New search and relevancy

Long post ahead, sorry

My clothing stores are on the Clothes sim. I carry four lines of clothing, so each of those is listed in my land description. In fact, this is my land description:

"Honey's -UK- Couture, WRONG, Reaction, KA Designs. Affordable men's clothes and women's clothing, accessories and shoes. HUGE KA Sale going on now! Free gifts! Free money by camping on the beach! On-rez and SLX terminals on site."

Another business on the same sim is smaller, has significantly less traffic, their business name is alphabetically after mine, their group has 3 members while mine has 38, none of their products are shown for sale (or even listed in search, for that matter), and their land description reads:

"Christmas accesories free come to play snowball come to have our owndesign freebies jewelries and costumes in our collection we have transparent or silver shirts sport pants jeans jackets tops sweatshirts suits dont miss this very new qua"

Their $50 classified ad reads: "jeans pullover snowball game knit wear sweatshirt shirtjacket pants freebies newyear gifts iceskate shiny tops"

My $100 classified ad reads: "Beautiful designer fashions at affordable prices! In addition to UK Couture, now carrying select items from KA Designs, Reaction and WRONG! HUGE year-end inventory sale!

Honey's -UK- Couture Boutique (authorized reseller) is located at the Clothes sim.

Earn free money by camping on the beach! Free gifts! SLX and OnRez Terminals on site.

-UK- Couture,UK Couture,WRONG,KA Designs,women's fashion,women's clothing,clothing,women's clothes,men's clothing,men's clothes,women's shoes,men's shoes,sexy clothing,sexy clothes, fashion,clothes,fashionable clothing,sexy clothes,dresses,jeans,shoes,stilettos,boots, shirts,pants,fashion,black jeans,blue jeans,denim,ladies,suits,rock chic,skirts,leather,business attire,elegant,sophisticated,trendy,formal,casual,Westwood,gift boxes"

Yet, SOMEHOW, despite these huge discrepancies, if you search for the sim, their name is listed above mine. Can anyone give me a clue as to WHY?

Search relevancy is *not* the same as the actual relevance that a human brain sees. Search relevance is dumb - unintelligent - and is based on numbers rather than reality.

But why are you concerned about a search on a sim name? It is better to be concerned about searches on phrases that people are likely to type into the search box when they are looking for what you have.

Because in my line of thinking...and as screwy as the new search seems to be...EVERYTHING has relevance.

I have to agree with this. Even if someone pulls up the sim in search they will most likely look at the individual listings to decide where to go. The "back" button is my friend in the new All search and I find I use it like a typical web browser clicking back and forth alot before I decide where to TP. If you have a better picture and more interesting and professional listing I would be far more likely to choose your shop, no matter where you fall on the list. And, as Phil says, I am much more likely to find you through a keyword search than a sim listing anyway.

That said, I am not in world at the moment so I cannot see the list right now. How many places show up in your sim?

Right now, 8 are showing, and there are more than that on the sim, so at least two that I know of aren't showing up (and one is actually listed twice, but I didn't count it).

I reckon that the order (within the region listing) is determined by who set objects to "show in search" first.

Edit - do the parcels that are not listed in the region list have items set to "show in search" ?

HoneyBear, I just popped in world to check out the listing, and am wondering about your TP location. Did you know that it takes you to the beach behind your stores? It could be that people TP in looking for clothes and land on a beach and leave again before things even rez. Would you consider relocating the TP in fron if the shops if they, rather than the beach, are your emphasis? Sorry if this is off topic.

The shops look lovely by the way. I didn't have time to browse this morning, but I'll be sure to stop back in soon. (Oh, and maybe I boosted your relevance by dropping in? Sadly, I'm not really sure how that all works myself. )

I really don't know how the new Search calculates relevance, but given these results, it's at least possible that length of the classified might count against the match score--and that's not entirely wrong, in my opinion (*if* it works that way). The idea would be that the more words that are irrelevant to the search string, the less on-point the description. But somebody would have to either test this out, or clue us all in on the details of the match rating algorithm. (Maybe that's already known somewhere, but it's a black box to me, and I could understand if it's not public, lest we all learn too soon how to game the system again.)

There are actually four listings for that property (I presume you got there through my profile), one for each of the stores, and one for the beach. Each TP for the shop puts you right in front of that particular store.

And thank you, I work hard on them

Are you taking about the description page for the region, http://world.secondlife.com/region/2eb37c4c-2419-4c8f-85fb-5cf3dbe25d48 ? That is one of the static pages LL generates from the database in order to give the Google appliance something to index. The parcels listed on those pages may not even be sorted at all.

You were right - those parcels not listed in the region are not checked to show in search.

As to your reckoning *smile*, the other business I mentioned has only one item checked to show in search, while mine has many. No clue who would have gotten there "first", but for pure objects for sale I have them beat hands down.

Hmm...food for thought here.

That's the page I was referring to. I wasn't aware that it was static and yes, perhaps that's the difference.

I see now, but I didn't use your profile. I used the search all to find the clothes sim and then TP's to "Honey's UK Couture Boutique, WRONG..." Then, I did a search under all for the first place listed in your sig "Honey's UK Couture" and the first hit for that one also took me to the beach. I see now that each store has a seperate name so if I searched for them I would TP there. Sorry about the confusion.

And I really can tell you work very hard.

To the human mind, yes, but not to a dumb computer programme.