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

Because the places listing would get removed, not the alt.

I.e. start a new mall, keyword spam/cheat or otherwise abuse search to obtain a better ranking and have the mall delisted from search altogether for a month as a sanction.

My experience is different, and it is going to depend on what market you are in.

For me, a higher paid classified has resulted in much better returns for me in the property rental market. I have pretty much filled up a new sim's worth of tenants in one month, whereas I had previously been struggling. My teleport numbers shot up immensely. Granted, I also made myself even more competitive and the ad itself may have attracted more attention no matter where I put it, but it helps to be on page 1 in my business. My 50L ads only see a fraction of the teleports that the big one does. Maybe it's because the big one was already seen... but all I know is that when I was super cheap about advertising, I had more stress with regard to this game.

Your sales revenue may not be great, but the stats don't give enough information to understand what the problem is. What are the number of sales to distinct individuals? If you have double the people spending less money, what would you expect? And people have been spending less money. If the numbers are up but sales revenue is down, it may be that your stuff is too expensive.

Ron,

Before the new release, it was easier to tell the effectiveness of your classified, and easy to tell how "visible" it was.

Now, under the new search, it is difficult to tell whether anyone is looking at it at all, because we don't know whether more searchers are using the old classified tab or the new all search with the classified dropdown choice. In the new search, does your ad show up in the top 8 "all star" ads? If not, does it show up at all in the body of results, or do you have to click many more pages than any typical user would to get to it?

If more people are now using new search, that might explain why few people are finding your high-priced ad anymore.

Cristalle, just to clarify, didn't you make it onto page 1 by changing your key words, and not through the price of your ad?

I've not modified my key words at all yet since the new search. I appear in the top 8, but don't seem to show up at all in the body of search. (or on any page I would normally get to when I pretend I'm the customer). Up to this point, I've been "Priming the pump," which worked, because I'm nearly filled too. (I'm at least making a good profit over tier). But I landed most of those good, long-term tenants through the old search. I am now wrestling with how to approach the problem when I open my new island, and whether spending the money for the ad is worth it.

With rentals, we have the luxury of not needing to advertise once we fill up. I wouldn't know what to do if I owned a shop.

I meant page 1 of classic search, returning in paid order. 50L ads never worked for me, not well anyway. The lion's share of my tenants come out of the classifieds.

With new search, I did diddle with it enough to hit page 1 - and even #1 for a certain keyword. But my other ads are not even on the radar with new search, even though they emphasize a different keyword or are for a totally unrelated business. This disturbs me. I think I understand it, but the system needs to be smart enough to know when ads are not related to the same business. What category the ad is in (special attraction versus property rental) should be a clue.

Regardless, I'm still seeing teleports come in for the expensive ad. I don't know where it's coming from - new search or classic search. I will soon hit full capacity and will be able to afford to experiment with the ads to see if the big ad at 50L gets the same amount of teleports as it does at 1401 (Yay, saved a few hundred L on it this week ).

Yup. Don't necessarily punish the avatar. Just take the listing out of search, including classifieds. A month is a long time though, how about 2 weeks?

Wouldn't it work a lot better just to make the search ignore spams, after, say 5 or 10 repeats of a word? Why enact a big legal hassle when the search engine is perfectly capable of handling the problem automatically?

I'm just picking random times really . I guess a week (or two weeks) would be harsh enough to send a message, yet not long enough to actually ruin anyone's business.

I can only think of Robin as a Linden to suggest it to though, and from the times I went to her office hour they seem to be rather hectic and not terribly constructive .

There's various ways you can game the current system other than keyword spamming. Like the "we pay you to put us in your picks" some places are already engaging in to boost their incoming links.

Under the old method, I always changed the sort to abc immediately after I got the results except for land sales, which I would first make sure to only have mainland, and then resort based on land size or price per meter.

When I shop I tend to go by recommendations, what I can find on OnRez & SLexhange, and searches in SL (places first, then classified - and I sort both by alphabetical).

I do not currently advertise for the simple reason that I can't get my land in search even though I checked that little box. If that is screwed up, I'm not spending more money for no results.

