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

Ya...ummm...I'm not going to be forking that over any time soon. That's ludicrous.

If they are feeling the same way as we are, they probably won't be forking that much out either.

Yeesh... that is some serious cash! I sincerely have to wonder if sales justify that amount. I guess they have to....

I thought the same thing at first, then again 200K Lindens isn't very many high-end skins.

I'm just curious whether any of these top 10 $700 US ads appear before page 29 in the actual search? I'm pissed as it is over my ad, but more in principle. I'd be crazy with rage if I spent $700 and only got a pop-up ad, but didn't show up in the body of the search for what I understood was a "paid classified."

I think RaC skin packs are 6k per pack... and that would mean they would need to sell 33 of them a week to make back the advertising cost. But if people are buying hair, shoes, clothes, etc. it probably isn't hard to do.

Naughty skin packs are about 3200. Their ad is 134k. 505 USD at 265L/1. 41.89 big skin packs per week just to make the advertising back.

Of course, they probably sell that many in a day. Not counting hair, clothes, etc.

James, I've thought more about this, and would like to retract my previous suggestion of getting Classifieds out of the new "Search All."

A more important issue is the fact that the new "Search All" appears as first.

This means that a newer player will go to "Search All" first, and never even get around to checking out the other tabs.

Not having the Classified entries in "Search All" would mean many players never see them at all.

1. So I think Classifieds had better stay ias a special tab in "Search All," but I would prefer that "Search All" itself were the LAST tab, not the first.

As the first tab, many new players will never even get beyond it, and new players often get excited and outfit themselves totally within a short period of time - land, houses, furniture, hair, clothes, everything.

2. And - I would prefer that the Classified in "Search All" were EXACTLY like the regular classified, please.

We pay a great deal for our position in that. There is really no rationale why other factors should be weighed in anyway, in a tab called "Classified."

3. And why does it only return the first five pages? Using several keywords, my shop doesn't exist at all in the new search, because it won't go beyond 5 pages.

coco

I want to make sure Kitty Barnett's suggestion on page 8 gets seen. If you look on that page for my post (my sig makes it easy to scan the page ) then you'll see I agree with her suggestion about changing the dropdown menu to checkboxes for filtering results. I really like that idea and I explain why in that post.

I can just quote myself too *thinks we need an innocent halo smiley *

I did actually peek at it some more, but then I forgot to post about it here.

The query parameter 's' defines the "collection" that's being searched in (Events, Classifieds, Places, etc) which can by combined with a "|" separator.

So if you wanted to search both groups and events for "building":
http://secondlife.com/app/search/search.php?q=building&s=Groups|Events

Since the functionality is already there, it should be rather trivial for them to change it from a drop-down to a checkbox group.

I am resuscitating this thread, even though the poll has closed, in light of the upcoming changes to new search and to solicit more input for James Linden, who has graciously commented and provided some feedback for us as to what LL has been thinking.

I am on the fence with the new search pulling classifieds. It is better than having wacky results appear because of keyword spamming, but I have to wonder if new players will indeed use the classifieds. I'm watching teleports, and I still get tp's - but the stats on tp's come from the classified tab, not from teleports from new search.

I wonder if there are any stats on the new search... what kind of usage there is, versus the old tabs. My feeling is that it an enhanced places search, with objects. Others disagree, but I don't see a basis for that - because when you search for any keyword, the first thing that will come up is a place. I'm also wary of inbound links, because they are not always going to be relevant, as people will put poetry and their friends/family in there while they happen to be on the parcel.

We need a more thoughtful approach so that relevant results show up all the way around. Any more thoughts?

And people wonder why camping is so popular.

I think with the changes that my store classifieds are going to become pretty much a waste of time but my land rentals will be fine.

As an example, if I searched for apartments using search all, the first five pages are all places, except for ONE entry, which is a group. And it's not even Ravenglass, which has 600+ members. It's one group that has 27 members.

Clearly, traffic has an effect. How else would Zyngo presented by Sunshine Apartments come up as #2?

And how useful is this to someone shopping for apartments? And for landowners, this only encourages use of the parcel listing fee, and then populating the parcel with alt farms.

