Tag Spamming & Tag Relevance

[ashleyh]

Just did a search for "vintage wedding invitations" and guess what 99% of the results all have in common?

Not vintage in the slightest...And mostly florals.

You don't even get to ANY that have a vintage style to them until the second page where it still is 90% FLORAL for that page and all of the following.

And upon digging further I find it is the same Stores over and over that seem to have just thrown all kinds of "keywords" into their tags like fishing bait so they can try and hook anything that comes by. I'm sure this happens to other areas as well. It's quite frustrating. 

A google search brings up the appropriate results for Zazzle invitations that are ACTUALLY of a vintage style so I guess we should be thankful Google can filter out the IRRELAVANT results and show the customer what they are actually searching for.

What happened to tag spam penalties? design relevance? etc

If someone has to sort through a few pages of irrelevant designs before they find yours, chances are they will move on to another site or decide those styles are just not "out there".

[RodneyK]

I do think it would increase the sales of serious creators and Zazzle overall if gross examples of tag spamming were stopped. Vintage is a good example, perhaps used often since it is hard to define. But there are many other examples. This is something for Zazzle to work on. Zazzle has access to the software experts. Zazzle stands to benefit due to increased sales and satisfied customers. I know there are many problems to tackle. It seems to me being able to separate the serious creators from the others must certainly be in the future. I understand that new creators make mistakes. I did. We all eventually adjusted and have professional approaches to designing for Zazzle. We are happy to be here on Zazzle seling our designs. Zazzzle - we need all the support you can give us.

[Windy]

Just to recap, for anyone who missed all of this. I linked above to a thread entitled "combatting tag spammers". That thread was posted in the final days of May 2022 and  has now been removed as of June 1,  2022.

The thread contained links showing some 1024 instances of products posted by what look to be autogenerated anonymous accounts using completely irrelevant tags. The use of such tags has been successful in pushing a large number of non customized generic type products to  the top of Zazzle search results.  I happened to post a few of the ridiculously irrelevant tags on my Twitter here

 https://twitter.com/InBirthdayCards/status/1531260278104629250

Once  the first set of 1024 such products was  found, even more were found.  Many people added to the thread showing more instances of these products. Questions were raised as to how much computer power and storage space is being devoted to these apparently autocreated spam accounts.

Now that Zazzle is aware, surely action is going to be taken.

[Westerngirl2]

And a similar synopsis of this problem is related in my posts above in this thread. Add to that the fact that many of these "stores", if they have added media pictures, are using some of the same pictures, usually groups of people in a work place setting. Just curious as to how so many different "shopkeepers" have access to the same group of media pictures, unless they are just all in the same group and pulling from internet photos.

None of us relish causing trouble; we just want a level playing field, and for everyone to follow the same rules.

[Scott]

Yes, we did remove a discussion on this topic. One user posted information that we elected to hide from public view.

The good: we were provided with a list of users that we can use to investigate these tag spam claims.

The bad: the list contained the full names of other Creators, seemingly without any constructive purpose whatsoever. The user's list already contained example products and store names, which are completely sufficient for us to look up the user. Adding the Creator's full name is not only unnecessary, but it's something that we wish to avoid here in the community.

If you (anyone) ever have an issue with another Zazzle user please contact us directly. Singling people out by name is not something we'd like to see here in the community.

I've been away for a few days, and I hope to catch up with the team on this topic tomorrow. I am sorry that we haven't been able to make more progress on this topic faster than we have.

[shellifitz]

I would like to mention that your request for examples was vague and easy to misunderstand what you meant. I feel like said user would not have posted all that information if your request had been more clear. They did invest a bit of their free time tracking down this list for you and I hope you will check into it and see what is going on. Reporting it through the normal channels is not getting it done. I have personally reported many of these same type violations And feel like it was wasted time and effort. 

[Scott]

It was vague? You asked Zazzle a question, and I replied right after your post with a request for examples. None of this exchange (screenshot below) had anything to do with the tag spam conversation.

If anything, this reinforces my longstanding desire for people to avoid going off-topic in a conversation. Not going to blame this on you for going off topic, but I will blame myself for engaging in an off-topic comment. This will probably be the end of that.

 

[Westerngirl2]

Thanks for looking into this, Scott.

If you need any examples of the spamming and "interesting" stores that I've alluded to, please reach out to me. There are many, many of them, and I'd be happy to assist in providing info that I have found.

[Zob1]

I started the thread, and it had developed as a general spam discussion with almost no reference to my original suggestion, so apologies if rules have been broken. That said, the largest proportion of those aforementioned accounts were identifiable by an identical combination of text formatting, name construction and description spam, including the formatting of the creator names, and were producing inappropriate search results. I hope Zazzle can get to the bottom of it all.

[Westerngirl2]

Looks like we are getting some results. Several of the spammers I bookmarked seem to be "missing" this morning, and so do the tag spammed products. Others seem to have changed their tags to appropriate ones.

I knew Z would get on this and fix it. THANK YOU!

