ATTIC is a new kind of search engine, one that offers a curated set of products from local, independent stores, dealers, makers, artists and boutiques. We're designed to help shoppers find furniture, home decor and clothing/fashion products, both modern and vintage. Whenever possible, we encourage our users to shop locally, but also offer a deep selection of products from great sellers throughout the USA and parts of Canada. ATTIC relies heavily on cutting edge technology, but also uses a bit of "human touch" to help achieve a wonderful mix of unique and diverse products from great stores.

If you're a store owner, ATTIC can boost your online marketing significantly. ATTIC is viewed nearly 200,000 times each month and in turn generates an average of 50,000 monthly leads -- that's 50,000 users discovering stores like yours on ATTIC every month. Best of all, our core service is 100% free, and it requires little to no effort on your part to participate.

Like other search engines, ATTIC's core technology is a crawler that "automagically" indexes websites and marketplaces. If you're using any of the platforms listed below, you're probably already eligible. Please complete our two-minute application to start the consideration process.

All applications are subject to review. We will consider established and new stores, but as a curated search engine, we’re looking for a certain level of quality and character in your products, as well as how you present them. Stores that are located within one of our major markets are given priority and stores with brick and mortar locations are given the highest priority. See our homepage for the list of current markets. We also accept stores from elsewhere throughout the USA and Canada, but such applications are subject to a more rigorous review that puts even greater emphasis on product quality and product image quality.

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No. ATTIC is solely a search engine to help consumers discover great products that are being sold elsewhere. We do not buy or sell any items ourselves.

We use a variety of automated techniques to discover stores that are a good fit for ATTIC. We also have human-assisted techniques including leads/suggestions from users and an extensive market-focused research process. If you've discovered that your products are already on ATTIC, then bravo! We liked what we saw.

Our core indexing service is 100% free. This includes unlimited indexing of products within any of our primary verticals (furniture, decor and fashion). Once indexed, your products are eligible to appear in our search results. Also included is a dedicated store page and a dedicated item page for each of your products.

To be featured or to gain higher quality photos, improved branding, links to your social media accounts, and numerous other perks, we offer ATTIC Premium starting at only $3/month. Cancel through our automated system at any time.

Once your store is on ATTIC, our indexing process is automated. We re-index stores to detect new products at least once daily. Typically products will appear on ATTIC within hours of them being added to your store's website. Once an item is indexed, it is eligible to appear in our search results and will appear on one or more of the following locations: your store page (e.g., Sunbeam Vintage), a market page (e.g., Los Angeles), a market vertical page (e.g., furniture in Los Angeles). All products indexed from your store link directly back to your store page.

Our indexing process includes a combination of automated and human-assisted moderation techniques to ensure that listings meet basic quality and accuracy standards. These techniques can remove individual products for any of the following reasons:

• The product falls outside the scope of our verticals (furniture, home decor, and fashion).
• The product's image(s) are not representative of the actual product or not of sufficient quality. See the FAQ item "Do you have any requirements, limitations or suggestions regarding the photography of items for ATTIC?" below.
• The product's title or description is not representative of the product or is somehow misleading.
• There was a technical problem in trying to index the product such that we could not fully index the product's key information (image, title, description etc).
• The product's image was provided in an unsupported format (e.g., a video or animated image).
• The product was deemed to be a duplicate of a previous product from your store.

If you notice that multiple products are missing and do not believe it’s the result of one of the reasons listed above, then there may be a technical problem that is preventing our crawler from communicating with your store. Have you changed your website in any significant way recently? Have you switched website platforms? Did you or a web developer change where your website is hosted? Drop us a line at [email protected] and we'll be happy to help troubleshoot.

In addition, our moderation process removes items identified as:

• inappropriate due to their content –we enforce a "PG-13" rating on all products;
• single or very limited use / disposable products.

Finally, we reserve the right to remove items, as well as stores, that have been identified as trying to manipulate or abuse our search results or service. We also reserve the right to remove products or stores that have been identified as providing consistently poor customer service, faulty or dangerous products, or those that may be engaged in fraud of any kind.

