
If you are using internal links on your website for SEO reasons, beware that the anchor text is also important.
An analysis of the biggest winners in Google search results for the United States in the first half of 2023 shows Mercari had a huge leap in search visibility so far this year.
Bing is not gaining much on Google’s market share, despite having a jump on AI search.
Brave Search now includes both video and image searching.
If you missed a lot of Google developments in July, Search Engine Roundtable has you covered.
[Advanced content] An Ahrefs study found that ⅔ of websites using hreflang have at least one problem.
SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site
General
Since most social media platforms don’t want people leaving their site, they tend to give lower ranking to posts with links in them. You can get around this issue by focussing on zero-click marketing. [text and video] There’s a followup video with transcript on the 4 ways you can promote content through social media as well.
Another what and when to post on social media, this one covering Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, based on what brand accounts did in 2022. [I’m thinking the Twitter data may not be as relevant today.]
Several US states have passed laws requiring parental permission for anyone under 18 to join social media, or are in the process of doing so.
One of the downsides of Bluesky is that it counts any link URLs as part of your character limit, but you can get around that if you aren’t also adding a photo.
Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)
Daily active users on Threads have dropped over 80% from their peak. The site is still developing, however, and desktop access plus searching is coming soon.
Instagram
Instagram is adding more tools that use artificial intelligence.
Photos carousels now support music.
TikTok
TikTok will be offering fulfilment services in the UK, to be followed by the US. “The example merchants are influencers and beauty brands to start with.”
Users in the EU will be able to remove online tracking from their TikTok “For You” algorithm in the near future, possibly by August 28.There will also be advertising changes.
Twitter
The Twitter algorithm is changing, and now prioritizes replies, plus it is pushing video. “X is also penalizing mentions of the term ‘Threads’ as well as links to the Meta competitor.” [Yes, I am still calling it Twitter, but you can call it X if you want.]
Tweetdeck is now a paid service only. The ability to organize different lists and even work with multiple different accounts made it an essential for doing a lot of work on Twitter.
ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS (minus social media)
Amazon
Amazon will be charging additional fees for sellers who use Prime but don’t ship through Amazon, starting October 1.
Amazon added hundreds of new product attributes that need to be added to relevant new listings starting on August 16.
Looks like there will be another Amazon Prime Day in several countries this year.
Amazon’s second quarter was strong, with a lot of growth in ads.
Investors are suing Amazon over several issues, including lying to them.
eBay
eBay is finally agreeing to negotiate with the union of its recent acquisition, TCGPlayer, after the larger company failed to reverse the vote to unionize.
Poshmark
Poshmark’s app will soon include an image search, called “Posh Lens”, although only some have the beta test at the moment.
All Other Marketplaces
Depop’s new seller protection policy for US and UK sellers kicks in on September 3, and requires sellers to purchase shipping labels on the site.
Wish is laying off over ¼ of its staff, including up to 40% of its employees in the United States.
Shipping
The port labour disruption in British Columbia is officially over.
ONLINE ADVERTISING (NOT SOCIAL MEDIA OR ECOMMERCE SITES
If you aren’t using the free Google Shopping ads for your website yet, here are some tips on optimizing your products. Note that “Google may also assess your landing page speed and experience to rank your products”; many think that is only for organic results.
Google ended “similar audiences” from all ads on August 1. “Campaigns using similar audiences will automatically get opted into optimised targeting and audience expansion moving forward. Marketers who would rather avoid this can go to the audiences tab in the Google Ads settings page and manually turn off the campaigns instead.”
STATS, DATA, TRACKING
Still not paying much attention to Google Analytics 4? Here’s more info on why and how it is different from Universal Analytics.
And that's it for this edition! Please let me know if there are other topics I should be covering.
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Etsy’s 2022 Transparency Report: Murky Stats and Non-Facts
Etsy claims its mission is to “Keep Commerce Human”, and unironically uses that tagline at the start of its 2022 Transparency Report - a report that details how the site’s automation is attacking legitimate Etsy shop owners with ever-increasing frequency. The deeper you dig, the more you can see that acknowledging the humanity of the seller base is not part of the corporation’s game plan.
Policy Enforcement Has Gone to the Bots
The Trust and Safety division is responsible for policing the site in areas involving fraud as well as items prohibited on Etsy, including manufactured items falsely listed as handmade. Etsy admits that automation is responsible for 95% of the listings and shops flagged for rule breaking in 2022. These reports more than doubled over 2021′s total, to around 36 million.
Despite this huge increase in flags, there was only a 16% increase in items removed year over year (a total of 1.9 million), meaning that Etsy automation is not improving in detecting real problems. Over 34 million flags were apparently unfounded; only 5% of the total flags were deactivated. That means that millions of listings were temporarily removed from the site or at least from search, when there was nothing wrong with them. It sometimes takes weeks for Etsy to restore these pages, and often that does not occur unless the shop owner opens a support ticket and complains (even though Etsy claims that every flag is reviewed “within four working days, on average”).
The 36 million flags equal roughly one-third of Etsy’s current site inventory. Clearly, these bad bots have meant a large loss of visibility and sales for shops that comply with Etsy’s rules, and often those shops aren’t even given coherent reasons for the removals. Frequently, there is no public announcement of a new “ban”, such as the removal of amber items that started in February 2022. [I had 2 items removed and then reinstated. They were wrongly removed, despite the fact I had selected the correct material attributes for both - agate and labradorite. The word amber was only used as a colour. I was not selling amber, and both focal beads were larger than the “1.25 inches” Etsy Support cited as the safety threshold.]
Unfortunately, the “Looking Ahead” portion of this report promises even more focus on machine learning to do the job Etsy truly needs real humans involved in. This problem is not going to disappear.
[Please note that I have no issue with using automation for some of these situations, but if it is only 5% accurate, it needs more human oversight.]
