Etsy new search bars is putting all the Supplies & Vintage shops out of business

Monday May 5, 2008 Etsy implemented a new search system where they've separated the item search into three new searches: Handmade, Vintage, and Supplies. The default is Handmade, with Vintage and Supplies available in the drop-down. You can also select "All items" to search Handmade, Supplies, and Vintage all at once.

The menu reads like this:
Search drop-down menu shows:

>Handmade Items: tags, titles (default)
>Handmade Items: tags, titles, descriptions
>Supplies: tags, titles
>Vintage: tags, titles
>All Items: tags, titles
>Sellers: Usernames
>Materials

Since the change, many, MANY supplies and vintage shops on Etsy views and sales have slowed and in some cases sales have stopped ever since this new search was implemented. Many made daily sales, myself included, only to wake up to no sales and no views. To quote schOOLLOcker, "

1. Why isn't there the option to search *descriptions* when looking for Vintage & Supplies?

2. Why isn't there an option for
*All Items: tags, titles, descriptions*?

This narrow search option for Vintage & Supply items means:
sellers of these items need to include all vital search terms in their titles and in the 13 available tags ---
which has the potential to result in ridiculously long listing titles.

When tagged properly & in accordance with the rules of the site, Commercial Supplies are limited to 12 descriptive tags because the first 2 must always be *Supplies* & *Commercial.*

Why the inequity?"

Etsy Administration responded to a very lengthly discussion on Etsy's community forum "Ideas" and this is what was said:

MaryMary said: "It turns out that according to the usage statistics we've been tracking, a negligible amount of buyers use the description search to find vintage items and supplies.

We made a judgment call to cut out the descriptions search for vintage and supplies primarily because descriptions searches require a lot of server resources (along with the fact they weren't being used), so we want to do as few as possible and also adding those options to the top would make the drop-menu too daunting.

That being said, our focus at Etsy is on handmade, so we decided to leave the option for description searches in the handmade search.

I hope this helps clear up some confusion and thanks again for your patience and feedback"

schOOLLOcker (who is now my official hero) responded with this great thought:

"I just want to make sure I understand this correctly.

--I can search every post on the forums dating back to 2005 by content (except locked/closed threads).

--The long ago-obsolete threads in Promotions … all 340,000+ threads are therefore searchable by content. (this statistic is just for the Promotion threads)
I can’t even wrap my mind around how many posts that equals.

However, the engineers have determined that it doesn’t behoove Etsy Corp to allow potential customers to search the content of all listings that WE ARE TRYING TO SELL.

So my listings (& all vintage / commercial supply listings) are a drain on the site’s limited server resources.

Interesting priorities."

I've decided to see what happens over the weekend and make a new game plan Monday, if need be. There are more choices out there and believe me, I'm taking a much needed break from nursing and I've already paid my dues having patients, family and doctors walk all over me I don't need this type of unfair treatment. All we want is FAIR treatment. Everyone pays the same fees so everyone should get the same exposure.

Here is a screen shot of the new drop down bar: