I've just seen a note from Torley/Phoenix on these forums saying that classifieds search has now been switched to being based on name prefix, rather than text in the advert or name.
Although I understand why you would do this, in order to reduce load on the database, this change is disasterous. Many users search for general types of products (eg, "gadget", "house", "prefab"
etc and in this situation, each classified can only cover a single keyword. As a result, business owners will be forced to enter multiple classifieds to cover the range of keywords referring to products that might be sold in their stores. This will make the database considerably bigger, meaning that the performance will be worsened by the extra records, as will the storage requirement.I do not know if your intention was to increase the number of L$ sunk on classifieds, but I do not think this change will have that effect, either. Indeed, unless a person can get their ad onto the front page, there is no point paying more to outrank someone in a keyword search because the money would be far better used covering an extra keyword in which their business otherwise would not appear at all.
Please, LL, consider changing this back or at least giving each classified a box with 10 or so keyword entries that we can specify for the ad, so that we can cover searches while still lowering database load.
EDIT: I may have misunderstood, so I'll add this question in retrospect: am I correct in thinking that this is a new permanent policy or a potential permanent policy on trial? Or is it just a temporary way of getting classifieds back while Search Places is having trouble?