[shellifitz]

If I was another user reading the thread I may not have known which of my posts you were asking for examples and could easily have misunderstood thinking you wanted examples of tag spamming instead of anonymous profiles. I will try not to go off topic in future too.  

[Windy]

I have  records of 43 of the many spam tagged products I had reported over the past year. (I only report egregious situations where it's clear that automation or a completely thoughtless approach has been taken.). I am heartened to see that another Zazzler is seeing some of her reports taking effect, with products removed or retagged. I will keep you guys posted as to when I see some of my 43 reported offending products being addressed. 

[shellifitz]

I am glad to hear that some of the offending accounts are being taken care of, so thanks Zazzle for taking some action!  Let's hope we see the marketplace and search results improve. 

[Barbara]

Thoughts that occurred to me while reading through this entire thread:

The multiple-store spamming problem reminds me of what we see on Amazon, which in turn reminds me of the misuse of Quick Create (as opposed to the ethical use). Quite a long time ago, Zazzle considered getting rid of QC and then apparently thought better of it because of legitimate users. Anyway, I assume several bad-faith users have grouped together and found a lovely way to game the system.

As was already mentioned, when it comes to "vintage" and "retro," it  depends on the age of the designer. Both those terms are somewhat vague, and so their use works well to fill in the gaps of the existing hard definitions for "antique" and "semi-antique," which are "100 years and older" and "50 to 100" years. Because I'm older, any design that mimics, say, a design from the 1940's would be retro. If it's the product itself, it would be vintage. But my memory goes back a lot further than a person in their thirties who would consider something from 20 years ago being retro or vintage. We probably have to give leeway to people on this.

And those are my thoughts.

[Windy]

Full agreement. There are differences of opinion as to which tags might be useful to shoppers. And there is abuse of the entire system. Reporting abusers of the system makes sense, but when I see a tag I am not sure I agree with, I just move along.

[Westerngirl2]

Agreed. I think this thread started with one thing in mind (vintage/retro) but then evolved into the rampant horrible tagging of just throwing everything but the kitchen sink (and sometimes even that!) into the tags. Mom, Dad, Best Friend, Dog, Cat, Gerbil, Best Uncle, Graduation, etc., etc. into one image or term that might allude to only one of 3 dozen different words used. Just throwing a line out there to try to catch a fish.

[Barbara]

What is the logic of tag spamming? What do spammers believe will happen if a customer who's searching for "dog" comes across a product with a cat in it because it was tagged "cat"? Does the spammer think the person will say, "Just what I was looking for"? When I come across this using a search engine, and I often do with companies buying ads, it irritates me and I slide right past them. Why would a customer not do the same thing here? Spammers hurt both the designer and Zazzle.

[Westerngirl2]

Yes, it hurts ALL designers, because it muddies up the MP. I'm like you, I'll leave a site that offers me a bunch of other design topics when I specifically search for a term. No one has the time or inclination to sift through all the stuff they aren't interested in. And why a designer would do that? Just hoping to throw a line into the water with bad bait, I guess. It's stupid.

And I've caught some of my designs with a bad tag. It happens, because I usually use an existing design to start a new product with, and sometimes I miss taking out a tag that isn't appropriate. I always correct it when I find it, and that's often why I don't get excited about seeing a product in the MP with one inappropriate tag. It happens. But these folks that have recently stuffed the MP with products that might carry ONE appropriate tag and the rest of the tags a hodgepodge of inappropriate tags that they think might get their product looked at by someone who isn't even interested in a design like that.....I don't follow the reasoning at all. But yet, there it is.

Having confidence that it will all get fixed; I imagine it is not a quick and easy fix for Zazzle, so I appreciate their efforts. It will make everything better for the shopping customer and all of us, too.

[Windy]

When the deleted thread was up, I looked a bunch of those stores and as far as I could tell each of them made a certain number of products and then stopped cold. I assume they stopped using the method specifically because, as you point out, @Westerngirl2 , this tag spam method does not actually bring sales. 

So my theory is, someone (or a few people) made a giant mess which is harming the sales and the designers and the functionality of the website....and just left this big huge mess there for years. Hopefully some of it will now be wiped away. 

I have been watching my 43 reported items and will let y'all know when any of them disappears.

[Zob1]

It's surely all about the volume; copy and paste (or somehow automate) your way to having a huge number of products (with identical/almost identical tags and descriptions), and you'll get some hits. Some customers will be browsing for a gift, and might be inspired by something unrelated to their original idea.

[shellifitz]

It's called "gaming the system" and hurts all of us. 

[Barbara]

I just ran a simple search in the marketplace such as a customer might do: "kitchen posters." By and large, I got what I expected. However, I found a few examples of people who tagged a poster with the various rooms their poster might work in, which led to some anomalies such as a travel poster. But there were posters having nothing to do with kitchens and that had no tags, title, or description that mentioned a kitchen. If this is common--something I'd have to test for a whole lot--then it might be adding to the tag spam problem.