I do not use OnRez or Slexchange for my own products for the simple reason that I do not know how to "watermark" my work, or whatever that term is that is used.

I am, in fact, quite incompetent when it comes to business. I admit that fact.

The "false hooks" is why I always resort the search results, and use LL Classifieds after search other tabs.

James, I would like to get Classifieds out of the Search All, and most especially the "Classified" tab in the Search All.

It defeats the whole purpose of having Classifieds. Many will just stick to the all tab and never go beyond it, and paying as much as I do to be visible in the Classifieds will become pretty much pointless.

That would be less sink for you from that, and also, since it is harder to find me, there will be less income for you if I have to cash out and be on my merry way because of it.

Keep Classifieds to its own tab (and not in Search All), and there will still be some hope for ever being found.

coco

My experience is pretty much the same as yours. My sales are down dramatically over last year (by 50% or more). I had been paying 5k per week for my ad (and 10k every now and then). 10k used to get you on page one. Now people are paying ten times that for the top spots. That's a game I'm simply unwilling to play. I attribute the decline in sales to a couple of primary factors - mainly to increased competition, greater saturation of the market, and downward pressure on prices due to new entrants trying to undercut everyone else. I've just reduced my classified to $500 and we'll see how it goes. At this point all I really care about is covering costs and making sure it's still fun. I really don't think running a 100k classified is going to help either of those goals in the long run. My time and money may be better spent getting more stuff up on SLX and onrez and putting my advertising budget into blogs and other SL related publications where there's a fixed cost. I'm not a fan of the auction mentality and the amounts people are paying have gotten truly ridiculous in the past year. If the new search makes that a waste I'd consider that a good thing.

I think I agree with just about everything you say here, Chip.

I would just like to see a clear implementation of how paid classifieds are supposed to work (if at all) instead of this extremely time-consuming and expensive guessing game we have to play now.

I see it as a prod to make us put all parcels in places search. I kind of dislike that, because I direct potential tenants to a central spot in each sim to look at available openings. It's like paying 30L for each plot, and to me, that is as worthless as a 50L ad. You would need high traffic, lots of inbound links, and a number of appropriately named objects on the parcel just to be found. For small apartments, that is a waste of L and prims to me. And the rental centers would suffer, because they don't get that kind of traffic to get seen. As such, I have to rely on people who don't have a chip on their shoulder (no pun intended Chip ) about people who pay for ads to find me in the classifieds, or by word of mouth.

If search all makes the most expensive classifieds useless, it will make all classifieds useless and I too would be forced to use other media to hopefully get exposure, but I haven't seen any significant results from other media. I use parcel directory services and have seen a couple of tenants come in that way. But if I had to depend on those, I'd be out of business. So far, they pay for themselves as the few folks that have come in that way have been long term tenants. But it wouldn't sustain my business if I decided to expand further.

I think certain markets lend themselves to browsing ads - property rental and land sales certainly do. But 'shopping' is a morass, and it takes a ridiculous amount of money to get seen. It could stand to be broken down a little more. Which is why SLX and OnRez are preferable for shopping - they break down into logical categories and help things to make sense. You don't have to pay 90k to outstrip someone in a completely different market. What does a skin maker care to compete with a gadget maker? But both have to pay truckloads of L to get on page 1 to get seen. Property rental/Land Sales are different. These are fairly homogeneous to begin with.

Cristalle, and everyone:

Not sure if anyone has already posted about this, but the search has changed. There are no longer only 8 featured ads, but 10, and they rotate per page.

I think it's better, but I still have mixed feelings about it. Now I feel like i'm just browsing 2 lists at once, and I still sit there wondering why people who pay almost nothing get top billing far in front of people who pay a lot. If the search is going to be based on relevance, and spamming key words, then LL, you can't claim that you get good results for money.

This past week I had the lowest numer of teleports ever for my classified ad. This, even though I was one of the top 8 featured ads the whole time. My business didn't suffer much since I'm already over the capacity I need to pay tier and some extra. But I still feel that was money wasted, and shudder to think what it would be like to own a shop. I don't know how I'm going to publicize my new island with the pathetic results I'm getting. I won't be diverting money into a classified ad, though.

