Poll: would you pay more than 50L for an ad with new search?

I'm in world and have been testing the new search. Hasn't changed my rankings much at all. In fact, in some ways they are improved. I'm very happy with it.

I don't know. For my rental business, it's useless to use search all. I have seen a pretty steady flow of tp's so I'm not going to worry about that one. Property rental is a category that lends itself well to browsing, so I don't worry about that.

I am a little curious for the prefab business... but it's so horribly swamped. I suppose I'd worry more if that were my primary business... I'm on page 13 of prefabs... but I'm #2 for "low prim houses" - what a roll of the dice.

I don't know what to think, really.

I *wish* I could say I am not worried.

I spent the better part of today switching my description fields on all my items at one location (new place I am moving to- bigger because i was doing better than my old place had me prims to use.) and I am testing that to see what the "relevancy" is they say they are using. More than a handful of the top 10 in the new search (past few days only) under search term "shapes" had more than 15 shapes. In my own store, I have easily triple (plus!) and avatars that include shapes and skins or shapes and hair and state as much in title. If "relevancy" was the key, i *should* place higher. I have classifieds for all locations, different for different items.

Relevancy can not be the key here. I have legitimate items with legitimate names.

I am trying to figure what the "secret" of this search is....I was an advertising professional in RL so I know a lil bit about keywords, marketing etc *smiles* Enough to know i have to keep working it but if I can't figure it out?

I only started two months ago and business has been decent given my competition - i like to think its because I am nice....and affordable copy/mod. I am not trying to get rich, but I need to pay the rent too!!

So how do I figure this out?? One place I went had FOUR , yes FOUR shapes for sale, in the top 3 in the new search and 3/4 of a HUGE paragraph in land description was regarding shapes. Bravo for playing the keywords, but its lying.

How can honest, hard working business people compete with big money business with false advertising? Well, not false but low on the relevancy scale in comparison to a business where 80% of their entire store is shapes based minimum?

(The reason I mention relevancy is because it is mentioned at the very bottom of the inworld new search page. This is not one of my pipe-dreams lol)

Anyone have any new insights???

I'm not sure how it's lying if the business owner advertised shapes, and you got there and found shapes. Are you saying they should have more than four? Did you get there, and they appeared to be selling something else primarily?

It sounds like you've already figured it out, Shanti. But there are some other threads going around with more information about how to get the most out of the new search. Phil Deakins posted a nice summary.

The classifieds are still a big fraud if you are not appearing in the top 8. I'd recommend either paying big, or not paying at all.

I just heard back from Jeska Linden re: traffic playing a part in Search/All. Stay tuned here for a possible posting by her, but here's what she said to me in email:



Which is basically what we've all been saying lately anyway, but at least she confirms that traffic DOES has some impact on Search/All.

BTW, I'm posting in this thread because I can't be bothered to look up all those darn threads on traffic. Besides, this is the thread that I pointed Jeska to.

This is nothing new. She has said the same thing on the blog. I'm not going to denigrate it as the party line, but it is the party line. Yes, traffic's effect is highly diminished.

And for the record, I also sent this thread to search-feedback. This thread shouldn't be news to the search team if they all have access to the email. I will have to assume that they do not, and that the feedback email is really routed to one person. At least you GOT a response. I did not, and I sent email on December 27 that should have alerted them to your idea about pulling the 8 featured ads, Kitty's idea to use checkboxes, my issue with separating picks from friends in profiles, and concerns about yanking classifieds.

As usual, crickets chirped. I have come to expect that.

you guys are still at this?

Here's what Jeska said about my idea for the Top Eight on the front splash page (i.e. not being classified ads; rather, they should be educational/recreational spots)



In other words, she didn't really respond at all.

In all fairness to her, she probably doesn't have any answer to give you. A "thanks for the idea, I'll discuss it with the search team" would have been a more comforting response, IMO.

Agreed. I was just complaining.

oki just installed the last version of SL, somehow the whole search change went by me un-noticed ?, the first thing i wanted to do, was send my feedback!

after a quick exploration i came to the conclusion, that its almost the end of the free market !? , "have a new shop ?, ur a great creator ?
very nice...but cough up some serious US$ for a classified , or be a unseen ghost !?"

totally shocked

yeah, cough up that cash and still have your classified buried by a $50 cheapskate.
in my world the classified section is dead and buried.

Well, they took classifieds out of the body of a search of ALL categories. The dropdown search, however, will still be wonky. What you need to do is optimize your description. I don't think there's anything unethical about that, especially if you can make a nice, detailed description that isn't too spammy.

What you really need to do is optimize the description of your parcel... but who knows, we have not yet gotten any feedback about how the new search is being used.

I didn't really connect the reference to Jeska in this post until now .

Jeska has an office hour on Friday at 3pm if you want to stop by and talk to her "in person". Her office hour isn't about search specifically though, so if she has a topic picked out there's no guarantee there's time for a search-specific discussion.

She did have some questions about search last Friday although that was more about the use of search from an end-user's point of view rather than people who are listed in search.

Thank you Kitty. I'm going to try and start making it.

