What can LL do to help small business owners?

Use speech marks Argent, though I don't think you'll find what you're looking for.

You said that adding words would narrow the search. That's not true.

No I said phrases narrow the search, to search for a phrase you generally use speech marks. However if you don't use speech marks you should still get the more relevant results for your phrase at the top of search.

Searching for exact phrases is not the goal. It won't find "multi-pocket vest for photographers". Searching for multiple keywords will. If XSL had a decent search engine, this would be possible.

The term you're looking for is "quotation marks", by the way.

+vest +photographers

Agreed....many types of SL businesses rely on an fresh influx of new players that eventually contribute to the economy.....e.g Land, Prefabs,furniture, landscaping products and many other sectors.
Right now it stagnant growth....although there are some signs of life in the Land economy.

Do you think that it might just be possible that nobody in SL made and sells such a thing? Or, if someone does sell one, do you think they might not be listing it on XSL? One of those seems the most likely explanation to me. You can find them, and pages that mention them, in web search engines because those engines index billions of webpages, but SL is just a tiny thing by comparison to the web, so such a relatively unusual item is far less likely to be found in SL than on the web - and considerably less likely to be found in an XSL search than is an SL search.

It isn't the search in SL that's flawed - it's an excellent Google system. It's what there is to index that's flawed. Even so, for such an unusual item to be found in an SL search, it requires that somebody makes and sells one, AND promotes it specifically. The chances of those criteria being fulfilled in tiny SL are slim, imo - and considerably slimmer in XSL.

It's definitely true. Your problem is that you're searching for something that either doesn't exist, or if it exists, either isn't for sale or isn't promoted. Or, you're just being awkward, which is more than possible.

Ciaran found a correct term. The term you're looking for is, "I was mistaken", or maybe, "I'll go back to bed and get out on the right side this time".

What is a photographer's vest?

Try using a search term people might actually...use.

That is really what they are called, but they are specialized items even in real life. I did turn up one on Xstreet searching for +camera +vest, but it was bundled with a rather expensive camera that doesn't really do anything.

These garments are very similar to military tactical vests, and a search on +tactical +vest turns up a number of possibilities.

There used to be a link near the Xstreet search button with the syntax, if it is still there it is well hidden.

(ETA: found it, the advanced search help is hidden in the real estate section. The old help page is at

Which is silly, if more people knew how to help themselves find better search results then that would at least be a start in improving the search experience, the same inworld, there are no easy to find hints on improving your results.

Xstreet could help itself by insisting lisings like "Also available in blue, black and red" are disallowed, I thought they'd actually done that, but it doesn't appear to be the case.

Thanks for posting the help page Viktoria, I had tried to look for one but couldn't find it.

I'm not looking for a photographer's vest, I expected it to come up empty. I was using it as an example that search terms in xsl don't work like in Google. Adding words expands the search.

The other thing I was getting at was all the lousy products that people put in there to spam the search, like the horrible tartan vests.

Those Tartan Vests are nice looking. They are not lousy product. Someone took full advantage of offering a classic style in a number of patterns, so that people had choices....and it's smart on a merchant's part to offer as many patterns/colors as they can come up with. That is NOT spamming. That is good merchandising.

Of course it doesn't work like Google. It's modeled after eBay's search.

To the typical consumer the distinction between spamming and good marketing is academic.

If XSL was designed to actually help people find stuff, there would be one hit for "tartan vest" which would either take you to the creator's "xstreet storefront" (where you would be able to select the clan and cut of your vest), or it would be followed by "There are 3467 similar products to this, would you like to see them".

The former would be the "Yahoo shopping" solution.

The latter would be the "Google product search" solution.

Not very well. I can actually find stuff on eBay.

Yahoo shopping would be a good way to do things. You do the search and get "Yahoo Shopping Search Results for vest". You click on the link for the first product, and you get "http://www.campingsurvival.com/khakdelsafou.html", which looks like a separate website, but when you buy stuff there you get redirected back to Yahoo. The merchant gets to present their product the way they want on a page they control, without restrictions on what they can link to. THAT is what LL could do to help the small (and large) business owner... and the customer as well.

You can find stuff on Ebay, because it is THERE. Like Phil said....you didn't find the perfect vest because it was not there, or the merchant did not use the right keywords.

If you typed in Tartan Vest into Ebay.....there is still going to be a long list, if the merchant has offered it in blue, brown, gold, whatever, by separate listings....you're still going to have to wade through that list.

I think you're missing the point of my example, which was that the search didn't work the way the message I was responding to implied it did. If you're looking for a black leather jacket you need to enter +black +leather +jacket, not black leather jacket or even "black leather jacket" (which will miss 'leather jacket, black'). This syntax is not documented except in a link someone found in the real estate section, for god's sake. This is not good for either sellers or buyers.

I have to apologise for misleading you, inadvertently. The cheap looking tartans I was complaining about were the ones that came up with for "waistcoat", not "vest". The vests do look a lot better than these:

OK....I'm going to play around with that today.

You don't like those vests? I think they would look sexy under a suit jacket.

"Black Leather Jacket" will find you a black leather jacket, my point was in response to the suggestion that people should pay for each keyword and I was pointing out that people do search using phrases.

+Black +Leather +jacket will find you anything with those three words in which could be black leather pants and tartan jacket.

So there are different ways of trying to find what you want, but whether you search for "Black Leather Jacket" or you search for +Black +Leather +Jacket you're likely to be closer to what you're looking for than just searching for a jacket.

ok...I'm going to use one of my own products....it was too hard with black leather jacket, because there were too many....and this product is more obscure, to narrow it down. The product has "lime green retro bedroom" in the title - so used the following keywords....these are the positions they showed up in search:

retro bedroom - 1

bedroom retro - 16, after retro refrigerators and retro pants

+retro +bedroom - 3

+bedroom +retro - 3

There is an item titled "blue retro diary" in the contents on the ad page, not in the main title, and this is how it shows up in search:

blue retro diary - 1

blue diary - 6, after "diary of a black woman gesture set"

retro diary - 4, after an arm diary, a thigh diary, and a bloody diary

+blue +diary - 1

+diary +blue - 1

+diary +retro - 1

You are correct - adding +, makes a huge difference. Not too many people know this. I play with search all day long, and I didn't know this.

If you play about a bit more, and use, just to please everyone, quotation marks, you'll get different results.

here it is with Quotation Marks:

"retro bedroom" - 1

"bedroom retro" - None Found - glance back up, and see that it landed at 16...plus there were more after that


"blue retro diary" - 1 - and only 1 - no others

"blue diary" - 1 - no others

"retro diary" - 1 - no others

"diary retro" - None Found

Although the quotation marks can clearly single you out....looks like they can have the opposite effect as well, and leave you out of totally related searches, and out of some not-directly-related searches, where you might show up and inspire someone to click, regardless of what they were looking for.

Yup, that's the risk when searching for a phrase.

Inworld search all doesn't work quite the same, every search inworld is an and search so you don't need the plus signs, they're automatically included, you can use OR inworld.

That's because, in the All search, the quotation marks won't return any pages that don't have that exact phrase either on it, or in link text pointing to it. So when you use quotation marks, you need to be aware of that. They are not always the best things to use. For instance, a search for "black leather jacket" won't return pages that contain the phrase, 'black leather jackets', and you would normally want those pages returned. (I think I'm right about that, although the Google system could take account of plurals and singulars. I haven't checked it). Pages that contain things like, "Leather jackets - black, red, green" won't be returned either.