is this true? re Zazzle hiding us from search

[TRW]

Is it true that if your products are priced above 10% royalty that Zazzle is hiding those listings from marketplace search?
before the latest changes, I was making roughly an even number of non referred, self referred and 3rd party referred sales. SINCE the change, I have made NOTHING other than 3rd party referred sales, almost all earning less than $1 for me since zazzle is giving away my work to someone who simply pasted a link. 

if that is not the reason why no one is finding my designs anymore... I would love to hear some other potential reasons why things changed so dramatically right at the same time!

[PenguinPower]

No, I don't have anything set at royalty of anything below 15% and I can still find my items in a marketplace search.

If there's anything impeding searches right now, I'm going to have to say it's product spammers.. I just searched "bigfoot aprons" and while the first three -four rows or so were bigfoot aprons the rest of the thumbnails on the page were blank black aprons with various titles, mostly about unicorns, apparently showing how mythical they are, because there were none in sight... and assumedly bearing the tag of bigfoot as well... 

[Cat]

Holy Moly. Take a look at this search: Bigfoot Unicorn Aprons | Zazzle

I'm not really sure why anyone would be searching for bigfoot unicorn aprons, but it is disconcerting.

I have to think you're right and that at least some of the technical difficulties that we're all experiencing (verify that you're human, etc) are due to some sort of spammer bot clogging the marketplace with these bogus products.

[VivianD117]

did you report them or should I?

[PenguinPower]

I just reported the 2 stores I saw in the aprons spamming all black items... but I doubt it will hurt if there is more than one person who reports. Not to mention you may find other stores from the same scammer.. I noticed 2, but there's probably more. 
But seriously... why do people do this. I cannot imagine there's any profit in it. No one is going to buy their plain black, mislabeled items.... even if it's mostly automated, it's a waste of time. 

[Cat]

I'm wondering the same thing. It seems more like an attack designed to grind Zazzle to a halt rather than a money-making scheme.

[SJoy]

I am wondering how they are even getting the black blank items to surface so high in search results when I try to tag to the best of the design and can barely get views on some things. Geesh 😞

[Cat]

Good question! AI maybe? Clearly they've figured out some way to game the system and trick the algorithm.

[KeegansCreation]

Now that you put it like that, this does look like a DDOS attack using black aprons.

[jophb]

Sheesh that 'Nurse' person truly just spams black designs with different titles and tags. Yikes.

[Cat]

Pretty sure it's a bot.

[Laura-LiseWong]

WOW now that is disconcerting for sure! It makes the entire website look terrible and customers won't even bother to search the site.

[TRW]

and you are searching logged out and incognito? 

[PenguinPower]

Yes

[TRW]

tbh  I have asked Zazzle multiple times to please remove the spam product, and low quality content etc etc... they keep saying everyone has the right to sell here... except the people LOSING are the ones following the rules! 

@Cat I assume all glitches are because zazzle is messing around changing code to make updates, often unnecessary ones 

[LMGildersleeve]

It is not true Tammy. My own products and many other creators I know who have above 10% royalty rates are found in the MP. 

[Anne]

There's a number of reasons why sales are down i.m.h.o.
Not only the huge number of bugs on the site (do customers now also constantly have to verify they are human for instance?).
Why is Zazzle barely visible on Google or Pinterest?
Zazzle apparently choosing cheaper producers creating low quality products resulting in more returns?
Bad search functionality (which has been mentioned just a thousand times by various designers, but not addressed).
And the orange wild card and inflation is not helping either.

[NigelSutherland]

I think Zazzle are missing a trick by not allowing integration with Etsy. I already work with a partner in the UK who automatically fulfils orders for my Etsy store. There are international companies that offer similar services such as printdoors.com in China. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult for Zazzle to link up in a similar way, at least for products with designs that don't require customising.

i have wondered about offering customisable Zazzle-made products from my Etsy store, with the customer informing me of what wording is required, and me handling it, and ordering from Zazzle, but I don't know how lengthy shipping delays might be, plus costs. I suppose I could subscribe to Zazzle Black, or whatever it's called now... Has anyone else considered this?