It Gets Worse - Meet The “Mature Content Classifier”
Here’s exactly how Etsy describes this “mature content classifier”, a new site feature:
“...in 2022, we developed a mature content classifier which identifies potentially mature listings using text and image recognition. Using this technology, we work to keep these kinds of items from being displayed to users who aren't looking for them, while still allowing those who are to find them. While no technology is perfect and we may sometimes get it wrong, we’ve seen a 17% decrease in flags of mature content from our member community since adding this classifier to our search experience.” [my emphasis]
This comes as no surprise to many sellers of both “mature” and non-mature items, as there have been many reports of items that are no longer searchable for many (if not most) words in their titles. For example, an affected listing will show up for a search that includes the shadow-banned words, but not other searches. Words and phrases that can trigger this issue include:
sex and sexy
pinup
nude
BSDM
harness bra and body harness
pussy
panties
I am sure you can imagine many others! (but these are ones sellers have discovered and discussed publicly). For most of them, it makes no sense for Etsy to remove the item from all searches except those containing the offending word/s, since many of the words can be used innocently. “Nude” can be a colour, for example.
The most bizarre so far is the dog diaper listing, which was affected not only by the words “menstrual” and “panties” but also the lead image of a toy dog wearing the garment. Switching up the photos so the toy was not the lead made the item searchable again.
If your items are not at all mature and should not be classified as such by Etsy, contacting Support may help you get them restored, although many cannot even get a straight explanation from Etsy on this point. For some shops, removing the offending word from the title but keeping it in the tags may restore searchability, as can changing the first photo.
However, it is obvious Etsy is going to refine this “classifier” in the future, meaning that more items will be affected - both mature and not - and the current fixes may not always work. Sellers of items that are mature or even border on mature, or rely on certain search terms that may be affected, should seriously reconsider depending on Etsy for any significant amount of business income. This "solution” Etsy is touting isn’t going to end.
Resolving Order Issues Is Quicker Now Because Sellers Aren’t Involved In Most Cases - And Often Can’t Get Etsy To Help When Things Go Wrong
After a short section on intellectual property infringement, Etsy goes on to brag about the “improving” cases through its Purchase Protection Plan as of August 1 2022. “On average, cases were resolved by our team in just 14 hours in 2022. That’s down from 4.5 days in 2021.”
What they don’t mention is that Etsy’s automation of this area means many cases are closed by bots almost instantly these days, as I detail in my blog post on the topic. Sellers often have great difficulty getting errors corrected, and Etsy is automatically forcing refunds from seller money in almost all cases over $250 USD now. While it is great for buyers that they can instantly get a full refund for the package stolen from their front porch, sellers are left with no protection with these larger orders. Even if they can prove signature confirmation and have photos of the delivered package from the courier company, Etsy still takes any refund over $250 from the shop’s account.
As explained on my blog, there have been many ridiculous refunds issued from seller funds, including the following situations:
the buyer didn’t pick the item up at the post office
Etsy’s automation said the order was shipped late, but the message from Etsy listed the correct date as being “late”
a not-as-described case where the customer used a screenshot from another shop to prove the item wasn’t as described
a buyer returning an order without notifying the seller (which Etsy policy does not allow)
the purchaser promised to return a damaged item, but recalled the package through USPS once Etsy issued the refund (thereby getting both the package and their money back)
In many of these types of examples, it was difficult or actually impossible for the shop owner to get their money back from Etsy, often because they could not reach Etsy or could not get an Etsy employee to understand the problem. Despite this, Etsy is claiming that “Sellers are also getting more access to support”. The corporation then flat-out lies by stating “we expanded our popular Help Center live chat support to be available to all sellers, 24 hours a day, every day.” I know this statement is as false as the day they announced it, as I was one of the sellers who filed [unresolved] Support tickets complaining that we did not have access to Live Chat. Today, I still frequently cannot get more than email options when trying to access chat through the Help Centre, and often have to use a help link generated by another seller to see the chat option.
Furthermore, even if an Etsy shop owner can contact Etsy through live chat, any serious issue must be escalated beyond that first tier of support, and some of those other tiers can now take weeks and even months to get back to sellers. In another example of Etsy’s shoddy automation, I filed a ticket 10 days ago regarding a listing in my shop that displays the “Sorry, this item is unavailable in your region” message when clicked on from the United States, and only received a cut and paste reply that explained some plants and seeds can’t be sold in the US. (It’s not a plant or seed, nor does it contain those substances. I can’t even figure out why they think it does. Plus, I have 4 other listings of the same material that haven’t been affected!) It’s obvious from my stats that this item was removed from US search and was made unpurchaseable there back in August 2022, yet not only did an Etsy employee not review this removal in any way, but 10 days later I still cannot get a real answer from Support.
It’s not just me. I advised 2 different sellers on appealing their shop suspensions back in March, but neither appeal has been decided yet (as of May 9). The Etsy forum is flooded with posts from new merchants who have correctly updated their tax ID numbers but still have suspended shops. Owners of hacked accounts can wait over 10 weeks to get Etsy to act. Most of Etsy’s social media posts get a large number of replies from disgruntled sellers who cannot get help with serious issues (or even sufficient explanations of what is happening). So even when live chat works, some of us may end up with worse “Support” than they did in the past, as the people staffing chat aren’t allowed to do many things on their own.
The Future Isn’t Any Brighter
So why is Etsy harming sellers in these ways? Why can’t the “Keep Commerce Human” company use actual humans to make sure its sellers are treated humanely?
The answer comes in 2 parts:
Staff cost money. Etsy can’t spend cash hiring adequate Support or Trust and Safety staff if it is going to stay profitable. It is becoming evident they are running out of ways to make more money, so they aren’t going to spend any more dollars on helping the human collateral of faulty automation, regardless of how unfair the non-human bots are. Their business model isn’t profitable if they “Keep Commerce Human” by hiring humans to deal with human problems.
In the recent quarterly report, Josh Silverman admits that shoppers have trouble finding the best things on Etsy - with over 100 million listings, there’s just too much stuff to wade through. It’s one of the 3 main points Etsy feels is holding the site back from having broader appeal. So when Etsy removes my keychain and pendants for spurious reasons, and puts the full onus on me to get the items relisted, it not only saves them money on staff, but also reduces the number of items in some searches, giving them an instant improvement in the oversaturation area.
Or, put another way, Etsy will still get the same sales if my listings and your listings and some dog diapers modelled on a stuffed toy don’t show up now and again. They’ve learned they can lose a certain number of listings - even best-selling ones - without really losing money overall. They’ve made this clear in the past when discussing “churn” when they do something that forces shops to leave the site permanently.
