Etsy Title and Tag Rules: What Etsy Accepts and What It Rejects

Two kinds of rules

Every Etsy listing has to pass two kinds of rules. Hard rules are enforced by Etsy: break them and the listing is rejected or a tag is dropped. Quality rules are not enforced, but they decide how much of your title and tags actually works for you in search. This guide covers both.

Title: the hard rules

140 characters

A title can be up to 140 characters, spaces included. Long titles are allowed, but search results and many screens show only the start of a title, so the most important phrase belongs at the front.

Limited and rejected characters

• %, : and & can each appear only once in a title.
• $, ^ and the backtick are not accepted at all.
• Titles can contain letters, numbers, punctuation, math symbols and the trademark, copyright and registered signs. Emoji and other symbols are rejected.

No more than three all-caps words

Etsy allows up to three words written entirely in capital letters. "SALE" or "XL" is fine; a title shouting every word is not.

Title: the quality rules

• Lead with the product and the main search phrase. "Retro Mountain Sunset Shirt" tells a shopper and Etsy's search what the item is.
• Keep it readable. Separate phrases with commas instead of stacking keywords. A title that reads like a sentence fragment is easier to trust.
• Do not end on a stray word. A title ending in ", Women" looks unfinished; end with a real phrase like "Gift for Mom".
• A practical length. Podinfly's SEO engine aims for 60 to 110 characters: long enough to carry two or three search phrases, short enough that the start is what people see.

Tags: the hard rules

• Up to 13 tags per listing.
• Up to 20 characters per tag, spaces included.
• Tags can contain letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens and apostrophes, plus a few symbols like the trademark sign. Commas, ampersands and quotation marks are not accepted.

Tags: the quality rules

Use all 13

An empty tag slot is a search your listing cannot match. If you are struggling to fill 13, think about who the item is for, the occasion, the style, the material and the gift angle.

Phrases beat single words

"hiking gift for dad" describes a real search; "gift" alone competes with everything on Etsy. Multi-word tags are usually more specific and more useful.

Do not repeat yourself

Writing the same tag twice wastes a slot. Repeating one word in most of your tags does too: "mountain shirt", "mountain tee", "mountain top", "mountain gift" all lean on the same word. Podinfly flags a word used in more than three tags.

Avoid words that suggest a digital file

If you sell printed products, words like PNG, SVG, download, digital or printable make buyers think they are buying a file. That leads to confused messages and returns.

Check a listing in seconds

Our free Etsy title and tag checker runs these hard rules and quality checks on your title and tags as you type, separating what Etsy would reject from what is only a suggestion. It runs in your browser and nothing you paste is sent to our servers.

Inside Podinfly, the SEO engine writes titles and all 13 tags against the same rules and regenerates anything that fails before it reaches your listing.