Fastest Way to Trigger Index and/or Re-Index - Products not Found in Public Store

[tracytrends]

Hello
I learned in this thread (Aug 2022) that we should check that our back-end "public" status products are actually showing when viewing our Public Store:
https://community.zazzle.com/t5/technical-issues/how-long-for-new-products-to-show/m-p/34168

Just getting around to checking and thinking about the best Store Structure to monitor this....
- I've found quite a few products (created circa Aug 2022) that have "public" status in back-end, but are not showing in public store (store viewed incognito or in a different browser).

What is the FASTEST way to solve this?
a) Edit some meta data and view the newly edited product:
- Does it matter what I edit - Title, tags, description, audience etc? Will any metadata edit trigger a re-index?
- wait ~48hrs to .... 14 days(?)  >>> see if it shows in Public Store

b) Recreate the product
- wait ~48hrs to ....14 days(?)    >>> see if it shows in Public Store

Any ideas on what is the best, fastest method to solve this?
- Do both methods fall into the same Indexing Queue, or do we think newly created fall into a different, slower Queue?

*thank you for all thoughts

[tracytrends]

Along the lines of this original post, how is everyone checking that there was not a glitch, and your products are actually indexed?
- Do you just enter your exact product title inside Zazzle search and if it does not show up, it is not indexed?

[tracytrends]

Following up on this topic to see if anyone has thoughts or best-practice solutions on maintaining visibility of our products. There have been so many reports of drop in sales and I think part must be our visibility.

*It might be helpful to begin looking very closely at your own MP Search and Public Store visibility - and report back.

Observations over the last 6-12 mos:
MARKETPLACE (MP):
1) SOLD ITEM OBSERVATION: I have sold products that do not show as "hidden" (which is correct - they should not be hidden, since they sold) but they do NOT appear in Marketplace Search results. Sometimes Zazzle  shows in light grey text "No results found for "my search term in here" and other times, Zazzle shows maybe 20 results and NONE are mine.
- It gets interesting when I click through a competitor product, because then, MY PRODUCT DOES appear under "Other designs you might like"
- I tested creating a brand new product (thus duplicating the listing) and the NEW item now appears in MP Search and both appear as "Other designs you might like" but not next to each other, one is further scrolling.

QUESTION:
What would you do? Recreate and keep both, keep the duplication? Recreate and keep duplication until the new item begins selling, then delete the old?
- My concerns are that the sold item has links from Pinterest and ranks in Google, so I'm a bit frustrated and disappointed that it seems I have to recreate and let my sold item with stats go
(PS> I have emailed support since August and they've yet to provide an answer that gives me good direction. They say my items are in the Marketplace, which in a way they are, they are just not in Search Results, even when only 1 page of items show. The ticket goes back and forth still.)

PUBLIC STORE
1) UNSOLD: I have unsold products missing from my public store, (they are not hidden) and I've found that if I recreate them, they do appear in my store. This has been a lot of work as I discovered 100s missing. I did find one comment in social groups that said anyone who used Quick Create may have issues with visibility. (OK, so I've been recreating, and it seems to solve the issue).
- I made the assumption that anything not appearing in my Public Store, would also not be in Marketplace Search (this may be incorrect) and I proceeded to recreate. (I tried to watch for views before recreate/delete which could also an indicate whether they are actually in MP Search.)
- But yesterday, I found products showing in MP Search but they were NOT in my Public Store. Frustrating because then, maybe all the products I recreated actually were in MP Search and just missing from store. (But I probably would still have to take the same actions anyway as it needs to be solved).
--- at the moment, I am continuing my recreate/delete plan as I don't know what else to do to regain visibility.

QUESTION: Any ideas on why our products might not appear in Public Store and/or MP Search?
- It is not the 100K product limit per user as I am below that
- I do drill down in the public store, down to the category level and the items are still missing (so it is not Zazzle's limit on # items shown in a Search)
- I did try adding cover and video & still they don't show
- Also pls remember, these are old products and they do not indicate "hidden" inside my backend

*thank you for anyone who wishes to check theirs, give thoughts and possible faster solution ideas

[Windy]

My mind is boggled reading this. I have done some searching through the years and don't remember, other than just one time, running into this particular issue of my products not showing up when I search, except in cases where what I have designed is too common, and I don't think that is the situation you are describing here. When I got to the part about Quick Create possibly maybe being responsible, I realized that maybe this entire problem might  not really be an issue for me. I wish I could be of more help, but I only encountered this one time with one product and a few months later the product eventually showed in the marketplace without my doing anything. 

[tracytrends]

Thanks for taking time to try and read thru the issue.

It's not just QC because I've got some products, like calendars that were never able to be done by QC.
- It must be new search updates from the past year or so. I know there's a current index delay.
I am also an affiliate and when I run searches for calendars in the marketplace, many that I link to do not show in search and searching for other things often gives crazy results.
It's just strange how the marketplace is choosing what to display. Can't figure the logic...

But thanks for your reply 🙂

[Zorinda]

I have a fuzzy recollection of an issue that was discovered long ago where zazzle wasn’t assigning marketplace departments to submitted items making them virtually impossible  to find. Maybe that’s part of the problem.   That meant that if you submitted a pillow,  ‘pillow’ wasn’t automatically appended to the title.  And if you looked at ‘marketplace department’ you had to assign it yourself.  I had loads of those items and as I recall finding them was like looking for a needle in the haystack.  I only knew to correct a handful, so I’m sure many of mine are just floating in the ether, lost in space.

Others who were affected may have a better recollection as to specifics and if there’s any connection and / or way to identify the marketplace orphans.

[tracytrends]

This is a great idea. Thank you - I will begin watching for Title endings and also the category.

I've already seen that transfer item sometimes transferred the item to the product but it was listed in the old category. Like if I transferred from tshirt to phone case, later I noticed the cat was still tshirts in my backend.

Great idea for something to check - thank you...

[Zorinda]

And if a product has nothing appended to the title and no marketplace department  whatsoever assigned it would be virtually unsearchable.  I seem to recall that one department where this was actually happening to was certain greeting cards.  So if you used your key words + that certain card type in your search, you’d never be able to find it because while the product physically exists in the zazzle universe it’s not connected  to the card department.