Inet Solutions

Revealed! Fiverr’s Search Algorithm – How Fiverr Ranks Gigs

Sterling King

The micro-services and micro-projects market has been growing rapidly over the past few years. Around the time when Fiverr came out, people were wondering who in their right mind would offer anything for five bucks. But then it exploded and ever since, more and more people are getting in on the fun. Once upon a time, making it on Fiverr (as a seller) was much easier – the competition was almost non-existent for many niches.

However, nowadays it is a whole different story. There are thousands of sellers on Fiverr each offering (somewhat) unique services, fighting for those 5 bucks – we are one of them. But in order to get those all-so-wanted orders, you need to know how you can rank your gig high in Fiverr’s internal SERPs. And that’s exactly what you’ll learn from this article today. We ride.

What You’ll Learn

The Most Important Ranking Factors on Fiverr

Now, if we compare Fiverr’s search engine to Google, they are not even playing in the same sport. Fiverr still has a lot to improve in the way it ranks gigs internally, but, at least, it has gotten a lot better than it used to be. Let me show you what I mean. I will list the top factors (in order of importance) that influence where a gig ranks in Fiverr’s SERPs and then, I will talk about how you can improve on that factor.

Now, all of the information I will share with you here is solely based on my observation of Fiverr. I created our account on the site back in mid February 2015 and since then, I have gathered a lot of knowledge as to how the platform works and what you can do to improve your odds of succeeding there – especially if you are a beginner.

Factor #1: Reviews

Nothing influences a gig’s rankings more than the number of reviews it has. The number of stars is also important, but not that much. In Fiverr, you would generally see most gigs that have a lot of reviews to be between the 4.5 and 5.0 stars range. Now let me show you why the reviews are the most important factor for Fiverr’s search engine:

The gig that ranks in first place for the keyword “seo content” is a YouTube video promotion gig. But why? Quite simply because, the owner of the gig is youngceaser – one of the most top rated and best sellers on Fiverr. So, it is not just the number of reviews that the gig has that are taken into account when ranking, but the total number of reviews the creator of the gig has amassed.

As we move down the rankings, we see that on the second, third, forth, and fifth spot, we have gigs that actually offer writing services. And again, the ones that have the most reviews win. Then, on 6th place, we have another non-writing gig, however, this one is more closely related to seo content since it is keywords research – again by youngceaser. But why do these gigs appear at all for this keyword? They do not have it in their gig description or title right?

That is correct. Both of youngceaser’s gigs here do not have the exact keyword “seo content”, however, they do contain the keyword “content” in their gig description and I guess that was more than enough for Fiverr to rank them where they are.

Now, below the 6th spot, you can see another 3 gigs – one regarding link building, one relevant to our keyword and one not 100% relevant to our keyword. The gig in 7th place has only 410 reviews while the gig in 8th place has more than 1k reviews and it has more orders in its queue. So why is the link building gig before it? Well, again, the same rule applies – the creator of the GSA SER gig has more reviews on their profile than the creator of the killer and amazing SEO content gig.

This rule however, only applies if the two gigs have review numbers close to each other. If one gig has like 10k more reviews than another gig and the first gig’s creator has less reviews in total on their profile than the second gig’s creator, the first gig will still rank higher because of those 10k reviews lead on that particular gig.

This is where I want to note something really important. If you are just considering starting a business on Fiverr, you most probably know that reviews do not come that easy. You have to do a really great job to get them, but the already top rated sellers are exponentially growing their reviews. So how will anyone ever see your gig?

Well, just before I lowered the activity on our legendary SEO content gig, it was ranking on this very first page for the same keyword – “seo content”. Now, Fiverr shows 16 rows of 3 gigs on each row in its initial SERPs – you can load more, but the gigs in the load more territory rarely get any engagement. So, you really want to be above this load more button.

Our SEO content gig had just about 100 reviews (all 5 stars) when it was ranking on the 10th row for “seo content”. So how did we get it there? Basically, it was a combination of using the keyword “seo content” in the gig description and in the gig title and getting a lot of orders and views on the gig. Another thing that really helped was the quick growth of the gig – it was getting like 1 – 5 reviews daily which I have noticed instantly pushes a gig higher.

For example, I was looking at our 10 days GSA SER gig one day to check on its rankings and it was ranking at the 50th spot for the keyword “gsa”. A few hours later we got 3 or 4 reviews in like an hour and it instantly jumped to the 20th place – yes instantly. So this goes out to show you just how extremely important reviews are on Fiverr, but its search engine also takes into account the time of those reviews and how recent they are.

