Why Does Google Really Hide Keywords?

Pulled from your last link:

"This is especially good news for the average business that doesn’t have the budget to invest in SEO strategies to generate keyword-rich content throughout the web to artificially inflate the ranking of their content. Most of us can’t compete with large companies and an industry that has grown to billions of dollars. Where there’s a financial benefit to cheat, companies will cheat. And the industry has been cheating (and cheating and cheating). Many of the players are delusional about their strategies but it’s clear that Google is not. Google wants organic traffic to be organic, not driven by wealthy SEO companies that have million-dollar sandboxes to uncover ways to cheat and get their clients ranked. Google’s change is hurting those folks – not you."

When put this way it does level the playing field between a small seller and a company that has a whole bunch of bucks. Actually I did not know the big companies were unable to see the keywords used by a person searching their items through Google organic.

At the same time these big companies do have access to Google's keyword planner like we do, can see what keywords are commonly or rarely used by searchers on Google and pay the big bucks for those keywords.
Here's a link to the keyword planner:
adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool

All you have to do is have a Google account if you want to use it, hit the first link that says Keyword planner, sign in to your Google account, then click on the first link for Search for new word and ad group ideas and from there it is self explanatory.

I'm not sure how effective it has been for me using that though and I've more than given it a try when listing my items. I guess it needs more time in Google land. My listings are still pretty much new at this point.

I use Etsy for keyword phrases also and I like using it. I've also used Etsy some for my Presto listings....not nearly as much as the Google's keyword tool.

I do have a pretty good idea on how to use this tool by Google. It helps for me to think outside of the box because on Presto, we've got not only our title area but also a box where we write in the short description, which we do not want to have them matching exactly. This is where Google helps. And then like everywhere else we've got the long description area and this is also where Google helps with this, too, because I do not want the short description being exactly the same as the long description even though the short description I give it is always shorter than the longer description.

Something I am seriously wondering about is if Google analytics is able to capture all the traffic I am getting.......because the views I see are definitely more than what I am seeing Google analytics capturing. I know some of those views I am seeing are bots, but not all of them can be bots...

@tiptoptreasures It's hard to say what Google Analytics is reporting anymore. At this point, I'm not trusting their stats since they made all of the changes they did. If they're blocking keywords, there's no telling what else they're blocking and not telling us about.

Regarding the word "vintage," it could be that it's getting used too often, so Google has devalued it. Again, back to not knowing what they're doing because they don't tell us anything. As for where to place it, I always try to put it where it makes grammatical sense without breaking up a good keyword phrase.

Using your example, I'd type it as "Vintage Vandemere Womens Robe Misses Large Blue Polyester Pockets," "Vandemere Womens Robe Vintage Misses Large Blue Polyester Pockets," or "Vandemere Womens Robe Misses Large Blue Vintage Polyester Pockets." It just depends how commonly the brand name is searched for. If it's a popular brand, I'd put the brand name first.

If not, then I'd put "vintage" at the beginning to target those looking for vintage clothing. In the second instance, I put "vintage" as close to the beginning to also target vintage clothing shoppers while also keeping the popular brand name at the beginning and not breaking up any good keyword phrases.