Oddly enough, business has more than doubled for me in the last week. Things were WAY down for a while, but they're back to where they were in March/April. I suppose it depends on your market. If you have a niche, the new All/Classifieds seems good. If you have a product (e.g. skins) that isn't "niche" then the All/Classifeds... I just don't know. It's so hard to tell only a week or two into it.

yup, that decides it.
cancelling my classified ads.

I am still getting good numbers on the teleports because I think I guessed correctly and chose the right keyword to emphasize. I also get a few teleports on the cheap ads, but the total of those 3 do not add up to what I get on the big ad on a daily basis.

Honestly, I am not ready to pull the trigger and cut the budget completely - It is too soon to tell and I have no idea who is using classic search versus the new search. But I think I'm surviving so far because of getting the right keyword and being on page 1 of new search. I am sorely tempted, though. I am also sad to say that my eyes tune out the featured ads. They really mean nothing to me, and I have to concentrate to go look at them and make note of who is showing up in them.

What really gets me is the emphasis on places in the new search - for this market, it is extremely frustrating. It has to be frustrating to newbies looking for rentals to search places and then find that the primary purpose of the place is a club or shop, that there aren't any places available, or to have to get there to wonder where the rentals are and then find out how much the place is renting for. It lends weight to those who have large contiguous parcels with lots of traffic, but not those who break up their properties into individual lots. Just going through page 1 and 2 of search all, any category, for "rentals" or "apartments" is exhausting. This would drive me to classifieds, because there at least I would get a better sense of who actually had what I wanted. Search all classifieds definitely produces better results in terms of shopping for a place to live.

This is not going to be the same result for people who are selling things, especially those in a category like "skins" or "hair." It's better for those who have large parcels and lots of traffic. But the options are so massive... This is why searching via SLX or OnRez is superior - because people can search a targeted category to find what it is they want, and find specific items.

I really don't know what to think, here. I am sorry to say that I feel that the only way to get any visibility in this system if you are new is to do as Skin Oasis does - put an alt farm of 50 alts with inbound links onto your property somewhere so that you will show up high in places. That, or diddle with the ad long enough and hit the right keyword over and over again.

I also figured this out finally, and got my expensive ad to appear on page 1 through keyword spamming. But that is giving me zero return for my money. And once everyone figures this out, it's going to be useless. It only works right now because so few people are onto it yet.



I am dead opposed to those stupid spammy "featured ads." I hate to criticize like this, but it's just a terrible idea. As I said before, I am one of the 8 featured ads if you search "apartment" "apartments" or "hotel." Before the new search I had huge amounts of traffic. Now, as a "featured ad" I get almost none in comparison. I think it is for the same reason that you and I don't want to look at them. No one wants to look at them. They look like results "outside" of your search, intruding on you like spam.

My business is going great right now, but it is only because I added so many long term tenants before the new search came on board.

I still have to say that it is far too soon to tell. But at this point, I would probably suggest yanking out classifieds entirely, or using a purpose-oriented search that gives shoppers and explorers what they need, and giving classifieds prominence for the shopping-oriented search. I can't imagine a tenable compromise any other way.

There is currently a bug with classified click tracking. In particular, if someone finds the HTML detail page for a classified, then clicks teleport, the click is not counted in the statistics.

Statistics still count clicks from the traditional Second Life-UI panels, including the old classified search and the window that spawns from sidebar clicks.

I'm looking into how to fix this.

James

Thanks for letting us know, James. Is there any way to separate these numbers out so that we can see where the ad is most effective?

Cool idea! Give us separate numbers from the All/Classifed and Search/Classified tabs. That way, we can actually TELL you if the sidebar is effective.

A Linden!!! Quick, catch it!!!

edit: can I have a bear?

The top classified ads right now are over 200k L$. That's over $700 usd a week. The cheapest of the top ten is over $500 usd. @#$&! insane.