More on the All search

You may remember that I've said how important the parcel's name is for rankings in the All search. Not only is it the very important Title of the parcel's html page, but it is also *the* most important text on that page, plus it is the very important 'link text' in people's Picks. Here's an actual demo of how important it is for rankings.

I've just completed moving my store into a different sim. To avoid losing business during the move, I set up the new store before I closed the old one, so that they were both operating for a while, and people were buying from both. I did it that way so that I could get the new place high in the rankings before the old place's rankings slipped down. I pushed the new place up to #3 for my main searchterm, 'low prim furniture', while the old place was still at #2. Then when I was ready, I removed everything from the old place and just left a shell with some LM givers for the new store. Everything went smoothly - people still arrived at the old place, and soon afterwards they arrived at the new place. And now to the point...

Now I needed the old place's ranking to drop out of sight where people won't find it, leaving the new one in the #2 position. I changed the parcel name - that important html page Title and main text. The next day it had dropped to #10. THAT shows the importance of getting the parcel's name right.

There is nothing in the parcel's html page that even includes the word 'furniture', let alone 'low prim furniture', and yet it is still on the first page, at #10, for 'low prim furniture'. THAT shows the importance of links - those Picks that have the parcel's old optimised name. I can't do anything about that except ask people to remove the Pick (and replace it with the a Pick to the new place, of course ), but it's new name states that the store is now closed, so people aren't going to arrive there from the search results.

Links alone, with the parcel name as the link text, got the old place into the top 10 rankings, and the optimised parcel name got it from #10 up to #2.

So, everyone that uses your stores' LM in their Picks/profile will boost the stores ranking?
If so thats cool, is that how some places are *paying* for other AVs to add their LMs in their profiles?

Yup, that is why. It raises their position in the new all search. I know of a place that started offering 200L$ per month for a listing in your picks.

That's right. Those links are THE most important ranking factor. The parcel's name is THE most important bit of text for rankings, because it's the link text of those links, it's the Title of the parcel's html page (very important ranking factor), and it's repeated again on the html page in *the* most important text.

/me writes note to self to change "picks" to correct site when next inworld.

It's great that you figured out how important the links it peoples profiles actually is. It'd be nice if in the future there would be a way to reroute a person to the correct location just like rerouting from an old web page.

I didn't actually figure it out, Bradley. It's a Google search appliance, and I know how Google does it - that was my RL business for quite a long time.

A rerouting facility would be excellent, and so would a means of literally changing the destination in people's existing Picks and LMs. It's straight forward going up the rankings, but trying to come down them isn't as straight forward. Right now the old store is at #10, and taking a first page spot from someone else. OH!!!! It just dawned on me - what an idiot! I've now unchecked the "Show place in search" option, so it should disappear altogether now - until someone buys the land and checks that option again, so changing the destination in Picks and LMs would be really good.

Also all those people who were helping to promote your store are now gone and your pretty much starting from square one. That's not much fun.

True. That's why I took steps to get the new store up the rankings, where it would take over from the old one, before closing the old one down. I could IM each person though, and I might. They'd probably appreciate being informed of the move.