Advertising and Classifieds

Has anyone had any concerns about keyword searches not working correctly for classified ads? I was always under the impression that keywords from the content of the advert would be searched for, as well as the classified title, but it doesn't seem to be working, is it just my ad's?

This seems to be a random issue. I don't know if there are a few servers handling the load and it takes them a while to all update, how long have you been waiting for?

one ad that doesn't show up with keyword search has been running for weeks now I only thought to test it because visitor numbers had dropped. Now I'm wondering if I'm just wasting my time and lindens with advertising again.

The other week I had a whole parcel that randomly wouldn't show up. I wonder if there's a general issue with search. I hadn't thought to check my classified.

last few months classifieds have been a waste of $ imo.

I pay for my fishing place to appear in search, and it only works in the All search and not in places. No, I'm not a happy camper.

I'm not privy to all the mechanics behind the classified search, but, in general, a title is intended to be displayed once an entry is found. If the title is something you want people to search, then I'd be sure it appears in the body of the ad. From the programmer's perspective, they are assuming that customers are going to search "shoes" or "apartments," and would never know to search "Mona's Hair Shop."

I do remember a long time ago trying to find a famous Skin store recommended in the forums, and never could find it in search. Someone had to give me the SLURL. Perhaps even a place as big as that was making the same assumption about the title? Most of us aren't household names, so generally, the programmer's logic still makes sense here.

There should be no lag time whatsoever. Every recent experiment I've done with search terms in a classified ad has been instantaneous. If you are putting a term in the body of your ad, and it isn't showing up, then either there are 1000 people in front of you with the same term who paid more, or something really is wrong.

This is a totally different thing than a parcel search, where apparently the words in the title are indexed, and it does take several days for the terms to show up. The OP asked about classifieds, so this thread is going to get very confusing if people start mixing up the concepts.

This would be exactly the problem, words which I've used in the body of the ad are not appearing when the same words are used in a keyword search

(added a bit later) Then with some more testing I discover that the classifieds do NOT operate on a KEYWORD basis but purely on a literal word basis! Arrgghh!

So... if you use the words "Low Prim" and people search for "Prim Low", their not going to find you. Was it ever keyword searching?

No.

Or not for the 18 months or so I've been placing ads... So you need the *exact* words you want to show in Search in the body of the Ad. Or the Title - in my experience both will be scanned. So include *both* "low prim" and "prim low" in the ad if you think that's what people will search for.

However, it is advantageous to 'All' search to repeat your *main* keywords (e.g. "Low Prim" in both Title *and* Body. The number of characters in the Title is limited, so you need to choose carefully!

BTW - I'd suggest not just to use "low prim" but "low prim furniture" or "low prim house" or whatever it is you sell. That will be found both for "low prim" and also the more explicit phrase.

things are really starting to make more sense now - thank you