How to use the Etsy tag generator
- Name the item the way a shopper would search for it: "retro bass fishing hoodie", not "Sunset Design 07".
- Add details: what the design shows, the style, and who buys it. A detail you leave out cannot become a tag.
- Press the button. Each tag shows its length, so you can see at a glance that it fits.
- Remove any tag that repeats your category or an attribute you already set, then copy each tag (or all 13 with Copy) into the Tags field of your listing.
Etsy’s tag rules (as of November 2026)
From Etsy’s Help Center article How to Use Tags to Get Found in Search:
- Up to 13 tags per listing.
- Up to 20 characters per tag, spaces included.
- Letters, numbers and spaces only. You can use an apostrophe or a hyphen inside a word, but a tag cannot start with one. Accented letters such as é or ñ are allowed.
Etsy’s Seller Handbook guide Keywords 101 (updated August 2025) adds the advice that matters most: use all 13 tags, prefer multi-word phrases to single words, do not repeat tags, and skip phrases your category and attributes already cover, because Etsy treats those like tags.
What good tags look like for a print-on-demand item
Take a pullover hoodie with a retro sunset and a jumping bass, listed in Etsy’s hoodies category.
Weak: hoodie, fishing, fish, bass fishing hoodie, bass fishing hoodies, gift. Single words compete with millions of listings, "hoodie" repeats the category, and the plural adds nothing because Etsy already matches both forms.
Better: bass fishing hoodie, retro fishing shirt, largemouth bass, 80s sunset hoodie, fisherman gift, fishing dad gift, lake life sweatshirt. Each phrase is a search someone could make, each is 20 characters or less, and together they cover the fish, the style, the activity and the buyer.
If the phrase you want is longer than 20 characters, split it into shorter phrases that still read like searches. "Vintage fishing gift for dad" becomes "vintage fishing" and "fishing dad gift".
Mistakes to avoid
- Leaving tags empty. Thirteen is the limit, not a target to stay under.
- Misspelling on purpose. Etsy corrects common typos in searches, so a misspelled tag only wastes a slot.
- Tags in a second language. Write them in your shop’s language. Etsy translates them when it matches searches in other languages.
- Brand and team names. A tag with a trademark you do not own can get the listing taken down. Check your phrases with Podly’s trademark check.
- Setting tags once and forgetting them. Etsy suggests refreshing the tags of listings that get little traffic in your Shop Stats.
Next, write a title buyers understand at a glance with the Etsy title generator, and check what you keep per sale with the Etsy fee calculator. Selling on Amazon Merch too? Podly’s Trending Search shows the designs climbing in sales rank right now.
Facts checked and page updated on .