[Connie]

I get the same irrelevant results when I search for "vintage wedding invitations." Those watercolor floral results are definitely NOT vintage in any sense or interpretation of the word! In fact, I complained to Zazzle before, using the "search Feedback" at the bottom of the page, but apparently it didn't do any good. There's one particular seller who started the spam ball rolling in weddings around 2019, and now more and more sellers are following suit ("If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"). Before that, I could search for any wedding theme, and mostly get relevant results. Now those floral invites show up at the top of almost ALL wedding invitation searches, and they are irrelevant for most of them! But these are Pro Diamond sellers, so I guess Zazzle looks the other way.

[Westerngirl2]

These new spammers aren't Pro Diamond, although I agree that is also a problem.

The new ones came on a few months ago; I first reported several of them in March. Here's an actual example of one set of tags for one product.

"golf is my valentine funnykoala bear birthday papa ofgolfing retro style vintagereal girls hunt talented girlsfunny disc golf frisbee sayingcupids favorite dog dad heartfunny carpenter to save timevintage 3d fishing saved melevel 12 unlocked awesome 2010"

The product they are tagging? A shirt with a simple retro golf club. No text.

And this is one of the more "benign" ones; some are much worse than this. This one has fairly irrelevant tags; can't imagine it nets them anything. Some of the tags are more intrusive, like specific breeds of dogs, common sayings, etc. I imagine they are just computer generated. There are at least hundreds of these; I'm guessing it's in the thousands, although I don't have the time to really look. I'm guessing the "individual" stores are in the dozens, if not the hundreds by now. If someone wants to really look, have fun! But please do think about reporting them when found...maybe eventually we'll get somewhere.

[Westerngirl2]

But I feel like I might have unintentionally derailed your point with the vintage wedding invitations, Connie, and I certainly didn't mean to do that. Your point is very valid, and I hope the situation is eventually remedied.

The tag spamming is just out of control.

[Connie]

@Westerngirl2I was addressing the original post, specifically regarding vintage wedding invitations. In that case, the irrelevant results on the top several pages ARE mostly Diamond Pro. But I also have found the situation you described, which is even more egregious tag spam, and those seem to be the same fake accounts that flood Amazon by the millions.

[Windy]

We need another thread about egregious tag spamming by automated accounts. We used to have a thread for that. Gone now.

[Connie]

Yes, I just came across a bunch of those, and I don't know how to report them?

[Westerngirl2]

In the "About this Design" section on the product page, there is a picture of the design. Underneath that is a blue flag with the text "Report this design". Click on that.

Although it says "design" there is a choice to report tag spamming. I've been keeping track of the ones I report, because in most of them, nothing has been done.

[Thecolourshop]

Yeah tag spamming is frustrating. With that said, while retro takes your mind to forty+ years ago, vintage just means something twenty years old or older so 1990’s style or before. There were plenty of floral designs running around in the 1990’s, albeit nothing like what’s available today. I’m terrible at tagging, and it definitely hurts me instead of helping me, so it’s probably not helping all the people tagging with stuff that doesn’t truly describe their work. Doubt it’s a sneaky think for a lot of people though. I think a lot of people (myself super included) are just inherently terribly at tagging. Lol

[Thecolourshop]

*thing

[Barbara]

In fashion, vintage is definitely at least 20 years old. I was corrected a few days ago in the world of cars, so I just now looked it up and it apparently depends on where you live, but generally, a classic car is at least 20 years old. (I'm only now replacing a classic 1999 Saab, poor baby.) Antique cars are over 40 years old. All I can figure is that a vintage car is between 20 and 40 years old.. Then there's furniture, which has to be a hundred or more years old to be an antique.

Other than retro, it's a confusion, so I like to stick with retro for what I've designed to appear, say, Edwardian, but I'll be darned if I'll deny terms like antique, vintage, and old-fashioned. Otherwise, I'd be cutting my nose off to spite my face.

Colorwash's Home

[Westerngirl2]

The vintage vs. retro will continue into the ages, I bet. Everyone has a different opinion of which is what; I've found myself confused about it, also.

I don't really mind when I find a product tagged "vintage" when I think it's "retro" or even neither. It's such an opinion thing, and I think it is for customers, too.

 But when I find a product design with a specific breed of dog tagged "golf, rose floral, best aunt ever, autism, cat, guitar playing dad, best welder ever" etc., and none of those terms have anything to do with the actual design.....frankly, it ticks me off. Because here it is a year later from this original discussion and these types of tag spammers are still all over Zazzle. They still have the same store name format that we've mentioned before in this thread, usually lower case first and seemingly last names run together, similar descriptions, some of the tags are obviously just copied and pasted to every product they throw out there. In some instances there are pages and pages of those displayed, pushing out too many designs that have been appropriately tagged by responsible designers.

I try to report them when I see them....but you could spend months doing that. I'd be happy to find them all and report them if I was paid to do it...ha!

It's just discouraging.