I might have to close up shop... does LL care?

As a small business owner (silent partner) I find myself in the position of needing to consider closing down shop due to the recent disaster in regards to search functionality (or lack there of).

Prior to last wednesday, people who were looking for specific items could go into search and type in 'keywords' and get a list of hits to those words that matched a stores description. As of today (7 days later) FIND>PLACES is still non-functional and IF I were to choose to post a classified ad in place of the previous functionality I would be forced to placed SEVERAL ads considering that search functionality is now castrated to the point that only the FIRST word in any classified is searchable.

This would mean I would literally have to place 8-10 ads at a minimum cost of L$50 per ad in order to even HOPE to drive traffic back to my location. In raw numbers that equates to L$400-L$500 (minimum) instead of L$30 (weekly fee for FIND>PLACES) in order to HOPEFULLY drive the same amount of traffic to my shop.

There is no fiscal logic for me to make that move. Like I stated.. I am a SMALL busness owner. We do very limited sales since we hit a 'niche' market. (and we are quite happy in that niche).

The point is... without search functionality the way it was small businesses have to completely rethink their business strategy in order to be able to come up with a proper cost/benefit analisys for themselves. At the time we started this venture it seemed very cost effective to have keyword searchable listings so we went forward and got things started and they were moving quite nicely until last week. Now, since FIND>PLACES has been turned off our business is down a good 60% or so from the prior week and that is INCLUDING introducing new products which have sold quite well, even if to a MUCH more limited market.

Imagine for a moment going to google and typing in "Chicken Soup" and only getting hits from webpages where the very first word was "Chicken". You wouldnt be very happy with google any longer, would you?


My hope is that Robin will read this and answer with something other than the same old "... read the blog..." lines since it's quite clear that communication via the blog is limited at best.

First, I should clarify we do care.

And while the blog doesn't cover anything:



I should also emphasize most of our relevant issues are a proactive response to topics Residents brought up first. For me, particularly through inworld.

It's tooth-grinding that Classifieds functionality continues to be limited. I'm checking with our Developers regularly. If we're going to add back those features, it must be done with care and stability, and not repeat in a recurrence of last week's database load issues. Classifieds wouldn't even work when those problems were ongoing.

These are two relevant blog posts, a renewal for Classifieds:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/06/classified-listings-auto-renewed-for-an-extra-week-at-no-charge/

and summarizing as Search features come back.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/06/update-summary-of-search-functionality-restored-so-far/

As a heavy Searcher, I too experience the frustration of not being able to use these to enhance my Second Life.

We will continue to work hard on bringing back what we can — I don't have further details until I have more certainties, as I don't want to communicate false hope.

I wish you all the best with this, Geddy.