Whether you’re an Etsy member or an occasional browser, you’ll notice the sheer mass of products available on this crafter’s market site.  Their database is enormous, full of thumbnails with handmade and vintage thumb warmers, log-shaped table lamps, garage sale finds and flower bouquets made of art deco brooches.

I’ve made it a daily habit to peruse the Etsy market, even when I’m in no mood to buy.  With daily email newsletters and shop RSS feeds, I get curated content delivered from editors as well as areas of my own interests.  There are other tools a registered user can take advantage of, such as bookmarking their favorite shops and seeing the shops of others that adore your favorites as well.  But Etsy’s grown significantly since launching a few years back, and it could use some tweaking as far as search and recommendations go.

Coming off a $20 million funding round, Etsy revealed an experimental search tool today, which starts out with a quiz and offers recommendations from there.  Called Taste Test, it’s a tactic used by others like Google’s new Boutiques.com, and VisualDNA.  You’re presented with a series of images, from which you can mark your preferences, and get a starting point for shopping its site.  You can see other users with similar tastes, or continue to browse based on these initial recommendations.

As a regular Etsy user, the new search algorithm doesn’t do much for me, and it’s not something I want to use repeatedly every time I’m at a loss for a shopping/browsing starting point.  But it is a more engaging way to reel in new shoppers, or even those that have forgotten how fun Etsy can be.  Nevertheless, Etsy’s search could be so much more.

Since Etsy is sticking to the straightforward methods of content delivery, search and engagement, they might as well incorporate a bit more social graph influence, perhaps drawing on the tastes of one’s Facebook friends.  Previous purchase behavior is another area to develop, with tons of potential data to re-purpose (Etsy, get crafty!) for recommendations.

What’s interesting about Etsy’s experiment is its potential for further connecting sellers and shoppers.  In discussing features like this, I often wonder the role of a brand as it compares to the consumer (VisualDNA’s example is primed for this).  But for Etsy’s unique market, these two ends of the gradient are often one and the same.  Developing a marketing tool around these recommendations should be an end goal for Etsy, especially as it becomes an increasingly influential marketplace.

I do like that Etsy provides a permalink for your resulting recommendations (here‘s my first run), enabling anyone to create a sharable version of their own curated Etsy newsletter (in a way).  This is where consumers and sellers (brands) can begin to drive activity around an automated recommendation tool, without having to pour over the site performing hours of manual search.

Since this is still in an experimental stage, there’s always a chance Etsy may ditch this effort all together.  But should Etsy feel the need to loop it into their long-term marketing services and personal cloud caches, I do think the algorithm can prove quite valuable as an automated service.  Incorporating it deeper into its user experience is certainly something I’m wishing for.