How we grade an Etsy listing
Every listing score we show comes from the checks below. This is the whole rubric — the weights, the bars, and the things we deliberately do not score.
The score is ours, not Etsy's
Etsy does not publish a listing score and does not give one to us. The figures we show you — views, favourites, tags, dates — come from Etsy's own API. The score is our rubric applied to those figures, which is why the extension panel says so on every card.
That means a high score is not a promise about where you will rank. It means the mechanical parts of your listing — the ones you control, and the ones Etsy's search can actually read — are in order.
The 6 scored checks
These add up to 100 points. Each one either passes or does not, and partial credit is given where the check is a measurement rather than a yes/no — a title at half the length gets half the points.
| Check | Worth | What it has to clear |
|---|---|---|
| Title length | 30 pts | At least 100 characters, so there is room for the phrases buyers actually type. |
| Multi-word tag phrases | 18 pts | At least 70% of your tags are phrases rather than single words. |
| Using all 13 tags | 15 pts | All 13 tag slots filled. An empty slot is a search you cannot appear in. |
| Description depth | 14 pts | At least 1200 characters. Skipped for scripts a character count cannot fairly measure, such as Japanese or Chinese. |
| Tags within Etsy's limit | 13 pts | Every tag within Etsy's 20-character limit (30 outside English). Etsy cuts the rest without telling you. |
| Long-tail tag mix | 10 pts | At least 8 tags that are 3-5 words long and still inside the character limit. |
Checks that advise but never score
These appear on your card and in your list of fixes, and they are worth zero points. We add a check this way when the advice is sound but scoring it would move every existing grade — a seller who screenshotted 78 last week should not find 71 with no explanation.
| Check | Worth | What it looks for |
|---|---|---|
| Materials named | 0 pts | A physical listing says what it is made of, so it appears for buyers filtering by material. |
| Tags describe this listing | 0 pts | At least 1 tag shares a word with your title, so the tags can be confirmed to describe this item. Skipped for scripts that do not separate words, such as Japanese or Chinese. |
Why a perfect listing can read 99
A score of 100 has to mean there is nothing left to fix. If every scored check passes but an advisory one does not, we show 99 rather than 100 — otherwise the number at the top of the card would disagree with the advice underneath it.
What this score does not measure
Etsy ranks on things no outside tool can see, and we would rather say so than imply our number covers them:
- Your conversion rate, click-through and sales history. Etsy weights buyer behaviour heavily. It is private to your shop.
- Your photos. They drive clicks more than almost anything else, and no API exposes how good they are.
- Reviews, dispatch time and customer service. Real ranking factors, not listing text.
- Whether your keywords are the right ones. The rubric checks that your tags are well formed, not that they match what buyers search for. That is a different question, and it is what our keyword tool is for.
See it on your own listing
Every check above runs on the free listing audit — paste any Etsy listing URL, no account needed. For a whole shop, use the free shop audit.