How long does search indexing take?

[welshdesigns]

I started some new stores the 4th of August (almost a month ago) with super unique names that's not all over the internet.  Hoping to get cleaner search results eventually.  I've been checking google's normal search, and gemini AI search, and one of the stores finally popped up, but not the others.  So I went to Zazzle and just searched my store's name, and none of the new names come up.   They are all set to public and stuff, so I know it's not that.  Does anyone know how long until Zazzle will have them show up?  It seems weird Google found one, but Zazzle won't return it. 

[Jadendreamer13 · Accepted solution]

Customers typically don’t search for products by a shop name. If they like a shop, they will follow it, so they can find it in the future. If I search on my own shop name on Zazzle, I can’t find it, either.

Customers search for a particular product, which may result in them viewing a collection, but they rarely visit a designer’s store.

And speaking of stores, Rick, running, optimizing, and maintaining 7 stores (like you’re currently trying to do) is taking time away from the tasks that will make you money—designing and marketing. So, do yourself a favor and stick to just one shop. You can have a general store that encompasses all your designs and all the products you offer. Streamline your business from the beginning. Don’t create extra work for yourself.

Frankly, if I had an opportunity to start a new store/business all over again, I would just use a name — like Rick Welsh Designs. It has a nice ring to it, right? Put your name up in lights, so to speak (like Kate Spade, for example). If you don’t, who else will?

Go get, ‘em, Rick.

[welshdesigns]

I'm sort of happy to hear your store doesn't show up in search  either, though frankly I don't understand Zazzle's logic there.    As you might remember (me) you helped me a few weeks ago, I had trouble IMHO using Welsh Designs as my store name, as it's two strong adjectives in the world of search, so nothing of mine shows up there at least from Zazzles site, where RB and TP with the exact same name does.  

Stop here if you're not interested in my history.  I started Zazzle long ago 2018?, when you could batch duplicate designs across products..  I did many, way too many (since deleted too).  At the same time, I did the same on TP and RB to see what worked, all three similar tagging, titles, and descriptions.  Both TP and RB sold pretty quickly.  RB has 800 sales and 2000 likes, and TP has 1600 sales.  Zazzle never sold enough for me to get a payout.  So I stopped even looking until a few months ago when I got a payout finally.  I looked to see how/why and saw I'd get a sale 1 or 2 a month, but never enough to pass the threshold because I was inactive on the account.  SO, I decided to dig into and see why Zazzle doesn't work when RB and TP worked, at lest good enough for me anyway, this isn't my job.   I started digging into views and most of my products were hidden because they never got any views in the timeline required.  I also saw most if not almost all never got any views at all while they were up.  Hundreds were zero!  So I have time on my hands and decided to try to fix my Zazzle stuff.  I decided my store name "Welsh_Designs" won't work, and went to start over so to speak.  In doing that, is "seemed" quite a few of the top sellers have multiple stores, especially if they have several design styles like I do. (Watercolor Art, Photography, Graphic Illustration).  So I'm setting out to fix my store names and added new ones.  I renamed the old one, but the underlying store is still Welsh__Designs beause that's what it started under and you can't change it which according to a google gemini search session is a potential issue.  When store name and store it's started under are different the algorithm can see a conflict and not index that page..  Hence new stores.  So in a nutshell I'm still trying to figure out the search process on Zazzle actually works, as it's weird to me compared to RB and TP and others places like Amazon or Google where my stores and products do come up in searches.  I'm slowly fixing titles, descriptions and tags as I go, but sometimes I stop and design instead because that's more fun! Ha!  I'd determined to crack this nut, so stay tuned! 🙂

[Jadendreamer13]

I personally think that Zazzle is a particularly hard nut to crack, although I do like the platform. There is a YouTuber who just this week reviewed all the popular POD platforms, including Zazzle, RB, TP, and more and created a rating system based on his earnings data and the number of customers who use each platform. You might find that video interesting (and helpful).

[welshdesigns]

Ohh, I’ll check it out.  I like Zazzle’s products and design tool.  Search is killing me though! Ha!

[ColsCreations]

For searching by store name on Zazzle, you have to use the store name exactly as it is in the URL, not the pseudo-name you can change on a whim. 

[welshdesigns]

Yeah, that's what's a bit weird.  Because you can't have spaces in url's which is needed when setting up a store, Zazzle recommends putting in an underline or underscore "_" which I did.  I had my store as Welsh__Designs (2 underscores) because, as I found later,  there already was a store called Welsh_Design (1 underscore).  Then the pseudo-name I changed to be Welsh Designs, but it's useless it seems.  Anyway, search engines skip over underscores and call it a space in some/most cases (according to Gemini anyway).   Google searches it as just Welsh Designs as two words, neither of which are good search words for my store/products individually.   So I'm abandoning it all together and starting pretty much over with new names and stores to see if that's why I hardly get any views at all. Yes, it could be I suck at tons of other things, but it's just weird to me RB and TP seems to find my stuff better with the same products, tags etc.  We will see. 🙂

[ColsCreations]

I remember your recent post about the underscores issue. Here's an old post I made Jan 2024 about store URLs.