Another thing to know about Fiverr reviews is that I have never ever seen a gig with an average rating of 4.5 stars or below rank high in the SERPs. So, if your gig is above this 4.5 stars rating on average, you are good. Of course, you’d want to maintain those 5 stars, because if people see a gig that has an average of 4.5 stars and then another one next to it with 5.0 stars average rating, guess which one they’d choose… yeah…

And that’s pretty much all there is to say about reviews. You should now understand that those are the most important part of a Fiverr profile and that if you do not have them, you won’t be ranking high in the SERPs. However, ranking high in Fiverr’s SERPs is not the only way to get orders from the platform, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Factor #2: Keywords

As we saw in the example with the Fiverr reviews, keywords are not that strictly considered by the internal search engine. However, they still play a huge role. If the two gigs of youngceaser did not contain the keyword “content”, they would never have been ranked for “seo content”. So the first thing to understand about keywords on Fiverr is that your gig doesn’t necessarily need to contain the exact keyword search phrase in order to rank for it.

However, it is a good practice to include it if you really want to rank for it as this will give you the extra edge over more reviewed and more active competitor gigs. So, do include your target keywords into your gig title and description. Usually, some keywords like “link” can only be used a limited amount of times in the content of your gig, so take advantage of that. But others you can use as much as you like and the more times you use them (naturally in the description and title), the higher your gig will rank for them.

So, before you get to creating your gig, it is of vital importance that you perform keywords research on Fiverr – you will see how you can do that in a minute. When we started out on Fiverr, I noticed that there was an opportunity with GSA SER services and so I took it. Our 10 days GSA SER gig quickly went to the top for the keyword “gsa” and a lot more other long tail keywords such as “gsa ser”, “gsa search engine ranker”, etc, but I have not checked them all.

Now, a very important thing to note for keywords is the profile content. Fiverr allows you to add a description to your profile which shows up on each gig page. And, it appears to be extremely important what keywords you use in it. Let me show you why:

Let’s take a look at the gigs which rank on position 2 and 3 for the keyword “backlinks”. The one in 2nd position has around 14k reviews and the one in 3rd position has 27k reviews. Now that’s a huge difference and even, the one with the 27k reviews has a flawless 5.0 stars rating while the one with 14k reviews has 4.9 stars rating. Not to mention the fact that the one in 3rd place belongs to crork_service – the highest rated seller on Fiverr with more than 80k reviews while the one in 2nd place belongs to youngceaser – who has “just” around 40k reviews. So how come the “40 days SEO” gig ranks before the 27k reviews social bookmarks gig?

It’s because of the keywords and a few other factors, which we will get to in a bit. If we open each of these gigs separately, we will see that the one that ranks in second place has the keyword “backlinks” a total of 7 times – once in the title, 2 times in the description, 3 times in the tags, and once in the profile description of the seller. On the other hand, the social bookmarks gig contains the keyword just thrice – once in the title. once in the tags, and once in the description, but not in the profile content.

It is also important to note here that the keyword “backlinks” in the title of the social bookmarks gig appears a lot in the back – you cannot see it from the initial thumbnail in the SERPs. I have noticed that this also influences rankings quite a lot. So, if you want to rank for the keyword “backlinks” for example, make sure to include it in the gig title as closer to the beginning as possible.

And that’s basically all there is to the keywords factor influencing Fiverr’s internal search engine. As you saw, you need to be smart about the content of your gigs if you ever wish to get to see it at the top of the SERPs – we will talk about Fiverr keywords research in a minute.

Factor #3: Gig Views

If you head over to the “My Gigs” page of Fiverr, you can see detailed graphs of your gigs’ traffic over a certain period of time – i.e. the amount of people who actually landed on your gig pages one way or another. Over the months I have noticed that once my gigs start getting more views, they shoot up in the SERPs. It doesn’t happen immediately like with the reviews, but in a day or two, Fiverr’s search engine reacts.

It probably waits a bit too see if this traffic is genuine and if it will keep up the tempo. If it does keep on receiving more and more gig views, it will jump up in the SERPs. We will also talk about how you can increase your gig views easily and quickly in the next main section.

