We used to be able to use a URL like this one [*with 'colscreations' being the name of your store]
https://www.zazzle.com/colscreations+gifts
to get to a page that served as sort of an alternative shop front. I noticed a week or three ago that this no longer works. Just says "your search for 'colscreations' did not match any products'.
Now, if we instead use a URL like this
https://www.zazzle.com/s/colscreations
we get a page that looks/functions like we used to get with the above URL. If you simply put 'colscreations' into the search bar, you get this same page, same URL.
If we replace my store name with yours we get this
https://www.zazzle.com/s/catseyeviewgifts
that shows 5,589 products. I get the same result if I simply put 'catseyeviewgifts' into search.
From there, one can use the "refine by category" filter to drill down to shoes. (And off-topic, this is a prime example of where Z forcing us to choose Mens or Womens hurts us. If I drill down to Womens Fashion --> Womens Shoes I get one pair; if I drill down to Mens Fashion --> Mens Shoes I get 28 pairs. There is no option in the cat drill-down for All Shoes)
If you put 'catseyeviewgifts' AND a product type into search, results vary wildy. For instance, if I do [catseyeviewgifts cards] I get 1,066 results, all of which appear to be yours at least through page 5 where I stopped scrolling. If I do [catseyeviewgifts mug] I get one result (yours). [catseyeviewgifts shoes] gives me three results (yours) but they are cards with pictures of shoes, not actually shoes. [catseyeviewgifts keychains] gives me over 1 million results, obviously not all yours LOL.
If I use my store name + a product type I get wildly different results. [colscreations totes] in the search bar yields 1.3 million results whereas just [colscreations] in search followed by using the "refine by category" filter to narrow down to totes yields just 14 results, all mine, which is spot-on as I have 16 published totes but two have one alternate color version so in essence it's just the 14 shown.
So ... using just a [storename] in search then using the 'refine by category' filter gives pretty accurate results. On the other hand, using [storename producttype] in search gives really wonky results that are all over the map. Outside of friends & family and maybe if you already have a loyal established customer base, I doubt many people besides Designers Creators would be searching by storename + product type, BUT, evenso, the results defy logic and are not what one would expect.
Complicating matters are things like
1) your store name has 'gifts' in it which used to be a generic word search filtered out
2) if your store name contains words that might be common you'll get results that aren't yours when searching by store name (like happens with @Barbara aka Colorwash store)
3) if your store name (the one we can change at will any time) is not the same as your official store name (the one in your URL which we can't ever change) who knows how this effects searching? Should people be searching for your changeable store name or the real store name in your URL?
I'm rambling, but yeah, it would be really nice if shoppers could enter a store name + product type to get to results that are just that product type from that store.
