Etsy sellers disagree with increased importance seller location

Etsy has been testing an updated search ranking so locally-made items for buyers in the United Kingdom and Australia are shown more prominent. The goal is to create a better local shopping experience. That may be the case for shoppers browsing Etsy, but its sellers aren’t too happy about it.

On Etsy’s discussion board there are several Etsy sellers, who shared their disgrace with the new search ranking update. One sellers says: “I just checked my stats for today so far and France is my top activity by country. Normally, this never happens, it’s always US or UK.”  Another one says: “I (as many) do ship worldwide. The shoppers select a location to which I ship to. They are not selecting where the shop’s location is. They are choosing where items ship to. Please quite thinking you know what the customer wants, there is already a filter for that.”

‘They don’t understand ecommerce’
Another Etsy sellers make a valid point by saying: “The more I think it over, the weirder it gets. Who goes on the internet to shop local? Who goes on the internet to sell locally?”, to which someone else replies: “I really don’t think the people making these decisions really understand ecommerce.” And there are more people complaining about ‘slow sales and views‘ or ‘searches wrongly showing mostly UK listings‘.

As EcommerceBytes points out, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson said in August the company had seen recent improvement in the United Kingdom, due to additional localization efforts. “We believe these activities attract sellers to Etsy, stimulate the local marketplace by connecting local sellers to buyers and expand Etsy’s brand awareness.”

‘Getting the right buyer to the right listing’
And now some US sellers think it’s unfair they now have a reduced exposure to shoppers from the UK and Australia. But according to Etsy’s spokesperson Nikki Summer, who talked to EcommerceBytes, Etsy just wants to get the right buyer to the right listing.” She says the online marketplace discovered that buyers in the UK and Australia have a preference for local items. “For eligible searches, we’re showing them more local items because we want to get them to the right listing, faster.”

She acknowledges that the change is to the default search in those countries and there’s no option to revert to the previous search. However, she wants to emphasize search results only affect users within the UK and Australia. “Searches in the US, for instance, will not have their results altered, and we don’t have plans to do this.”