One of the easiest ways to disappear down the print-on-demand rabbit hole is to spend all your time designing products without ever checking whether anyone can actually find them.
So I tried something embarrassingly simple.
I went to Zazzle, searched “mahjong tote,” and started counting.
My Public Nuisance Apparel mahjong tote showed up at #48.
Not #480.
Not somewhere on page nine where only my mother and a very determined Mahjong enthusiast would ever find it.
Number 48.
And considering how many Mahjong tote bags are already competing for attention on Zazzle, I was actually pretty happy with that.
What I found in the search results
The search returned hundreds of products, with page after page of Mahjong bags in just about every interpretation imaginable: traditional tiles, funny sayings, pink designs, florals, minimalist patterns, personalized versions and plenty of products clearly aimed at Mahjong groups and game nights.
My design is called Vintage Mahjong Game Night Floral Tiles Tote Bag, and there it was among them.
When I took the screenshot, Zazzle was displaying the results using its Popular sorting option. That matters, because this isn't some permanent Google-style position carved into stone. Search results can move, sorting can change, products can be added, and Zazzle can change how things are surfaced.
So I'm treating #48 as a snapshot, not a trophy.
But it is a useful snapshot.
The good news: Zazzle knows what the design is about
The first thing this tells me is that the listing isn't completely invisible.
Zazzle's own guidance says product titles play a critical role in helping customers find designs. It recommends using words shoppers would realistically search for and describing things such as the theme, style, color and specific elements of the design. Zazzle also warns against stuffing unrelated keywords into a title. (Zazzle)
My title already contains some very relevant terms:
Vintage. Mahjong. Game Night. Floral. Tiles.
That's a fairly accurate description of what's actually on the tote.
And when someone searched the much broader phrase mahjong tote, Zazzle still managed to connect that search with my product.
That's encouraging.
But I found something interesting about my title
There's one wrinkle.
My full title currently ends with “Tote Bag.”
That sounds perfectly logical. Someone searching for a tote bag might reasonably expect the words tote bag to appear in the title.
Except Zazzle's current title guidelines specifically tell creators not to include the product type in the title. (Zazzle)
Well then.
That's exactly the sort of thing I want Flowshirt to document, because the advice you would naturally follow as a seller isn't always the same advice the platform gives you.
I'm not rushing off to change the title just because I discovered that guideline. The product is already appearing reasonably high for the search I'm interested in.
Instead, this gives me something I can actually test.
I can record where the product appears now, change one part of the listing later, and see what happens rather than endlessly “optimizing” everything at once.
Tags aren't just a place to dump keywords either
Zazzle currently allows up to ten tags per design and recommends using descriptive terms that genuinely match the artwork. It also encourages phrase tags when they reflect searches real customers might use, while warning that irrelevant tagging can hurt the strength of the product's metadata. (Zazzle)
That last part is worth paying attention to.
It's tempting to see #48 and immediately attack the listing:
mahjong tote, mahjong tote bag, mahjong bag, mahjong gift, mahjong gifts, mahjong player gift...
But more keywords aren't automatically better.
Zazzle specifically warns against repetitive keyword stuffing. (Zazzle)
So rather than trying to force the product upward by cramming variations of “mahjong” into every available field, I'm more interested in making sure the metadata accurately describes the design and then watching what the product does.
#48 doesn't mean it's a bestseller
This is an important distinction.
Finding my tote at #48 does not tell me how many people have bought it.
It doesn't tell me how many shoppers clicked it.
It doesn't tell me whether #48 will become #20 next week or #120 tomorrow.
And Zazzle's public documentation doesn't give creators a neat formula saying, “Do these five things and your product moves ten positions higher.”
Zazzle does publish separate Marketplace Optimization criteria, but those deal with whether products remain active in the marketplace. Under the current rules, a public product qualifies if it has sold at least once, has been published, edited or viewed within the last 15 months, or belongs to a product type introduced within the previous two years. (Zazzle)
That's useful information, but marketplace eligibility is not the same thing as search ranking.
I don't want to pretend we know more about the algorithm than we actually do.
This is where the experiment gets useful
Instead of staring at #48 and wondering whether that's “good,” I'm going to turn it into a baseline.
Right now:
Search: mahjong tote
Product: Vintage Mahjong Game Night Floral Tiles Tote Bag
Store: Public Nuisance Apparel
Observed position: #48
Sort shown: Popular
Date checked: September 25, 2026
Now I have something measurable.
The next step isn't necessarily redesigning the tote. In fact, I don't want to touch the artwork yet.
I'd rather see what happens as the listing sits in the marketplace and then test individual changes when there's a reason to make them.
Maybe the title gets adjusted.
Maybe I revise the description.
Maybe the tags change.
Maybe I leave everything alone and simply check the same search again.
That's the difference between guessing and testing.
And this is why I keep searching my own products
There's a tendency in print on demand to treat publishing as the finish line.
Upload the artwork. Write the title. Add some tags. Hit publish.
Next product.
But once a design is live, we suddenly have access to something much more useful than another YouTube video telling us how Zazzle SEO supposedly works.
We have the actual marketplace.
Search for your product the way a shopper would.
See what appears around it.
Look at the wording competitors use.
Notice whether Zazzle understands what you made.
And record where your product appears.
My Mahjong tote sitting at #48 doesn't prove I've cracked Zazzle search.
But it does tell me that Public Nuisance Apparel has a product competing visibly in a fairly crowded search.
Now we get to watch what happens next.
And that's a lot more interesting than another list of SEO theories.
