The point about the search feature is extremely accurate; in my opinion it's one of the most fatal flaws in Etsy.
It works poorly, and users can tag an item in endless categories (often conflicting ones, like 'gemstone' and 'rhinestone'), and so frequently give items dozens of tags, that it makes the search irrelevant.
The categorization and organization forces you to "wade through pages of crap" to find anything relevant; that crappy feature lost me as a buyer years ago.