Factor #4: Orders in Queue

Take the situation we used for the keywords factor section again. But this time, we will compare the first and the second placed gigs i.e. the 30 PR9 backlinks pyramid and the 40 days SEO link building campaign. As we already said, the one ranking in 2nd place belongs to youngceaser who currently has around 40k reviews while the gig ranking in first place belongs to blboss who currently has around 25k reviews.

While we already mentioned that profile reviews do not matter if there is a huge difference between individual gig reviews, the orders in queue still help blboss’ gig to currently rank before youngceaser’s gig since it leads by about 100. I do check the search results for the keyword “backlinks” quite often and the first three gigs change their positions constantly. Not long ago, youngceaser’s 40 days SEO gig was first with close to 500 orders in queue, but when they dropped, the rankings switched back again.

Miscellaneous Factors

The above 4 factors are the main ones that I have found influence Fiverr’s search engine the most. However, over the years, Fiverr has tweaked it quite a lot and nowadays you can see some gigs out of line. Let me explain.

You see, I already mentioned that nowadays, the competition on Fiverr is huge – there are thousands of sellers and quite a few established ones so a new seller really has no chance if the above 4 factors were the only ones strongly respected by Fiverr’s search engine. The thing is, top rated sellers’ gigs will almost always be at the top of the SERPs – they won’t move. However, the gigs below get rotated.

Miscellaneous Factor #1: New Gig

Right when I was starting out and had recently created my Fiverr profile, I was pushing hard to get it high in the SERPs to get some more orders. At first when you create a gig, Fiverr will instantly list it in the “New” section of the SERPs which is great exposure, although, not too many people go there. However, I think it takes around 2 weeks for a gig to get dropped out from that section and when it does, it goes into the real game – the real SERPs with “High Rating”.

A new gig will most probably get a review or two while it is in the “New” gigs SERPs, however, that is not nearly enough to get it to the top once it gets to compete in the real SERPs. So, how did Fiverr cope with this problem? How did they give new sellers a fighting chance?

Well, they started rotating gigs. Around the time that my gig dropped out from the “New” section, it completely disappeared from the SERPs overnight. Orders stopped and views almost went to 0. This is the tipping point. Fiverr is testing you whether you are a pusher or a quitter. I even sent a ticket to Fiverr support as I though the gig got de-indexed or something:

Then, a few days later, boom! The gig jumped to the 2nd row of the SERPs for keyword “gsa”. It had no more than 5 reviews and it was ranking above gigs with 1k or more. That really boosted our orders while it lasted. I think it stayed there frozen for about 2 weeks or something like that, and then it went back into normal rankings, however, it remained on first page (at the bottom at first) since we got more than enough customers who remained with us and are still with us – leaving reviews and ordering.

Miscellaneous Factor #2: Featured Gig

Another miscellaneous factor that Fiverr’s internal search engine takes into strong consideration is a gig being “Featured”. But getting your gig featured is not something you can do easily. Usually the ones that do get featured are either gigs that provide something unique, funny, and pretty much something that no one else on Fiverr provides, or gigs in the writing and/or design niche. But, getting your gig featured can boost it immediately – it will instantly jump up in the SERPs and get you some orders.

Miscellaneous Factor #3: Gig Favorites

The third and final miscellaneous factor that matters is gig favorites. The way favorites work is similar to the way reviews work, but much, much less influential to the SERPs. However, do not hesitate to ask for that extra favorite aside from the review – it does give a little bit of extra edge to the gig and trust me, you are going to need that.

Here’s What You Need To Do In Order To Rank Your Gig Higher

I will list the most important things that you need to do, that we also did, which will give your gig the extra edge and allow it to naturally grow and get more and more orders. We have been on Fiverr for about 7 months now and I can confidently say that we are doing pretty well. Here’s what our Fiverr account currently looks like financially:

Just over $5k in 7 months is not too shabby considering the level of competition in the SEO niche on Fiverr and the fact that I have not been seriously promoting our Fiverr services in the past 3 months since I have been mainly focused on creating and growing this site. Keep in mind that this would have been a lot, lot more if I would have let our SEO content gig grow, but I decided to stop it in order to create this site and focus all the writing here. Also, we have 0% cancellation rate which is not very easy to achieve and not a single negative review out of more than 550 orders:

So that’s what’s up. Now, to the ways you can get your gig higher in Fiverr’s SERPs. As I already mentioned, I will list all the things that you need to do, so all you have to do is read them and then employ them for your own Fiverr gigs. And here they are:

