BUSINESS OWNERS: Have you checked your KEYWORDS lately?

Have you noticed your business dropping off lately? Or maybe your dwell isnt what it used to be...? I noticed it when 1.6 hit, but didn't pay much attention to it.

About a month ago, on a whim, I took all my words for my 'keywords' on my parcel, and decided to plug them in one by one into the search engine. I was VERY surprised to find that some are pulling up my shop, and some arent. And............unfortunately, one of my keywords that is NOT pulling up the shop just so happens to be one of our prime products that we sell.

So, I took the next step-- After trying every possible configuration of words, capitalization, etc... I contacted Ben Linden about this. He recreated the same bug w/ me and I was told to file a bug report on the issue. I did. This was on 7/6/05.

I checked from time to time to see if the search was queueing my keywords- and it wasn't. On 7/12/05, since the issue hadnt been resolved on my original bug report, I filed another one.

And again, the issue wasnt resolved after a few more days after bug report #2, so I decided to call Lindens directly at their home office. I spoke to Collin Linden. I found out that there IS apparently a recognized problem w/ the keyword search. I mentioned that I began to notice this after the 1.6 update. He confirmed that something had been changed w/ 1.6 and it has caused some problems w/ the search engine. I also was told that they (the folks at LL) were discussing how to 'resolve the issue'. I had also been told during this phone call that dwell/traffic doesnt have anything to do w/ whether or not your shops pulled up in a search.. That it pulls the top 100 results. Top 100 results based on what? Even if it was a random thing, when searching this word, it should have shown up ~sometime~ between 7/6 and now, right? The end result of the conversation basically summed up to this: Yes theres a known issue w/ the search engine since 1.6 and I was advised that a possible option/temporary fix was to put my shop in the Classifieds section for exposure. Yes, that's a good suggestion (and an appreciated suggestion), but what's going to guarantee that my potential customers will even LOOK at the Classified section? I know when I search for something, I use the plain ole search feature.. Doesn't just about everybody?

Now here's the real kicker.. It doesnt seem to matter whether its on the mainland or a private sim. It doesnt matter how you capitalize it, space it,....nothing. And why is the word is working AT ALL for others and not for our shop? It's almost like someones flipped a magic switch and turned it off . This disturbs me highly. It just doesnt make sense, and the worst part is, no one can tell me why this is happening or what the criteria the search is built on..... It's not consistent at all...

To date, I still havent heard anything back yet and the issue still hasnt been resolved. My husband (Sitting Lightcloud) made a post in the Hotline to Linden's forum last night regarding this issue. It was moved to the archives and he got a note that said that they dont reply to bug reports and that we should be hearing something in 48 hours.... Since I filed two bug reports and and even CALLED home office, why wasnt it addressed and corrected by now? its been almost a month. That post to Hotline to Lindens shouldnt have had to even be made IMHO since it's a known issue and has been reported twice and called about once

Dont get me wrong, I know that there have been more pressing issues lately to deal with, but it's almost been a month. And what worries me is, this isnt affecting just ME-- its affecting tons more ppl but they just don't know it yet! I spoke to a friend that was a private sim owner and he sold pre-fab houses-- the SAME thing happened to him, and it was detrimental enough to his business he had to get RID of his private sim and go to the mainland because he just couldnt afford the land fees anymore..And guess what? the words pre-fab WORK on the mainland and hes showing up in the search now.

SO, as a word to the wise-- check your keywords-- see if they are pulling up your business in the search engine. If not, its time we all get together and make our voice heard... I refuse to be one of those lil independant worker-bee avies out there that has worked my virtual lil ass off (and paying $400.00 USD a month for our sims) to make our business SEEN and successful, only to watch it dwindle away because of something unresolved like this that is apparently affecting not only myself, but others.

Thanks! and please check your keywords. If yours arent working or some aren't working correctly, please post something here...

P.S. Im going to bump this every so often to keep it alive. I really would like to know if others are having this issue and dont want to let it get buried.

*crosses my fingers that this isnt removed by the Lindens Gods*

*hugs*

Nytemyst Grace
Nyterave Island and CrystalBrooke

I often wondered what does make it to the front page of that search because for the longest time I didn't notice the "next" button at the bottom of the screen to continue on.

I am curious about them steering you to the classified to list your business. That costs 250L every 2 weeks, right? Did they offer this to you for free due to their bug being the issue? An answer like that would make you think they are trying to make money off of their known bug.

How would charging you$L250 make LL any money or be any gain to them?

Why must everyone jump to a conclusion that LL has some evil motive?

It's a bug, I tested my keywords, they all worked for me. Maybe your using too general of a phrase or key word?

I didn't jump to the conclusion they had some evil motive. I said an answer like that would make it look that way. It wasn't a thinly disguised dig at LL. Same applies if I buy a hamburger at McDonald's and they serve it to me raw. Are they going to tell me, oh just go buy another one? Same principle applies is all I was saying.

I noticed that button too after a while *laugh* Guess Im not the sharpest knife in the box..lol

But thing is, my dwell is usually always running about 1500-2500 each day but still its not on the list when you search for animaton or animations..*sigh*.. and as for the Classified section being free, Nope.. I would have to pay for it.