While Etsy’s primary goal isn’t to remove legitimate listings, doing that doesn’t hurt the bottom line, and does help with the “too much stuff” problem. What’s not to like, from an executive's point of view?
The corporation sees nothing to fix here. Sure, we can argue they shouldn’t release bad bots before they work better, but that would also cost money. Building faulty automated “solutions” is really Etsy’s thing, and they aren’t going to stop just because individual human shop owners lose thousands of dollars when their best sellers get deindexed or Etsy refunds an item that the buyer signed for.
You’ve been warned.
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Etsy Moving to Square Photos on Shop Home Pages
Screenshot of my shop home page in July; these photos will change to squares in "early August".
Although Etsy hasn't sent out warning emails or posted notifications on shop manager dashboards yet, the forum Announcements section let us know that Etsy would be changing the ratio of images on shop home pages in early August. (Yes, they are only giving us a few weeks notice. Perfectly reasonable, right? 🙄) The decision was based on the much-maligned tests run in June and July, where many shops saw their product photographs bizarrely zoomed and cropped, with no explanation from Etsy.
Turns out that those tests showed a higher conversion rate for squares, so that is where Etsy is headed. Problem is, we don't know if they are going to properly adjust the crops or not, which they did not do when testing. During that experiment, many of my square photos were zoomed then cropped off on one side, in part because Etsy hadn't removed my previous use of the cropping tool for rectangular shapes. The issues were just as bad or even worse for sellers who mostly used rectangular photos to match the shape of Etsy's gallery displays.
Many sellers are panicking, worrying that they will have to redo thousands of photos in just a few weeks time. Etsy states that "No immediate action is required, however, you may want to start taking and uploading images with this format in mind." Since search pages will still have rectangular product images, squares will not always work (unless set up to look decent in both shapes).
What should sellers do?
I suggest waiting to see what your items look like in this new format before making changes to older images. We don't know whether or not Etsy is going to fix the problems displayed during the experiments. Shooting new listings with both shapes in mind is definitely a good idea, but it is possible your older photographs will look good enough to avoid getting out your camera again.
My best guess is that they will not make the same weird cropping errors with already square photos like mine, as they are not currently doing that on Market pages, where square photos are the norm. See an example below, and compare to the screenshot of my shop home page rectangles above:
Note that my earrings show up fine as a square on the Market page. This listing photo was shown cropped off on each side during the shop home page square test. However, my original photo was taken to look okay as both a square and an Etsy gallery rectangle: a square shape with extra space above and below the earrings. The listing photo in the top right corner above was apparently taken to fill the rectangle shape on each side, so the earrings on the right and left are cut off in square view. This is a problem that many shops may face, depending on how Etsy formats the new home pages.
If you want to check how your current photos look as squares, use this trick to see them on a Market page. (You may need to narrow results by price to find your listing easily.) However, remember that we cannot be certain this is how Etsy will display pics on home pages come August. If we learn more about it, I will update this post.
UPDATE (August 2, 2023): Unfortunately, Etsy went live with the changes today and didn't fix any of the shop home coding, so my photos are weirdly cropped again, and I cannot fix them with Etsy's cropping tool. This shouldn't happen, as my photos are already square!
This is what Etsy has chosen to do with my square photos. Why not just, you know, display the squares I uploaded? Sigh...
If you are taking new photos and want them to work in both formats, you will need to leave space around the outer rim of the image, so you don't lose vital parts of your product when Etsy changes the photo shape. I've been using squares with empty space on the top and bottom of each shot, which is so far working fine on the Market page squares. This may not work for all types of products, however.
If you learn anything from Etsy about this, please post below, or send me an email, so we can share this info with other sellers.
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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES AND STUDIES, early February 2023 (Part 1)
Yes, my latest news update is finally out - at least the first part of it. So much has gone on that breaking it into 2 parts seems like the best option for ease of reading.
So the following contains the top news stories, all of the Etsy news, and general SEO information. The next update (coming in the next few days) will cover everything else that happened between the end of November and now.
Since I am still a bit worried that Twitter will become unusable, I’ve begun posting more timely updates on LinkedIn, so please follow or connect with me there!
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
As you may know, Royal Mail was hit by a ransomware attack that has restricted their incoming and outgoing international mail. Most international mail can now be sent, but things are still slow. Note that items entering the UK may also have taken longer than usual in the past month.
Etsy is continuing to refund buyers out of seller funds when cases are opened on orders $250 and up, even when tracking says the packages were delivered and some even signed for. I posted several of the Etsy forum threads and screenshots of deleted threads on Twitter. While many shop owners have received full refunds from Etsy after complaining, some of the recent examples are only getting 50% of the order value back. Let Etsy know what you think in this survey.
Even orders below $250 are coming under additional scrutiny, with this news investigation [video and text] regarding a vintage shop that Etsy issued automatic refunds for without allowing the seller to comment on the cases.
I am writing a blog post on the topic, so if you or anyone you know has been affected, please email me with the details - I promise to keep your details confidential if you wish.
Americans who made at least $600 on a marketplace or through a payment processor/app in 2022 will not be receiving 1099-Ks for that income after all - the IRS has delayed that change for one year. The main reason seems to be the huge amount of new paperwork required for the platforms.
ETSY NEWS
Etsy has had a bizarre checkout bug that only affects a tiny percentage of shops for a few weeks now with no sign of a solution for most of them. Shockingly, Support told one affected buyer “to go to another Etsy seller"!
Hidden as a post in the Technical Issues section of the forum, Etsy announced that some non-US sellers would need to verify their bank accounts in 2023. They state that shops which opened after November 2020 do not need further verification, so I assume that means all of us non-US sellers who had to re-verify last year are ok as well.
If you use the private listing option (even after Etsy removed most of the functionality), beware that those listings do not have a way to add estimated delivery times or return policies before publishing, so you need to rush to add them afterwards before the listing is purchased, or you lose seller protection.
Etsy is testing (or doing a very slow rollout of) letting buyers make an offer on listings, but very few people have it. I did posts with a screenshot on LinkedIn, my Twitter account, and the Etsy Sellers subReddit. Here’s the Etsy forum thread started by someone who spotted this option.