  • Before setting up your gigs, perform in-depth keywords research – use Fiverr’s search bar to get suggestions for niche keywords. Also, look carefully at the content (title, description, tags, and profile) of the gigs that rank at the top positions for your target keywords – they are not there by luck. Carefully examine the gigs that are on first page of google for your niche keywords + “fiverr”.
  • Use your target keywords in your content as much as possible – do not stuff keywords of course (this isn’t Google 2007), but simply include them naturally in the content. Make sure you add your most important niche keywords at the beginning of the title of your gigs, into the tags, and into the about section of your Fiverr profile.
  • Write short and simple titles – gigs with short and straight-to-the-point titles usually get better rankings than gigs with long and over-complicated titles. Plus, after a certain amount of characters, the tile will get cut from the thumbnail that shows up in the SERPs, so it won’t be seen anyway.
  • Use the full 1200 characters allowed for the gig description – you want to insert as much content as possible and professionally explain why your gig is so great. Do not leave a single character.
  • Use the best niche tags possible – you can find out which those are by simply writing your own main target keyword and looking at the suggestions that show up. The ones which are more to the top are the more used and more searched ones.
  • Ask for reviews – when you deliver an order, always and I mean always ask for a review in a professional way. Do not beg like a slave, but explain the buyer why they should leave you a 5 star rating. For instance, you can write something like: “If you are happy with our work, please leave a 5 star rating on the order. It really helps us grow and provide even better services.” You can even think of some bonus in exchange for that review – as we already showed, reviews are everything on Fiverr.
  • Prevent negative reviews – when you deliver, always make sure to include some text like the following: “If there’s any problem, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us and we will resolve it as soon as possible!” You can’t imagine how much heartache this will save you. Negative reviews are a complete destroyer for new sellers and you do not want to have to do anything with them.
  • Ask for favorites – get that little extra edge added to your gig by asking your buyers, politely, for a favorite. Again, you can include this request when you deliver each order.
  • Boost gig views – basically, there are a few ways you can boost gig views on Fiverr – naturally by allowing your gig to get up in the SERPs as time goes by (slow), or forcefully by marketing your gigs everywhere. Where everywhere? Here you go:
    • Web 2.0 blogs – you won’t believe just how fast you will get orders if you create a few Web 2.0 blogs (WordPress, Tumblr, etc) and write a few articles promoting your Fiverr services.
    • Blog comments – these will drive a lot of views to your gigs and a lot of potential buyers. These are extremely important (extremely) and you should really focus on spreading the word of your gigs on as many blog posts as possible. This link building strategy really boosts gig views more than anything else!
    • Social media – market your gigs on every single social media site that exists – no exceptions. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, VK, Reddit, Delicious, Diigo, Behance, etc – do not leave out a single one.
    • Forums – you can’t imagine how much traffic and how many orders you can get from the right forums – of course, market your gigs only on niche relevant ones.
    • A website – you can go the extra mile and create a full website especially designed to promote your Fiverr services. Add a blog on it and talk about your gigs and why people should order them. Market that website again everywhere and get even more gig views and orders.
  • Create unique and engaging videos for your gigs – this factor is not very strong in terms of influencing a gig’s rankings in the SERPs, but it does give it some more power. As a seller in an extremely competitive market, you want all the extra power you can get.
  • Get your gig featured – if you have come up with some great and unseen service, and your gig representation is flawless (video, title, description, tags, etc), go ahead and shoot Fiverr a message and let them know of your gig. I’ve seen gigs with as little as 20 reviews get featured just because they were awesome.

Conclusion

Fiverr’s search engine currently looks (ish) like an improved version of Google pre-animals era. Most certainly, there is a lot that can be improved and has been improved, but it is currently what I would call, close-to-balanced, meaning that the SERPs it creates, while not perfect, are decent and most importantly efficient. I think they give way too much weight to reviews, but that’s just my opinion. Think of reviews on Fiverr as authority backlinks in the context of Google rankings. Then you have the usual content factor, and of course user signals in the face of gig views and conversion rate (not that much taken into account). So, Fiverr’s search engine is not that different from Google in terms of ranking fundamentals – it’s just different factors and weights of those factors that vary.

The good news is that you now know which factors have the biggest impact on Fiverr gigs ranking and you also saw how you can improve your odds with each and every one of them. Trust me, simply employ all those tips and tricks that I shared with you above and you will enjoy an incredible success on Fiverr – it’s not as hard as people think it is.