The products on ATTIC consist of relatively unique, low volume goods, from independent retailers. Confirming and maintaining accurate price information for such goods presents several challenges:

• Prices change over time (e.g., temporary/flash discounts, promotions and sales, closeouts) that are not always reflected online.
• Prices are sometimes subject to negotiation.
• Prices are sometimes subject to thresholds and context (e.g., prices that vary if items are purchased separately or as a pair/set).
• Prices are not always made public or made available at the time of indexing (e.g., stores that require a direct inquiry, especially for unique high-end items and artwork).

To avoid misrepresentation, we systematically remove detailed price information from products that we index and display in our search results. We offer a 5-point scale ($-$$$$$) that gives users a general sense of the likely cost. Our pricing scale is dependent upon the product's vertical (furniture, decor, fashion) and is periodically re-calibrated. Users are encouraged to visit the product's point-of-sale and/or contact the store to gain the most up-to-date price information.

Our search results prioritize relevance and newness. We also prioritize location when a user is conducting a city/market-specific search. To optimize for relevance, your products should use accurate and descriptive product titles. Titles should include terms that are representative of the item, especially when they are being viewed outside of their original context. For example, an art gallery listing a piece of original artwork for sale might consider using a title like "Original Oil Painting: Sunny Day" as opposed to simply "Sunny Day." Optimizing for newness is simply a matter of regularly adding to and refreshing your inventory. We'll take care of the rest.

Yes, stores that subscribe to ATTIC Premium Pro choose the source we use to index their products. For example, if you list your products on Etsy, eBay and your own website, you can choose your own website as the indexed page (assuming it's compatible with our web crawler). This will make our search results point users to your website and increase your traffic. For stores that are not subscribed to ATTIC Premium Pro, we select the source that contains an accurate selection of your products and provides the best product information. To support the costs associated with our free core service, we also prioritize marketplaces with which we have commission agreements.

We reserve slots atop several of our pages to highlight products and stores that caught our eye. Stores with active ATTIC Premium subscriptions have priority for these slots.

The purpose of ATTIC is to show off the regularly changing and diverse inventory of great small businesses in great cities. We try to make it clear that pieces may be one-of-a-kind and sell quickly. We note in various places that some items, especially older ones, may no longer be available.

Additionally, we regularly run an inventory check (currently in beta) to detect items that have been sold. If we are able to detect that an item is no longer available, we will update our records accordingly. Note that we are able to automatically mark items as sold when the item is removed in full from your store or the item is marked as sold using "structured data" or a similar technique. Please note that several website platforms and marketplaces never fully remove your items. Instead, they point interested viewers to other items that may be of interest to them. Contact us at [email protected] or a web developer if you need further assistance.

For removing individual items, please see the FAQ item "How do I remove items that are no longer available (sold etc)?".

If, for some reason, you do not want your store or its products to appear at all on ATTIC, please review the following technical information about web crawlers used by ATTIC and other search engines.

Products that appear on ATTIC are the result of an automated indexing process, which is conducted by software known as a web crawler. Web crawlers are used widely to build search results for all Internet search engines, including ATTIC. They are subject to certain technical conventions and legal limitations. If you wish to block web crawlers from indexing your store and its products, the accepted convention is to configure a robots.txt file to "disallow" crawling. By expressing your wishes in this manner, you can help to control how your content appears on the World Wide Web and Internet.

ATTIC recognizes crawling requests, including "disallow" requests, targeted at "Googlebot," the web crawler used to power Google's search engine. To modify your robots.txt file, we highly recommend seeking the assistance of a qualified, professional web developer. Note that modifying your robots.txt file may prevent search engines at large from crawling and indexing your content for display in their search results. You should only take these steps if you do not want your content, including your website and its content, to be discovered by the public through search engines. For more information, please see our Terms of Use.

Since our launch in 2015, we've partnered with stores and other interested parties in all kinds of ways. We've co-hosted events, appeared at pop-ups, launched co-branded products, run a grant award program and more. We're always looking for interesting ideas and proposals that can help to further our mission of helping people shop small and local. Please drop us a line at [email protected] if you'd like to share an idea or brainstorm together.