The “Updates to Etsy Search” article that came out mid-January is mostly coverage of things they did a few months ago, including an Add to Cart button in search, displaying the time remaining on expiring sales, video autoplay, and the Star Seller filter [don’t worry, the last one is hidden under the main filter button, so most visitors will never even see it].
They also mentioned the estimated delivery dates being displayed in search, but I haven’t seen that for at least a few weeks; right now I only see the filter they have had for a few years. [It’s pretty embarrassing when they make an announcement like this and it isn’t accurate - and they don’t even bother to correct it.]
Remember, none of these things directly affect the ranking algorithm, and the elements of Star Seller - reviews, shipping on time and answering Messages promptly - are all part of the algorithm already, the latter 2 because they are part of the seller service level standards. If you are worried about the Star Seller filter, also remember that breaking any Etsy policy/rule can negatively affect your Customer & Marketplace Score. “to determine a shop’s Customer & Market Experience Score, Etsy considers a variety of factors that make up overall shop quality, including user reviews of products, whether or not a shop has completed an about section or its shop policies (e.g. returns), whether or not the shop may be able to fulfill orders in a timely fashion, and whether or not the shop may have violated any Etsy policies.” [my emphasis]
January’s category updates includes 2 types of bags, plus changing “unisex” kids and baby clothing categories to “gender neutral”.
The workaround to keep old written shop policies is now being removed, with many of us losing those old policies recently. You may be able to find caches on Google or Bing if you look quickly. Forum discussion thread. If you need to link to your new stripped down policies or your FAQs, here is how.
Etsy is being sued for allegedly allowing counterfeit cashmere items on the site; expect the bots to start taking down anything with the word “cashmere” next.
Etsy’s legal policies now include a page explaining their prohibition on “unsafe or recalled products” and including links to rules and reporting procedures for many countries’ reporting procedures. Recent recalls affecting Etsy include children’s pyjamas from Selfie Craft Company, and a baby rattle sold in one Etsy shop only.
In the “bad publicity” category, part 1: US federal prosecutors say that an Etsy shop was used as a front for smuggling weapons components to the Russians. While the shop didn’t sell anything like that, they did sell gift baskets with commercial components, so Etsy could have avoided this bad press by following their own rules and shutting this shop down far earlier. See a screenshot of the shop in the comments of my LinkedIn post.
Bad publicity, part 2: A shop's atrocious customer service went viral on TikTok, which then garnered more media coverage. That shop better be careful, because Harry Styles was already suing ecommerce sellers over products with his name and likeness (including on Etsy).
Also on the infringement front: Disney is suing a couple who have sold infringing items on multiple ecommerce platforms for years, including Etsy and eBay. My Twitter thread has screenshots of some of the products sold on Etsy.
Etsy’s new Chief Legal Officer used to hold a similar role at Facebook.
Etsy Strike spinoff group Artisans Cooperative is hoping to launch a new marketplace this fall, and now has organizing support from the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, including funding from the USDA Rural Cooperative Development Grant Program.
Etsy trend “predictions” for 2023 include 2 colours (indigo and honeycomb), marble decor, and “over-the-top” wedding looks. They provide some search trends from August to October on Etsy, so check out what people have been searching for!
Note that that trends post is different than this one, which includes more detailed search trends and addresses shopping holidays. For example, “56% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “personalize gift mom”. You also need to know that there was “1420% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “hot pink decor”.
Etsy loves running tests so much they give out trophies for starting the most.
This article [soft paywall; Modern Retail] says that holiday sales were down on Etsy, but Etsy hasn’t released any numbers yet.
This is perhaps my favourite Etsy story ever: how an unusual custom order ended up seen by millions as it hangs on the International Space Station.
SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES
Everyone selling online loves December algorithm updates, so Google started rolling out a new Helpful Content Update around December 6. “Google said this update will "tackle content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines." Both the Helpful Content and Link Spam updates finished rolling out on January 12.
Ahrefs has updated its link building chapter in the Beginner’s Guide to SEO. “Links are incredibly important for ranking well. And it is quite rare that you will outrank pages that have a lot of strong links—unless you get just as many.”
Understanding basic Google SEO is not enough to have a successful website; understanding how to structure your website is also crucial. For more on that, here’s another article on pillar pages and topic clusters [semi-advanced; you need some basic knowledge of website structure and SEO to fully grasp everything.]
There’s often confusion on long tail keywords and how to use them - this article should clear that up.
EAT has become EEAT: Google search quality raters now evaluate “experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness” instead of just the last 3. “Google explained that there are “some situations where really what you value most is content produced by someone who has first-hand, life experience on the topic at hand.”
Repeat after me and Google’s John Mueller: the number of times a word/phrase is used on a page (aka keyword density) is not a positive Google ranking factor.
Also, readability ratings do not affect Google ranking either, and John Mueller confirmed that as well. Writing for your intended audience is important, however, and that can include some elements of “readability”.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to write articles for websites is not against Google rules, but using AI just for SEO purposes is. Not surprisingly, more than one media site is already using AI to write content with SEO in mind: CNET is no longer solely about tech news, for example, and the articles apparently have a lot of plagiarism. Should Google be doing more to stop this junk from ranking? Maybe not - they are already working on using it themselves.
Speaking of AI writing, Search Engine Land did an overview of ChatGPT and how it may affect the SEO industry.
Yandex (Russian search engine) had all of its source code leaked. This Twitter thread goes through the different ranking factors and compares them to Google in particular.
Yahoo Search is making a comeback. No, really. They are even hiring!
You were probably busy in December, so here’s a summary of what Google was up to; here’s January as well (both including some things already covered in this news update). If you were busy all throughout 2022, then read the full year summary too.
Here’s a change - was there a Bing algorithm update around January 18? (Usually this question is only asked about Google.)
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Etsy Third Quarter Earnings 2023 - It's the Economy, Not Upper Management's Fault (Apparently)
Slide 12 from Etsy's 3rd Q earnings call, © Etsy; they are definitely going all out to let US buyers know about the Purchase Protection changes.
