Recently the MP seems to have changed how to narrow search results. There used to be words you could click to narrow your choices- like “modern” “ornate” “simple”, etc. Those seem to be gone…and less descriptive icons have taken their place? I do not find them as helpful. What do you all think?
For example, when searching trivets - these are the circle icons I get to narrow choices
They introduced this late October
general-zazzle-discussion/hot-tags-are-now-thumbnails
I really like it and notice now that the suggestions appear at both the top and bottom of the page. Nice. 
The text that goes with them is the same as it was before. They’re tags used on products in the group of results you’ve already fetched. Then you use those tags to narrow results down further and so on. So it might be as brief as “pink” or as detailed as “waterfall colorful bright art”. It’s just that instead of getting just the text we get a design picture with it now. I have no idea how the algorithm decides which tags to pull for each narrowing-down, or which design image it decides to use from the products in that tag group for the thumb, but it does remind how important it is to write tags that actually match the design.
Yours is a better example. When searching ‘trivets’ William Morris, Floral, Strawberry Thief, and watercolor are the only ways to narrow that search? Really? I dunno - maybe I just need to get used to it… I feel like some of the narrowing choices that were there have been pared down…
I didn’t even realize they announced this way back in October! I didn’t get the new look until a week or 2 ago. I miss the old style, since I mostly only used those blue tags for keyword research, and now there are a lot fewer words, while the pictures are distracting.
Agree!
As @Connie implied with keywords, we designers are likely to be using the search function for something different from the customer. We’re researching, not necessarily looking to buy. That said, I’ve wondered how much the new way helps or hinders the customer. Does the customer use the images and ultimately slender choice, thus not necessarily seeing the broader range of designs available? I sure hope they resort to the search box the way we’re likely to do.
If I search for “black necktie” - these are the “narrowing” choices I get. REALLY? Team mascot and tiger…moreso than ‘traditional’ or funky or plaid or floral? Help me understand. I find it very disheartening. Unless a customer puts in a VERY specific search string - most products will never be found with these new “narrowing” groupings.
I just now ran the same search on “black necktie” and found you’re totally correct. The pickin’s are downright slim. Going to “Filters” was not a speck of help. The customer might be better off without being sidetracked by those little thumbs. I’m sure Zazzle is doing this via some sort of algorithm, but it isn’t working very well.
Hi Barbara, an example of odd results via the search function! Kitchen Clocks Modern results in this
Click to view as not screenshot savvy when in a hurry
https://www.zazzle.com/s/kitchen+clocks+modern?dp=252520646703870871&q=kitchen%20clocks%20modern&sgsc=kitchen%3Amodern&gs=true Note The Dog clock image for Cat clocks
One example of the whole page!
@orientcourt The dog clock proves the thumbs are based on the tags people use. The dog clock’s tags include “modern.” So, the algorithm is only as good as the tags people use, and we all know that not everyone is good at tagging, and then there some who cleverly use tags so their products show up where they don’t belong. Sadly, Zazzle is a victim of the tagging system. I wonder if there isn’t a better way.
Here is a post in 12/22 about the new search, https://community.zazzle.com/t5/technical-issues/site-update-eliminated-half-the-displayed-tags-in-search-results/m-p/55292
Yes, I read that thread as it developed, and even though Scott said they aren’t tags, those little mini-categories can’t be pulled from anything other than tags. Certainly not the descriptions, unlikely the titles, so what else is there? When I clicked on some of them, I found the key to them was in the tags designers had used. It seems the logical way to do it, but the results are strange.
Let’s say you have a rustic, orange pumpkin pattern shower curtain. Let’s see if your product is easily found.
Customers often want to match colors, so to start, they search for “orange shower curtain”. These are their “narrowing” choices:
We want them to find yours…so we click on ‘pattern’ to narrow the choices. This comes up:
Tiger, animal, safari, pink, boho. Which will I click on now to find the rustic, pumpkin pattern curtain?? 
I suppose it _could _be titles, tho’ not as likely. It seems what these ‘narrowing’ choices likely do is present the customer with the most popular/most purchased items - which is good for Z, but not necessarily for beginning or niche designers who might have been found with more and varied narrowing choices as before. 
When you click on a circle tag and keep clicking on the circle tags, it narrows it down to one shop. I found it to be very specific tags from the creators and the circles are linked to popular designs, When you narrow it down, clicking on the circles there are less choices for the customer. I’m not sure what to think about it yet.
Personally, I’d rather type into the search box precisely what I’m looking for. If the company has it, it’ll show up, and if it doesn’t, it’s likely they’ll make suggestions. Amazon did this to my husband just yesterday, all the suggestions closely related to his search. It might have worked had he not wanted a very specific something. I wish Zazzle could do something like that, though I’m not sure it’s possible. Amazon is all about the product, less so the design.
If I wanted something that specific I would just search for it by typing in [rustic orange pumpkin pattern shower curtain]. Which I did and believe it or not got two shower curtains as results, both of which contained rustic, orange, pumpkin and pattern in the tags and/or titles. 
I feel like suggestions are probably mostly clicked by people browsing randomly; people looking for something specific would be more likely to type what they want as a search or use the category tree.
I looked at the other linked thread and while Scott does say “These are actually suggested/related search terms, not product tags” that may just be a matter of semantics because it’s easy enough to do your own search and drill down through the suggestions and see they are product tags. In my first post, you can see in the screenshot that after I searched for [tie dye tissue paper] and then clicked the [decoupage] suggestion, the next level of suggestions includes [NameName Name Name Name] which takes you to five products obviously by the same designer who uses that as one of their ten tags. The only thing that makes [NameName Name Name Name] related to tie-dye and decoupage is that the designer used it as a single tag along with [tie-dye] and [decoupage] in other tags.
I started my search by typing in [tie-dye tissue paper]. That gave me 574 tissue papers that have [tie-dye] in tags and/or title.
From there, clicking the "decoupage’ suggestion narrowed it down to 17 tissue papers that have [tie-dye] and [decoupage] in the tags and/or title.
From there, clicking the “NameName Name Name Name” suggestion narrowed it down to 5 tissue papers that have [tie-dye] and [decoupage] and [NameName Name Name Name] in the tags and/or titles.
Once we get to the mere 17 results for tie-dye and decoupage, the pool of tags to pull from for the next level of suggestions is pretty small, especially since they’re all from the same seven designers and as designers we tend to use many of the same tags on similar designs. The algorithm pulled [NameName Name Name Name] which was used on 5 of those 17, [asian influence] which was used on 5 of those 17, [furniture flipping] which was used on 5 of those 17, [rainbow colors] which was used on 6 of those 17, and so on.
I have no way of knowing but I really don’t believe it has anything to do with sales or popularity or favoritism, I think it’s just randomly pulling tags which progressively leads to smaller pools for the next level to pull from which naturally might lead back to one particular designer.
I just can’t make sense of the algorithm with the black neck tie example.
When you search for that, you get the narrowing choices below. I have to believe tags like “plaid”, “elegant”, “floral”, “striped” are more plentiful on ties than “sports”, “cross”, or “Jesus”…so I can only conclude the algorithm chose those narrowing words bc they…what? Sell more? Why else those (relatively) obscure categories? I dunno. It is what it is, I guess.
