Autocomplete woes
May 10, 2018 7:29 PM Subscribe
How do I get google autocomplete to suggest my business's new website instead of my old etsy shop?
I make fancy chocolates and sell them on the internet, my business name is Jon Good Chocolates. I started off selling on Etsy, but about a year ago I switched to a shopify website and got a domain name, jongoodchocolates.com. But when a customer starts to type this web address into a browser bar, google autocompletes or autosuggests or whatever my old etsy shop instead.
One factor may be that my etsy shop was appeared on a buzzfeed listicle two years ago which got a lot of traffic sent there, and Google's algorithm notices that. Currently, my etsy shop is up but with messages that say "go to my real website, jongoodchocolates.com instead" but that's 1. unprofessional, 2. kinda sketchy, and 3. one more step in the process that potential customers might give up at.
So what do I do? De-activate my etsy shop? (or would this just be sending traffic to a dead site?) Is there some department at Google I could contact about this? Is there a script I run? I've searched for things but they're all full of jargon I don't understand.
I make fancy chocolates and sell them on the internet, my business name is Jon Good Chocolates. I started off selling on Etsy, but about a year ago I switched to a shopify website and got a domain name, jongoodchocolates.com. But when a customer starts to type this web address into a browser bar, google autocompletes or autosuggests or whatever my old etsy shop instead.
One factor may be that my etsy shop was appeared on a buzzfeed listicle two years ago which got a lot of traffic sent there, and Google's algorithm notices that. Currently, my etsy shop is up but with messages that say "go to my real website, jongoodchocolates.com instead" but that's 1. unprofessional, 2. kinda sketchy, and 3. one more step in the process that potential customers might give up at.
So what do I do? De-activate my etsy shop? (or would this just be sending traffic to a dead site?) Is there some department at Google I could contact about this? Is there a script I run? I've searched for things but they're all full of jargon I don't understand.
Seconding that google autocompletes first on your own history, so I’m pretty sure that’s what is happening here. Try incognito mode or a different browser.
That said.. when i tried searching on my iPhone Siri indeed did suggest your etsy shop. I was going to give you a bunch of ideas about how to manipulate the search engines here, but that won’t work — when i searched google i got your main site, then facebook, then instagram, then twitter... and then i stopped scrolling. So google’s got it right anyway, which is really all that matters. No clue how to fix Siri though. She’s broken in so many ways regardless.
posted by cgg at 8:20 PM on May 10, 2018
That said.. when i tried searching on my iPhone Siri indeed did suggest your etsy shop. I was going to give you a bunch of ideas about how to manipulate the search engines here, but that won’t work — when i searched google i got your main site, then facebook, then instagram, then twitter... and then i stopped scrolling. So google’s got it right anyway, which is really all that matters. No clue how to fix Siri though. She’s broken in so many ways regardless.
posted by cgg at 8:20 PM on May 10, 2018
Response by poster: Are you sure this happens when a customer does this and not just when you do?
I've tried it on several machines and had several customers tell me this. I'm glad it's not doing that for you, though, maybe it's just a matter of time...
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:27 PM on May 10, 2018
I've tried it on several machines and had several customers tell me this. I'm glad it's not doing that for you, though, maybe it's just a matter of time...
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:27 PM on May 10, 2018
Can you just have the Etsy site redirect to your domain?
posted by unreasonable at 2:21 AM on May 11, 2018
posted by unreasonable at 2:21 AM on May 11, 2018
I've tried it on several machines
Are these machines on which you've previously visited your etsy shop?
Do you know what an incognito window is? What happens when you try in incognito?
Can you just have the Etsy site redirect to your domain
No.
So what do I do? De-activate my etsy shop?
No. It will never really disappear and will instead just re-direct to Etsy's homepage, so this is the worst option.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:47 PM on May 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Are these machines on which you've previously visited your etsy shop?
Do you know what an incognito window is? What happens when you try in incognito?
Can you just have the Etsy site redirect to your domain
No.
So what do I do? De-activate my etsy shop?
No. It will never really disappear and will instead just re-direct to Etsy's homepage, so this is the worst option.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:47 PM on May 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: an update: this problem seems to be going away as I do more stuff on the internet. One possible factor is that the day before I posed this question, I signed up for gsuite to get @domain name e-mail addresses, and that might have shifted the algorithm a bit. Thanks for all y'all's help!
posted by Jon_Evil at 1:19 AM on May 13, 2018
posted by Jon_Evil at 1:19 AM on May 13, 2018
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posted by DarlingBri at 8:06 PM on May 10, 2018 [3 favorites]