Etsy's third quarter 2023 didn't show any real sales growth, and upper management is projecting an even weaker holiday season. However, economic issues and geopolitical instability bore the brunt of the blame, along with ecommerce competition that is spending too much money on ads (compared to Etsy, of course). The top brass doesn't think it has made any big mistakes, and surprisingly, didn't announce any new ideas to get things moving again, largely repeating what's been said for the past year or more.
That doesn't mean we didn't learn anything new, though, so let's dive into the aspects that will most interest sellers. In portions where I am reporting on what was said or posted, I will put my personal commentary in square brackets to separate it out.
First, here are the resources that you should read/watch yourself, if you want to know more:
the press release
transcript of the conference call
slides from the conference call
video of the call (click on “Webcast” under “Latest Quarterly Results”)
my summaries of the third quarter 2022, and the second quarter 2023 for comparison
Second, the basic numbers (covering July to September 2023, compared to the same period in 2022):
Sales on Etsy were $2.7 billion, up 1%
Total sales for all 4 marketplaces (Etsy, Reverb, Depop, Elo7) were $3.0 billion, up 1.2%. [Elo7 was officially sold in mid August, meaning it was only included for half of the quarter]
Etsy’s revenue (including all 4 sites) was $636.3 million, up 7%
Seller service revenue was up 16.2% to $175.4 million, while marketplace revenue was up 3.9% to $460.9 million
Net Income was $87.9 million, up almost $1 billion due to the loss taken on Depop in the third quarter of 2022
Active buyers on Etsy alone stand at 91.6 million, a second consecutive all-time high
Active sellers on Etsy alone are 6.7 million, the third large jump in a row compared to the previous quarter; numbers had been stagnant through the end of 2021 and all of 2022 [Note that “active” means one charge or transaction in the past 12 months; many “active” shops currently have nothing for sale.]
Sales where the buyer and/or the seller was not in the United States were 47%, up from 43% last year, but most Etsy buyers are still in the US
Sales on mobile are now at 68%, up from 67% last year [this includes both the buyer app and mobile browsers]
The Economy, Pricing & the Consumer Appetite for Discounts
As you may have heard, the economy is not great, especially for lower-income households, and that affects certain products more than others. CEO Josh Silverman actually stated "the volatile macro climate is going to make it challenging for us to grow this quarter." Strikingly, both VP of Investor Relations Deb Wasser and CFO Rachel Glaser urged people to buy their holiday gifts on Etsy [which hit me as a bit desperate during an earnings call!]
However, households in US areas that average above $100,000 in yearly income are actually spending more on Etsy, and the top 10% of US households (by income) spent 20% more on Etsy this quarter than last year. Glaser pointed to this as evidence Etsy was doing fine, all things considered, and a better economy would once again lead to more growth. [That's a fair take based on that evidence; Etsy certainly is doing better than some other ecommerce marketplaces right now.] Is there an overarching plan if the economy doesn't improve? Investors weren't let in on any such plans during this call.
Despite all of this, sales were actually up a bit each month of the third quarter, while dropping in October. Glaser stated this matched US ecommerce trends. Non-US countries were up 7% this quarter, including the UK, Germany and France, continuing the trend of bigger international growth.
"In this economy, we are seeing that mass merchants who sell essentials and whose brands stand for low prices and deep discounts are generally gaining e-commerce share broadly at the expense of most others." Hence, as I pointed out last quarter, Etsy is leaning into discounting and stressing affordability to try to drive sales. This includes at least 3 approaches:
offering discounts paid by Etsy, such as the "GET5" coupon and the $10 off of $40 orders promotion. The former drove orders and paid for itself; the latter did not. They will continue to test these types of offers.
promoting sales that sellers already run, such as through links on the home page and through emails. [This would seem to include the lengthy holiday sale that Etsy is pushing, with at least 25% off.]
giving sellers more data on pricing, including when and how to put items on sale. They touted the [mostly useless] pricing tool as part of this plan, since "our sellers don't have pricing departments, giving them insights into things like how best to price each item and how or when to use promotions. So we need to be the ones to provide those insights and be their advocates."
They also talked a lot about the fact regular Etsy prices can be affordable. [It may be difficult to convincingly present that position to prospective buyers. Spinning shopping on Etsy as buying direct from the maker with no "middlemen" is a bit rich, considering Etsy is the middleman, taking an ever-larger cut in the past few years, through fee increases, Offsite Ads charges we didn't have to pay before 2020, and ever-increasing margins on Etsy Ads.]
In short, consumers are very price conscious right now, and Etsy is aiming to provide them with what they want.
Search - Branching The Biggest and Most Generic Queries
As they have been discussing for a few years now, one of Etsy's biggest goals for search is to better narrow down large searches, which currently produce an overwhelming number of results [a fact not helped by the continuing growth in seller numbers and Etsy adding items to results that don't have the search terms anywhere.]
They are now happy with the relevance of large searches - "[w]e've made a ton of progress on relevance" - [even though smaller searches can be quite poor, as I discussed last quarter], so they aren't going to focus on that as much going forward. Instead, they are finally testing better ways to offer multiple branches from large searches, or "open-ended head query items" [head searches are the opposite of long tail searches, so this is only being done in a small percentage of the total unique queries overall].
Here is the example given in the call, from a test ran recently:
Slide 6 from Etsy's 3rd Q earnings call, © Etsy; shows a test on breaking down a generic search into more specific ones.
This version had multiple rows of top items in specific narrower searches, before the full search results appeared further down the page, which led to a lot of scrolling. However, I am not seeing that version of the test any more when I check. I am seeing this one instead:
Search for "tree" on Etsy, November 3, 2023.
Note that the normal search results are much higher up the page with this one, plus you can see the 4 different options to narrow the results down without having to scroll. While the 4 sub-topics look like they might be categories, clicking on them simply leads to a search using all of the terms, i.e., a search for "tree home decor" instead of a search for "tree" filtered to the Home Decor category.
Note that Etsy plans that these options will ideally include personalization and contextualization, and are also likely to feature more "quality" items [which so far seems to mean items that have the Etsy's Pick badge in other areas, even though that hasn't happened in this type of test, or at least not that I have seen up until now].
Other changes in search mentioned include "utilizing ML [machine learning] models designed to determine the visual appeal of items and incorporating that information into our search algorithms." [It's hard to say how far they have gotten in testing that versus using it across the site; often these types of musings during calls turn out to be works in progress instead of live algorithm factors. I am trying to formulate a few tests on this, though, so stay tuned!]
