we need a searchable database of all SL products

The "find" feature is a searchable database. A useless one, however, because only a fraction of all products for sale in SL are listed in the search engine. This leads to frustration. Also, all search engines make their results public. It would be helpful to residents to be able to see a list of search terms that are being search on in SL. If there are 500 residents a day searching for the term "widgets," and no one is producing widgets, you can bet that some resident will begin creating and selling widgets. Widgets buyers who are unable to build their own widgets will be happy instead of frustated.

I propose that it should be made free to list any number of products for sale in the find feature, and that the results be made public.

Lets put an end to the frustration.

I agree that find doesn't work very well for individual products, but this has a fix that wouldn't require any sort of feature addition.

The problem is that people don't list all of their products within their land profiles. Retailers would likely do better if they listed each product. I've had numerous new residents ask where they could buy certain products. Since we often don't find them using search, the only solution is to find a copy of the product in-world, and check the creator's profile for a store location.

The solution seems like a no-brainer to me, but maybe I'm missing something or not understanding the limitations of such a system. I'm not sure why more store owners don't list products this way.

Why don't we use Snapzilla for this? If everyone took a pic of thier products, put the product name as the subject, some keywords in the description, then we'd have a searchable database on the web. I suspect the LL databases do enough work without having to worry about a fully searchable object database.

Of course we should check with Cristiano Midnight first. We don't want to ruin slpics, with every product out there, but maybe he'll setup a seperate section for it. Being the google of SL must sound appealing no?

Dote - I am assuming that people don't list things because it costs money. Am I wrong?

I think it is absolutely something LL should do to enhance the user experience.

As a retailer I try to list an overview of what I sell but there isn't enough room to list everything individually. Second, the vast majority of retailers use rental stalls to sell and can't list anything. Again, the owner of the mall or whatever can only give general keywords in the limited space.

SLExchange and Gigas were developed specifically for this limitation by allowing retailers to have searchable databases for individual items. Problem is, not all retailers use the services.