Im really not a raving bitch..lol honestly... I feel like Im a pretty easy going person. If a bug affects me, fine. It affects me and I deal with it. But thing is, I honestly think that this particular situation is BIG enough, that it is affecting TONS of folks that rely on SL to bring in $$Lindens$$. Bad part is, we all have always just taken for granted that the search engine functions properly inorder to be found by potential customers. I was one of em. I just hope that enough people check into it, and post something here to make our voice heard and get it resolved ASAP.

Thanks for the reply, too.. I appreciate it Helps keep the thread alive! *hugs*

No - there are 2 different broken things with search. One is that for some reason some keywords don't show up for some people.

When I reported this for a plot I was renting live help told me it showed up for them when they searched under that keyword. My snapshots with UI proved that we couldn't see it. (This was 1.5.x)

The order places are returned in is totally broken and there is no reason why some places end up on the first page and some on subsequent pages. Within each page they are ordered by traffic but the first page isn't those with the highest traffic.

I dont think that Collin suggested this to make money on it. Not in the least. He was trying to help with a temporary bug work-around.

Im glad that all your keywords work. If you check Nyterave's words you will see they arent too general at all. My husband is a database administrator. He logged in as me and tried everything possible. No go. That's what I am trying to point out. It's not consistent and apparently there is a known issue w/ it. I just wanted to make sure that people that hadn't checked their keywords in a while check em. There's definitely an issue.. figuring out how many ppl this is affecting is the key. I know it's not an isolated incident. Hopefully it will be resolved.

If the word animation is in the keywords it should pull up land that has animation in the keyword. For everybody! Sorting by Traffic or not all should be pulled up we pay $L30 per week for this. Why would the word animation show up for stores with 0 traffic and not for us? We even tried to copy someone elses exact keywords and it didn't help. You're right it's a bug that cost us a lot of money and others too and it's been there for months. IF they tried something new and it doesn't work maybe they should go back to the old system!

Yeah, we have a few different parcels on the SIM we have divided off for different purposes. Funny thing is, I can plug in the word animation on my Treasures & Beyond parcel, and it shows up in the search. Same sim-- same property owner.. We just cant understand what is causing it. I even copied someone else's EXACT words from their description word for word and put it in our land description-- it STILL didn't show up. SO..again.. inconsistency.. but why? thats the $1,000,000.00 question..lol

LOL get outta my head! (hes at work and Im at home..hahaha wonder why we're married? *laugh*)

Thank you for the heads up Nytemyst!! I'll be sure to check out my shop's listing as soon as I'm able to get in world!

I had this problem with a piece of land in Federal that Taeja's furniture store is on. All of the sudden, it stopped coming up in the listings for the keyword furniture, and a drop in sales followed. I could make other plots come up by changing it to include the word furniture, but not the plot the store was on or any near it. Multiple bug reports and support requests with no assistance, and then finally, through just messing around with joining and dividing land, I finally got it to work again. The whole system is flawed and they have acknowledged that - SL needs far more robust search capabilities than exist now.

Good deal! and I hope that yours turns out ok.. But, I would LIKE to see others that say its not..hahah (you know what i mean..lol)..

Im sitting on top of this post today just to see what folks are finding out, so forgive me for the quick responses *laugh*

Be safe! and good luck tonight!

I dont know how I would divide it again..lol stop by and look. Maybe you can suggest something. We can get the other plots on the sim to key the word search-- but not where it NEEDS to be showing up. We're at our wits end here. And the drop in sales is killin me.. We depend on this money to float the land tier fees.. If it quits being self-sufficient, we fold.. Im praying it gets fixed before this happens.. Guess you can consider the original post my plee for help

I really wish I knew the magic combination that caused it to start working again. All I remember is I would subdivide off 16m pieces one at a time, and add the keyword to a description and see if it would come up in find. Once this worked, I rejoined it back to the original piece of land, and it started working again. I can't guarantee this will work for you, but it did for me after much trial and error. Good luck! It is extremely frustrating and I am sorry you are going through this.

It seems like a miracle but now suddenly we appear on the Next list which we weren't 2 days ago. Does that mean someone got bumped of? And does anyone know why some blessed people get on the first page?

And if you haven't done so, please check all your keywods one by one to make sure they show up in find....

Thanks

You had somebody killed so you could get back on the list?

I noticed this some time ago.. I have tried EVERYTHING I could think of to get my shop to come up using the abreviated word tat. I come up with tattoo, tattoos, tats even.. but not tat. I added tat to the Bodyart description header and the main description line.. with no luck.

Thank you for the great post regarding this being a known & frustrating bug. I quit filing bug reports some time ago.. they are far too prolific & just plain weird, for me to bother anymore. This one definitely made my just plain weird list.

Bump
TTT
^^^
This Is still not resolved.

This is just getting ridiculious!! Again, after this was fixed about a week after my original post, I just noticed that it is happening AGAIN! My main land parcel is NOT showing up in find-- although my smaller tower area DOES thats divided off..WHY in the world does one work and the other doesn't?? This is totally inconsistent!

LINDENS PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FIX this problem!! once and for all!!