Enforcing Etsy Policies To Entice More Shoppers
Etsy is finally aware of the negative image it has in some circles, and is making a big deal out of how it is now enforcing the rules and removing more handmade violations. "Handmade policy takedowns are up over 120% for the third quarter" sounds great [but they didn't mention that the overwhelming majority of their takedowns - roughly 95% - are wrong, and that innocent sellers' businesses are damaged when this happens.]
Because the job of cleaning up handmade violations is so overwhelming to program bots for, they are now approaching it by trying to deactivate the most visible items first, and claim that "we've nearly cut in half the percentage of visits where a buyer comes across a violating listing." [This explains the glut of long-time sellers complaining that their best sellers have been deactivated for handmade violations. Etsy is going for the items with good quality scores first, and as I have noted, they do a poor job of distinguishing real violations from legitimate listings. Aiming to remove non-handmade items from the biggest searches etc. first is a good idea, but you would need competent programing and quick human review to do this fairly and effectively, and Etsy has neither. By the way, despite promising in late September to review all handmade bot flags within 48 hours or reinstate them, and to deindex listings from search rather than deactivate them entirely, they are still not doing that.]
One of the investment group reps said they had seen an improvement in enforcement, and asked how much it was affecting sales. Silverman replied "I'm also proud to say that we are seeing no deleterious effect to GMS from that. People don't come to Etsy wanting mass-produced product, and we're finding that as we do even more to suppress those listings on the site, the site experience only gets better." [In other news, I am not at all proud to say that the packaged snack seller who is violating Etsy's gift basket policy by selling mass-produced foods in cardboard boxes is still on Etsy, and is now a Star Seller, despite me reporting them twice in 2 1/2 years. Since the corporation isn't removing this stuff - which sells well - I am not surprised that the gross marketplace sales have not been affected yet.]
Purchase Protection and On-Time Delivery Guarantees
As shown at the top of this post, Etsy's recent changes to the Purchase Protection Plan - officially stating that eligible orders arriving after the last estimated delivery date will be fully refunded after a case is opened - are a key part of the holiday marketing plan in the United States only, even though the policy applies worldwide.
Slide 9 notes that over 98% of orders were delivered on time in the US last holiday season [but of course sellers could enter their own custom delivery windows then, which is no longer possible in the US or the UK]. The slide did not note if that included items where tracking doesn't always get updated on Etsy, such as envelopes with Pitney-Bowes labels, or services Etsy doesn't program the tracking for. Were those part of the late items, or were they not included at all? We just do not know.
[Remember, if your order qualifies for seller protection, Etsy is the one who pays the refund, not you. They've been doing this for over a year now. Of course, some countries and classes of items are less likely to quality for seller protection, largely due to shipping and tracking differences. Review how seller protection works if you are concerned.]
Advertising
One of the most interesting parts of the call was both Silverman and Glaser blaming Temu and Shein for running massive ad campaigns that were not sustainable if they wanted to be profitable. They explicitly stated Etsy may reduce the spending on Offsite Ads if the other companies are driving bids up higher than they are worth, and also said they are increasing paid social media as one way to compensate. [So if you rely on sales from Offsite Ads, watch those number in the next few months.]
Overall, Etsy spent more on marketing/advertising this quarter than the previous year, up 9% to $161 million. As part of that, new commercials will come out in the UK and the US for the holidays, while Etsy tried TV commercials in Austria and Switzerland during the quarter.
"Etsy Ads was the primary driver of [services revenue] strength as we optimized our XWalk functionality to better value potential listing conversion and pricing into our ad ranking system." [Since I don't use Etsy Ads any more, I can't test this at all. They've previously said they incorporated listing prices into the search algorithm, but my testing demonstrated little effect. This is something I will test in search again.]
Miscellaneous
Etsy alone has added nearly 1 million sellers over 3 quarters after that number being relatively flat for a year, and Silverman says they've done nothing to go after those new folks. More people selling on Etsy was attributed to economic factors [but I suspect AI availability is also involved, as the tutorials for setting up an AI-generated shop on Etsy are all over the web now. Note this increase means that while gross marketplace sales have been roughly flat this year, the average amount per seller has dropped.]
Etsy spent around $1 million covering the October bills of sellers affected by war in Israel and Gaza.
Depop had an excellent quarter; "GMS and revenue both grew double digits on a year-over-year basis with growth in active buyers sparked by strong new buyer growth in the U.S." Reverb was down a bit, but kept ahead of other musical instrument businesses.
Silverman has mentioned that Etsy isn't the first place many people think to shop for certain types of items over several different calls now. For example, "Only 12% of buyers will name Etsy top of mind as the place to shop for gifts." They don't seem to have any updated numbers showing how they've been improving that situation. [It's time to go after that "enormous opportunity", Josh!]
I wish I could report there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but just waiting for the economy to improve is probably not the best way to increase sales. Yes, economic factors are a big part of Etsy's sales stagnation, and Etsy is doing better than many of its competitors, but they are going to have to present some new plans soon if they expect to keep investors happy.
Don't be surprised if there are major site changes in 2024, because this can't continue.
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Etsy's Removal of the "Other" Shipping Option - What Sellers Need to Know
Late in September, Etsy removed the "Other" option from the US and UK shipping carrier lists that sellers choose from when setting up shipping options. They also initially removed it from all print-on-demand (POD) items made in those two countries, although Etsy staff later claimed that was an error.
This is problematic for both shop owners who ship using services Etsy does not recognize in their pre-set lists, and those who find the carriers' estimated times to be too short. Many types of packages are more easily and cheaply sent through carriers Etsy doesn't have an option for, including furniture items. Sellers in many countries have relied on "Other" to protect them from angry shoppers who expect instant delivery, even overseas. This is even more important now that Etsy has updated its legal policies to confirm that packages arriving after the expected delivery date are eligible for full refunds under the Purchase Protection Program.
Right now, listings can be sold and relisted without updating the shipping profile information, but sellers in the UK and the US cannot edit old listings or create new ones using the "Other" option. We should expect that the existing "Other" listings will eventually be deactivated if not updated to Etsy's new requirements.
