Products missing from MP which have sold once.

[LauraLee]

I have a question to ask Zazzle moderators to find out if this is true or not.  Because, I was told years ago by a Platinum seller that once a product is sold, it stays in the MP forever.  Is this a true statement?

Anyone can chime in, but I would like an honest answer from the ones who should know for sure.  It seems like, as the years have gone by, with multiple changes with cover images being needed, and said given a priority, which lately I've found that not to be true at all.  One change, that does not affect what I'm asking about...because it was my understanding that all products sold would be in the MP.  But somewhere along the line, things are not selling as they once were here.  Why?  You may think oh, the algorithms changed here and on Google (as I know Google's did), but when did the sold products get "taken out" of the MP??  What happened to Zazzle? 

The thing is, how many of my products that have sold are missing??  I found one in particular, due to research on a forum question, and in response find that my sold product is no longer found in the MP.  Is Z hiding sold products now??  

[PenguinPower]

You can easily look and see if a product is hidden by looking in your back end... if it doesn't say it's hidden and it's old enough to have been indexed, it's there. Now mind you - not being hidden means that a product is searchable in the Marketplace but does not mean that it will actually appear when you put in a particular search. Search results have always been truncated to the first 16 pages, which means that only around 800 of whatever you search will be displayed, no matter how many are found. There's no guarantee, sold or not, that your product will make it into those pages, if there are more than 800 results for your search. Again, that does not mean the product is hidden.. you just have to search more specifically to find it.. 

[LauraLee]

These are products in my back end.  They wouldn't or I'm better off saying, they shouldn't be hidden if they were sold, right?   I'm having a hard time finding the products that have sold.  I thought I knew how to find them, with the exact title name, or searching with narrowing down categories to a few pages to search through them visually.  I didn't think this was difficult, since I have a very specific store...but it's the point that I was told once by a Platinum seller that once a product was sold, it should permanently be in the MP.  Or so I thought.  It could very well be that searching the MP has changed.  Things change so much at Z. 

But, why wouldn't a sold product be in the MP?  There's more chance for it to be sold again.  The bigger issue, for me, is that if Zazzle is picking and choosing products from everyone to be in the MP, sold or not, doesn't this take away from those who are affiliate marketing and those who do not market at all, even with their own products?  This is the thing as well, is it simply a glitch as the big umbrella comes out to cast a shadow on what actually happens.  Idk.  We can't ever know.

[LauraLee]

Here's a list of products that I'm unable to find in the MP:

https://www.zazzle.com/st_patricks_day_green_beer_grunge_custom_credit_card_bottle_opener-2563555897... 

https://www.zazzle.com/cute_modern_custom_desktop_pattern_business_card-240902268366435203 

https://www.zazzle.com/take_a_ticket_admit_one_satin_ribbon-256642654129945952 

https://www.zazzle.com/retro_photo_beach_water_santa_claus_wrapping_paper-256078456560824360 

https://www.zazzle.com/cute_beach_ready_flamingo_cutout-153156820986173189 

https://www.zazzle.com/personalized_delivery_driver_instructions_sign-256498919695899460 

https://www.zazzle.com/gilded_baroque_business_portfolio_green_gold_3_ring_binder-256031131191652060 

https://www.zazzle.com/historic_desoto_hotel_savannah_ga_postcard-256536783367116923 

And these are from my smaller store, that I was okay with researching.  I have 11 other stores, and I hope I don't have to do this kind of research on each one! 

[PenguinPower]

I can see every single one of them - they are NOT hidden. If they were hidden I'd see this message (this a product that I have hidden myself, if I try to view it in a browser in which I am not logged into my  Zazzle store account) .

[ColsCreations]

I think search is just broken and giving it a thorough overhaul would IMO be the most beneficial improvement Z could make to the platform.

On your first link above, for the bottle opener, I could not find it searching by exact title or any keyword combo I tried. So I went to the very broad search terms of [st patricks day bottle opener] and then used the Type filter to select credit card style. There are four results. FOUR. While possible, I find it improbable that on all of Zazzle, there are only four bottle openers of this style with 'st patricks day' as a keyword. Also peculiar that all four are from same designer and just published at end of Feb. I get these same four results whether searching while signed-in or searching anonymously with no browsing history, cache etc...

If (while signed in, after I have obviously just recently viewed your particular opener) I go to the site map and click 'bottle openers', yours is shown as 2nd result.

However, if I do same thing (site map --> bottle openers) from my anon browser, yours is nowhere to be seen even after narrowing it down to proper cat & style.

Your second link for the business card, from anon browser, I couldn't find by exact title either but I did find it with some keyword combos. I didn't try searching up any of your other links. But as PenguinPower said, they're not technically Hidden, but since search isn't working as one would expect to call them up, they are effectively hidden.

[Laura]

I had a bestselling t-shirt which suddenly, completely disappeared from the MP a couple years ago. I emailed support about it and they couldn't explain it. The most disappointing part is that I was able to find it on google being sold illegally on other sites (same model, etc.). Then, it seemed someone picked up the Zazzle link on Pinterest or elsewhere and it slowly started to sell again but not near what it did before.