Googling up info again tonight, multiple sources (no AI) including Google's own documentation, that still remains true. Google does not recognize underscores. So my_store_name would be treated as mystorename. 
Hyphens on the other hand are recognized as spaces so my-store-name would be treated as my store name.

This is one of your stores: https://www.zazzle.com/store/welsh__designs
The URL is welsh__designs (double underscores) but the pseudo-name is WilyShylee

Searching on Zazzle for [WilyShylee] yields zero results.
But searching for the exact URL name including the underscores [welsh__designs] yields 1,201 results. I clicked on random products across all 15 pages of results, and every one was yours from WilyShylee.

It's Google that is the problem for you here.
If I search Google for [welsh__designs] it gives me results for [welsh designs] where the top AI overview is for someone who is not you, but the next three results are for you - two Pins and your Instagram. After that it's results for welsh + designs 😞 But, if one notices this option at top of search results page

and well yes Google, that IS what I mean as that's what I typed in to begin with, grrr, and I click it, results are a bit different with one of your stores showing up in the AI overview at top. But it's this store
https://www.zazzle.com/store/welsh_designs_photos  (WilyShylee Photos) with only one underscore and a different pseudo-name. And if I search for [WilyShylee] I get very few results but the top result is yet another one of your stores - 
https://www.zazzle.com/store/wilyshyleestamping (WilyShylee Stamping).

I don't like to be a doomsayer but with 7 stores where many have psuedo-names different from the URLs and welsh and wilyshylee make appearances in both, plus the underscores issues, I think Google will forever be confused with your properties. Given the history you shared where you have been successful on other PODS but haven't really put much focus on Zazzle so have few sales and few views and hidden products because of the inactivity .. I really think the best long-range bet is start over with ONE new store with a carefully chosen URL (with NO underscores or hyphens) and a pseudo-name that matches, and re-post everything to that new store. It would be a big undertaking but if Google results are important to you, I don't know, I'm not seeing it getting much better as things stand. One store/URL can house your entire brand and you can can employ Collections and self-made categories to organize things within it. And in the long run, it might make things easier for both you and Google/ 

[welshdesigns]

Wow!  That’s really some investigative work you did there, thanks!  Yes, Houston, we have a problem! :).   BTW the instagram you found on your search isn’t me either! At least when I did it last night, it wasn’t me.  

Weird there’s a conflict on how Goggle says it handles underscores in things (maybe URL’s only?). Here’s what their AI said about them, and it says underscores are treated as spaces not collapsed into a single word like you’re seeing in documentation.

Underscore ( _ 😞 Google's algorithm generally treats a single underscore as a word separator, similar to a hyphen or a space. So, if you search for my_search_query, Google is likely to treat it as if you had searched for my search query. It will show you results that contain those three words, regardless of whether they are separated by a space or an underscore. For example, a search for white_dog will show results for "white dog" and "white-dog".

So, yeah I created a few stores to get away from the double underscores and renamed a couple of the old stores but now I’m in the middle of the transition.  I JUST renamed the oldest store to WilyShylee, but I’m rethinking it all AGAIN now, and might just start a single store called WilyShylee and put everything in that single store. (I have reserved it, just nothing in it yet)  While lots of clicks, it’s not “hard’ to copy them over.  I like the multiple stores sometimes, and the categories are clean/clear to me.  But the collections get out of hand for lots of stores, because of the 10 collections per store requirement.  

Thanks for all the work on this, it’s given me a lot to consider (again!) 🙂

[ColsCreations]

BTW the instagram you found on your search isn’t me either! At least when I did it last night, it wasn’t me.

This is the one I encountered last night. If that's not you your issues are getting more complicated by the day. 😮

Weird there’s a conflict on how Goggle says it handles underscores in things (maybe URL’s only?). Here’s what their AI said about them, and it says underscores are treated as spaces not collapsed into a single word like you’re seeing in documentation.

I agree, weird and def a conflict in what's happening. Everything I've read says underscores are ignored so the characters on either side of them run together as one word. But when I searched Google for [welsh__designs] it gave me results for [welsh + designs], treating the underscores as spaces like hyphens are supposed to represent. And then the option of "did you really mean ...". Just uggg! I get upset with Google in recent times as I'll be searching for something and scrolling results and then will notice the line in red under the result that says "x keyword not included" with a strike-through and I get so frustrated; if the result doesn't have that search term I intentionally entered in it why are you showing it to me???? I don't like the state of Google where it thinks it knows better than you what you want to see. 

Anyways, I think your back-up idea of re-branding as WilyShylee is the way to go. Searching for that on Google (no hyphens or underscores) yields only 5 results for me and 3 of them lead to you 

If you have the the time and no real stats to lose, that's the way I would go. 

[welshdesigns]

Yes, that instagram is me, that’s my watercolor artwork.  So at least that works!  But there’s no underscore, so sometimes you can find it, if google doesn’t split up the word into two just for fun! :).  I’m heading down the single store path today just to see what I think, the single store, and single word “brand” of WilyShyee appeals to me, pretty much nothing can go wrong with that I don’t think.  BUT moving over the products is scary.  But lots are recent and none have sold enough to lose anything.  So long term if’s feeling “right” today anyway! .  The amount of Categories i have across the main 4 stores is enough to make me want to drink heavily! 🙂