Since Etsy started first doing this in May, and since the corporation has increasingly pressured sellers to ship with tracking Etsy recognizes for a few years now, this change is unlikely to be reversed; at best, it might be delayed. I strongly suggest pressuring Etsy to offer more options in their pre-set list, and to make those delivery time frames more accurate.
However, the good news is that Etsy is correct about something: the fact that the companies and times on the pre-set options sellers are now forced to use are not visible to buyers at any point, and Etsy often relies on modified delivery estimates instead of the ones shown, as confirmed in the screenshot above. That means some sellers can follow Etsy's suggestion of choosing the closest available option to replace "Other"; the delivery estimates shown to customers will frequently be longer than those shown in the pre-sets. You can change 1 listing and then try shopping as a guest incognito to see what times are shown to buyers in different areas to confirm this. Etsy will later update the expected delivery date if necessary once it has valid tracking it can read, even if that tracking is not one of the options sellers could choose initially.
Is this an acceptable solution? No, not at all. The times will still be off for some sellers, occasionally by quite a lot - my inbox is full of examples. There is no reason Etsy could not update its list of pre-set shipping options for listings to include more of them, with more accurate delivery time frames. Heck, they apparently do not even include some of the specific services that are available as Etsy Labels! But updating the company's software costs money; it's cheaper to foist all of the work and a lot of the risk onto the sellers.
If you aren't in the US or the UK, be aware this will likely spread to other countries soon enough, so keep an eye out for problems with your listings, and make a plan now.
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Etsy Updates Case and Purchase Protection Policies, Just a Little Bit
I've highlighted the major change above.
While some Etsy shop owners have already been held to these standards in the past, everyone selling on Etsy should be aware that the corporation has finally edited and clarified both its Cases Policy and the Purchase Protection Program for Sellers Policy as of today (September 13, 2023). These changes were unannounced; thank you to JMOldeVintage for pointing out the update.
In short, buyers will be eligible for a full refund if their order "arrived after the estimated delivery date window". The previous "[i]tems that are received after the agreed-upon delivery date due to shipping delays" exception to case eligibility has been removed.
This applies whether you or Etsy set that delivery date estimate. While Etsy sometimes adjusts the site's official delivery estimates, it is often well behind known delays, and usually does not accommodate for events such as weather and other natural disasters (unless they are widespread and in the US, of course).
We've known for a while now that Etsy was already refunding "late" packages in some cases; I commented on how those buyer refunds violated Etsy's own eligibility policy in my blog post on Etsy's Seller Protection Program. Sellers have also argued about the definition of "estimate" in the Etsy Forum regarding this point. Today's updates seem designed to correct the legal policies for this previous anomaly.
Of course, this change is not a serious problem for the average seller so long as the order qualifies for seller protection. In those situations, Etsy will refund the buyer out of Etsy's own money. The seller will keep the money they originally received.
However, this means this official change will again put many sellers outside of the United States in a tough spot, since our orders are, on average, less likely to comply with the official Seller Protection requirements. Most countries do not have Etsy Labels available, and some of those also don't have tracking available that Etsy can recognize. Those with access to Etsy Labels often find that the services they use aren't offered through Etsy (for example, Canada Post oversized lettermail, and many popular services from Royal Mail in the UK).
And of course, do not forget that all orders over $250 USD (including shipping fees) are also ineligible for seller protection. Shop owners should not expect Etsy to make many (if any) exceptions to this rule now that the program has been in place for over a year.
Should be a fun holiday season! 🙄
UPDATE (Nov. 9, 2023):
Etsy has again revised the Cases legal policy as of October 31, 2023, adding the following to part 2 A:
"Items that arrive late due to forces outside the seller’s reasonable control, such as a carrier strike, natural disaster, war, civil unrest or similar force majeure event, as determined by Etsy in its sole discretion, do not qualify for Etsy’s Purchase Protection Program."
Guess they realized their new "refund if it arrives late" plan was a bit too broad.
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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES AND STUDIES, Etsy & Google, early June 2023
Since I have been writing so much in detail about Etsy happenings lately, I didn’t have time to write my usual news summaries. Better late than never, here is what has been happening on Etsy and in the SEO world in general for the past few months.
The bad news is I am on a 2-week road trip as of June 14th, so you may not get the rest of the ecommerce, social media and other news until into July, but I will do my best to get some work done in the car each day without an internet connection.
Don't forget you can always follow me on Twitter or on LinkedIn to get more timely updates.
TOP NEWS & ARTICLES
Etsy sellers in the EU can opt out of Offsite Ads. In fact, even shops from Switzerland can do so. The UK is not currently included, and no one knows which EU law makes this possible.
If Etsy gives you trouble when you try to opt out, keep pushing.
If you ever thought Etsy wouldn’t put your shop on payment reserve, did you know they did it to Katwise? From numerous other reports in the last month or two, Etsy is now putting more shops on reserve for very small increases in recent sales, and plenty of other bizarre reasons. One seller contacted me because the now-on-reserve shop had been empty and unused since May 2022! I’ve updated my blog post with some new details, and have a new list of potential factors. Please let me know if you have recently been put on reserve and if any of the factors - known or suspected - apply to you.
I’ve spent the past few months researching how Etsy’s seller protection plan works in practice, and yes, there are some things you can do to reduce the chance of losing money due to Etsy’s new rules.
ETSY NEWS
In a disturbing development, Etsy sellers in India now must use Etsy Labels for all domestic orders. Unfortunately, I don’t expect this will be the last country Etsy does this for, as Etsy is already making it difficult for people in other countries to mark orders as shipped. Anyone experiencing this issue can avoid it by using the app, by buying labels on sites with automatic integrations with your shop (so the order is marked shipped immediately), or by trying this tedious workaround on every order.
As I previously reported in beta, Etsy introduced a “Make an Offer” option for US vintage sellers in April.
Etsy is pulling the usual last-minute attempt at complying with new laws by having some sellers re-verify info before the INFORM Act takes effect in the US.
Etsy’s Annual Transparency Report shows that their technology is mostly flagging items that aren’t prohibited on Etsy, even after a few years of adopting this automated approach. I cover it in detail on Tumblr. If you are interested in how search is working these days, definitely read my post! This could explain some items suddenly getting no views.