Well the original question was would you pay more than L$50 for a classified and my answer having played about with this is no. The new search has ruined classifieds for all but the big players, there's absolutely no point whatsoever in paying much more than L$50 for a classified.

Quite frankly I find it unethical that they will take money from people and not deliver a service, this is not google but the search all, the default search, they're treating it like google.

Classifieds are simply not worth the money anymore, this was my concern from the moment this new search was mentioned and I wish I'd been proven wrong.

As Oryx mentioned, I wanted to post here to let you all know that we are aware that there are suggestions about the current classifieds system from the community and to let everyone know that we are currently researching a new design to improve the classifieds system.

When we launched the new Search All tab, we purposefully didn't make any changes to the way classifieds were sorted, they are still sorted exactly the same as they are shown in the Classifieds tab. We're looking at different systems to better compliment the new Search All set-up (including more ways to highlight ads in addition to the "top eight", but didn't want to hold the beta test for Search while we were designing it.

I can never make any of these office hours, because I have to work in those times and can't get on SL... I'd have to sneak on from work.

Quite candidly, I see no use in talking to Jeska. It's not her baby, she's just the face that gives us the boilerplate answers regarding search, and other topics. I'd rather talk to James, to reduce third party miscommunication and to gauge response to our ideas and how they interplay with the intended design. It isn't meant to be a slight to her, but lately, Jeska doesn't tell me anything I don't already know and I don't feel a reverberation that the suggestions are being listened to. I thought your idea and Oryx's idea were stellar. Crickets are chirping, however, when it comes to getting feedback on those ideas.

???

Sorry Jeska,

Am I reading your description wrong? In no way are the classifieds sorted in Search All like they are in the Classified tab. In the Classified tab it's simply sorted by amount paid. In Search All, they're sorted by God knows what. What am I missing here?

I see the same thing, Avion, and it has been sorted by relevancy for the last month or so.

Maybe Jeska is talking about the classifieds as they appear in the sidebar? There's no way that the classifieds appear in the same order when you filter search all by classifieds only as they do when you search via the classifieds tab.

That would make sense.

Right now, the only reason why I bother paying anything more than 50L is because I don't know what the usage is like between new search and the classified tab. I have only one ad out of about 5 that shows up in new search results, even though I know that all 5 or so are indexed - they show up in the sidebar when I search for my name, but only one appears in the body of search results. Of the 5, only 2 pertain to my rentals, the 1701 ad and a 50L ad. That 50L ad gets a few tps daily, so I know that the classified tab is getting some play. I have to assume that the 1701 ad is too, but I have no idea how much, versus new search all of classifieds.

I haven't read the whole of this thread - just the last couple of pages. And I know that it's about classifieds rather than the whole of the new All search, but I'm going to post anyway, because I'm surprised at how the new All ranking system is still not understood. Sorry, that this isn't specifically about classifieds.

The system is really very simple. It ranks places (parcels) on two distinct things - page text and links/link text.


Page text:
Page text is the parcel's html page that LL produce for it. It includes the parcel's name, description, and a list of each object that is set to show in search. The most important of those, for ranking purposes, is the title. Not only is it given highest ranking weight because it is the page's title, but it accrues the next highest weight on the page because it is used in a heading tag. Those two uses of the parcel's name make it very very important for rankings. The parcel's description is the next most imprtant part of the page, as it appears in the page's description and in a large font near the top of the page. Object names and description are the rest of the body text on the page, and count for ranking purposes.


Links/link text:
These are the most important of all for ranking purposes. Each of them is on a par with the page's title, and there can be many links counting, but only one page title. Links are:- Picks, LMs, links from the traffic pages, groups, and more. For Picks and LMs, the link text is the title of the Pick and the name of the LM. If my memory is correct, a Pick's description is also counted as part of the link text.


Many people say that the All>Any category search is no good for finding things, but that's because Place (parcel) owners haven't optimised what they can for it. People write that they've given up on the new search for their places, but they probably haven't tried yet. They can optimise their parcel's name and description, which also appears in most Picks (name and description) and LMs (name only), and they haven't optimised the objects for the search. When people do that, the search results will be better. In the meantime, the top rankings are occupied by those who have optimised for it. For instance, I am in the process of moving my store, but I don't want to lose traffic/sales in the process. So I optimised the new store before the move, and I now have it ranked at #3 for its main searchterm, in the Any category results, with the old store ranked at #2. I'm now ready to make the final move. The old #2 will slip down the rankings and the new #3 will take its place at #2. It can be done, and it needs to be done for the new search to work well.

The new search is very good, and the best search that SL has, even though it really needs more text to rank places on. When people learn to optimise for it, then the results will be greatly improved.


As for classifieds, since this a thread about them, my view is that the should appear in the All>Classifieds in money order, of course, and in the All>Any category search, because they are in fact a category and they belong there, but not in any other All>category.


Is it worth paying more that 50L for one? I think so. It must be worthwhile for those people who pay enormous amounts every week, or they wouldn't keep paying it. But it largely depends on the type of business.

well, whatever shes talking about its unlikely to come to fruition for at least another couple of years.
classifieds are for all intents and purposes, dead.