When are my Products "fully" visible? Does "grouping products" slow their appearance?

[Amanda23]

Hello!

I am slowly learning SO MUCH about Zazzle, but I feel like every time I turn around, I have more questions! lol 
Today I'm just going to focus on my most pressing issue because I want to advertise my new collection. 

Two days ago, I posted some new products. When I look in my public storefront, I don't see them as my newest products. I'm also not sure where they are in categories because they're not where I put them, and they're not in the department area from what I can tell either (I have this problem a lot...I may need to request help about this soon!). However, they DO appear if you go into the correct collection. When I try to search them by keywords, tags or even the title in search, they don't appear. 😞 

Additionally, I'm trying to group the products for the first time because I created multiple color versions. It says on the backend that they're grouped, but when I click on the product, it doesn't show the colors... so I'm not sure how to advertise, as I would prefer to link to individual products so they can easily see the colors and customization options. 

Does grouping products slow them down from appearing at all in marketplace? Are people I don't know able to see my products? lol

This is one example. There should be two other color variations, and I think it should appear on my front page and in the marketplace, but I can't find it. This product doesn't seem to have tons of entries yet because it's pretty new, but mine is nowhere to be seen. And when I search with the title, it's not even accessory bags that appear. 
https://www.zazzle.com/cute_yellow_butterfly_and_initial_on_accessory_bag-256595618705741196 
Any clarification you can provide is very much appreciated. 🙂

Sincerely, 
Amanda

[BKMuir · Accepted solution]

@Amanda23  When I click on your link for the butterfly accessory bag, I go to the product page (there is no grouping yet). When I go to your store page and sort by most recent, it shows a Solar Eclipse magnet that was posted 3/25/2024.

As mentioned in numerous postings, the indexing is very slow, taking days before products show in the marketplace. As you have shown with your bag created 4/2/2024, new products are able to be promoted/linked to.

Searching your title in the marketplace does NOT bring up your butterfly product ... yet. Searching by the product ID does find the product. So ... your recently created items are available by links/ID. Indexing should bring them to visibility at some point.

[Amanda23]

Thank you so much for thoroughly checking it out! I really appreciate your specific response. I am worried because I have labeled all of my products for the past several days with tags and names for Mother's Day. I am hopeful they can be seen in the marketplace before it's too late and no one is looking anymore. 

I need to get a little farther ahead of events. I wish inspiration (which always seems to come at the last minute for me! lol) would hit in a bit more timely fashion!

I was wondering: do you happen to have any insight on categories and how to use them? I've tried to look here on the forums and have seen where people have had some issues, but I can't tell if they're ongoing. No matter how I seem to look things up, what appears for different categories never seems to be the full list of what should be there. Have you found that departments or categories is better? Is there a way to maximize/make sure I'm doing these correctly (eg. with categories and subcategories?)

Thanks again !