Speaking of which, the latest glut of bot takedowns involved several different areas:
handmade items, often best sellers from successful shops. Some have not been successful getting the listing reinstated after several days of trying
drug paraphernalia, usually for items that aren’t even remotely drug-related
listings making medical claims, which now includes mentioning the FDA. Read the updated Medical Claims policy here.
Despite this supposed increased effort of Etsy policing the site, the counterfeit accusations against the Etsy marketplace continue to percolate through the media and blogosphere, with some noting that both counterfeit and basic reselling [Glossy; soft paywall] hurt genuine handmade and vintage sellers. If you prefer video on the Citron report, here’s one from Yahoo.
Then this Washington Post article [gift link; no paywall] got a lot of attention regarding dropshipping and how you can get a lot of the same things cheaper on Alibaba; there was also an investigation in the UK that came to the same conclusion.
Etsy even addressed the negative media attention in the first quarter report, which I covered on Tumblr as usual. In case you missed it, the fourth quarter of 2022 is here.
If you use abandoned cart coupons, note that many shoppers are now receiving them within a few hours of carting your item.
Some sellers - mostly but not all in the UK - discovered they could no longer use the shipping carrier option “Other” on their listings around May 12. Listings already using this option cannot be edited or renewed with more than a quantity of 1. Etsy Support has told many of them that this is intentional, and that they will need to select listed carriers - but Etsy does not offer some of the common Royal Mail or other carrier options in their coding. This removal also prevents sellers from using extended delivery dates when the official ones are too optimistic, putting them at risk of forced refunds under the Purchase Protection Program.
Canadian sellers now get reduced Tracked Packet (US) rates for Canada Post through Etsy Labels, but there are several problems with the offer. It’s only available to people with Solutions for Small Business accounts (many sellers have commercial contracts, which are not eligible for this deal), but the labels purchased no longer count towards Solutions for Small Business tiers. That means you will eventually end up paying more for your non-US labels, and for your labels for other platforms and your website. It therefore isn’t useful for bigger shops that sell to more than the US, or sell through multiple channels.
Also, it appears that you can get a lower rate at Canada Post counters, as well as through eBay as of April 27th. And even if you don’t use any of those sources, tracked packet to the US has been only marginally more expensive than small packet since September, so make sure you compare prices before opting for the untracked method.
Etsy has reintroduced its wedding registry, and included the latest wedding trends in the blog post. This should work better than the first time they did it in 2012, since Etsy now has many more items sold in multiples that can be on dozens of registries without selling out.
The old Etsy seller app was removed from app stores by May 23, and eventually it will not work any more.
As mentioned in a previous update, now that Etsy has brought on “tens of thousands” of new sellers in India, they are working on attracting buyers in the country.
In India and interested in opening a shop? Etsy has a specific “how-to” page for you.
A new listing page is currently being beta tested and should be available to all sellers now, but you can opt out if you have it.
Etsy Up was held in mid-May, and all of the sessions are available online now. Most of it is rather bland advertising for Etsy, although new sellers may learn some things.
The somewhat-depressing story of how one tech writer managed to open an Etsy shop in a week with all AI-designed artwork and print on demand services. “I created a series of four retro-futuristic puzzles. The MidJourney prompt was merely this: retro-futuristic. The results were just so good that I decided to use them as-is.” Note this still took a lot of editing and time, plus skill with the AI-art generator used.
Reminder that Etsy knows it doesn’t have to keep every seller happy, just most of them [Fortune; paywall]. Josh Silverman said "...with 5.4 million sellers, no matter what you do, you’ll find 100,000 sellers that aren’t happy... We’re trying to create an ecosystem with the right incentives so most of our sellers can succeed." [my emphasis]
SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES
Chat bot/AI search is the SEO hot topic of 2023 so far, but the commentary varies widely, and offerings are changing almost daily. Therefore, I will provide very few articles on the topics for the foreseeable future, since they are often going to be out of date by the time you read them. A few exceptions this time around:
One author suggests that AI will change SEO by making social media and question answering more important.
Google is building a new AI search engine, while adding new AI features in the existing engine.
“If your content isn’t better than what AI can produce, it’s not worth making.”
There are currently at least 7 types of queries that Google doesn’t use AI chat to respond to. [Twitter thread]
You can use Chat GPT to build Chrome extensions that complete SEO tasks and functions [I admit I can see this sort of thing being very useful for those of use who aren’t pro coders]
This post lists 7 good sources of AI news.
Since so much has happened since my last news summary, you may want to skim through update lists to make sure you didn't miss anything. Everything important that happened with Google in February is covered here (by Search Engine Roundtable), and here is March, then here is April, and finally, May.
Google’s March Core Update saw big increases for some shopping sites, including Amazon and eBay, plus media and government sites. Etsy seems to have dropped a fair amount, but this is just one study. Poshmark was also down.
Want your images to show up in regular Google organic search (as opposed to Google Image search)? The quality of the page as well as the image itself can be important. The number of photos or images on the page may contribute.
Ecommerce SEO is both the easiest and the hardest it has ever been right now. You need to do more than just post products. [slide deck]
Google updated its advice on linking, to now include advice on anchor text (aka link text) and internal links, among other changes.
Title tags - the words that show up as your page title on Google and in the browser tab - can affect clicks beyond just keyword use.
Want to show up for Google’s featured snippets? (They’ve changed recently) You may need to edit the page in a few different ways.
Just 16 companies (and all of their subsidiaries) control most of the top-ranking pages in Google searches. This is an old study with newly-updated information.
A lot of small business owners ask me what “keyword difficulty” really means. Part of the problem is that different tools calculate it differently. [article has tips on how to approach the issue]
On the same topic, don’t forget Bing’s keyword research tool when you are trying to find new keywords. There are 15 other free keyword tools in this article. [I always recommend Keywords Everywhere and TagCrowd] And here is a searchable site for all sorts of SEO tools (some are paid tools).
Google’s Search Off the Record podcast took a look at moving websites, and the possible SEO issues, with solutions. [podcast and pdf transcript] Here’s a different post with a checklist for site migrations, in case you have one coming up.
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