My $L2: GET THOSE FEATURED ADS off the front page of Search!!! Those 6 or 8 (I'm not inworld so can't check) VERY prominent links should NOT be businesses. Those spots should be reserved for educational or official Linden spots. When you put those big 8 up there, it makes them look officially sanctioned or promoted by Linden Lab. How fair is that? We should be seeing stuff like Ivory Tower, Help Island, the old Orientation Island, Linden Village, NCI, or even some of the lovelier builds, like the ever popular Apollo, or SL Botanical Gardens, Svarga, etc. Just please please please for all that Linden Lab claims to be (unbiased and impartial!!) take off the paid adverts from the very first page of Search.

now this just blows it all...

doing a search for 5th labs (spelled right or wrong i don`t care atm) and a get a frigging HUGE list of returns on the WIKI!!!!

wtf is it searching LL`s websites???

this is absolutly pointless, search is for ingame, we have a ....... browser for the wiki ffs


besides, 10 results per page? wth is up with that?
sooo regret that the old client started to messup with what ever they`re doing that i had to downgrade *yet* again to run smooth grrr


edit: yea i know, it was 5th order...

I realize that this was posted quite a while ago, but since the thread has resurfaced, I'll respond to it.

Maybe the various times I've been hit in the head have something to do with the way I see things, but with what you are suggesting, a competitor could make an alt to place ads for your place and get you kicked out of search. Not a good idea.

Would you pay more than 50L for an ad under new search?


I will not pay 1L for a grid full of libsl bots camping 24/7 to increase traffic.

It's too hard to make new frieds ...

I don't necessarily think that it appears "sanctioned" by LL - I understand from the getgo that these are paid ads, and the only way I wouldn't know that is if the words "paid ad" meant nothing to me and I was momentarily brain dead. I do, however, think that putting helpful things like the Ivory Tower, Help/Orientation Island, NCI, and some featured lovely builds or fun places to go is a great idea and is one step toward accomplishing helping newbies find someplace cool to go.

I would imagine that it's more to do with a plan to have ads external to SL appearing.

You don't need an ad, just bots with picks.

3rd quarter numbers were down significantly. I will go out on a limb and say 4thQ will show a sharp rise in residents, especially in December. The trend will continue into 1stQ 2008. Spending will remain flat, however. Anyone willing to take the bet?

Agreed. Obviously the "Paid Ad" announced that they are advertisements. To the newbie, however, the placement on the very front page could possibly signify that these are Lindens' favorite places to shop, or that Linden Lab officially endorses those places.

I remember when I was new and trying to figure out search. If I had seen those top 10 spots, I would have figured that they were better or approved or whatever, and would have gone there.

To retain members in SL, we need to show them the cool stuff, not just the shopping. Educational links, neat builds, themed parks, whatever, THAT should be on the front page. THAT is what will keep people in SecondLife. They can figure out the shopping on their own.

I wouldn't have drawn that conclusion, Oryx, but we are on the same page as to the usefulness of the splash page.

Let's look at what is in search all: places, groups, people, the wiki, and events. Classifieds are coming out of the body of search. Events are coming out of the body of search. People shouldn't be in there. Or should it? I can see how it makes sense to find business owners through a search that includes a pertinent term in their picks. But not if their name is Sari, a name of a good. That is just an example. It would frustrate me if I were searching for saris to find a person come up in the body of my results. I wonder if it can be tailored to exclude avatar profiles where the search keyword is their name. But honestly, the way people use their picks to showcase their friends, you would still get odd results from someone else who included their friend Sari in their picks.

I reiterate that the use of picks needs to be re-thought... or put in a friends tab in the profile, so that the picks would be used properly. People make picks on the fly, wherever they happen to be standing, on impulse. I have people who have made picks inside my apartments, and while that's all well and good, it produces an unintended result that would benefit me if I listed their place in the places search. Picks should produce the right results. And make it so that when a pick is placed, the picture and parcel description text cannot be replaced. This way there will be no more willy-nilly use of picks to show off friends, and a pick really IS a recommendation to others.

(edit: Thanks for the unlock, Strife.)

Thanks for the unlock Strife!

My vote would be to have 3 major Search tabs: All, People, and Land Sales/Rentals. It is very disconcerting to see 8 people listed before the first event, place, or classified. It makes no sense.

What's happening with Search/All? Is the consensus for Kitty's suggestion, with filter check boxes?

I would separate groups (edit: and events) out too. All, People, Groups, Events and Land Sales/Rentals.

Why events? http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3153

Events are no longer searchable by time.

Am I missing something?

If you only want places, you just pick places from the drop-down and no profiles will show up in the results.

*blinks*

I never suggested getting rid of the different search tabs. In fact I'd have a big rant about it at some Linden's office hour if they did that . The tabs are far more useful than the All search.

The only thing I suggested was that All could be used to get a filtered result of an arbitrary combination of the categories instead of "All results from all categories".

I'm putting myself in the shoes of a newbie who doesn't use the dropdown and searches any category. I as a "power user" would search classifieds first, and then maybe places.

No profiles will show up and no places either...well, they will, but not mine. My store shows up in the old search but stopped showing up in the new search under places about 2 weeks ago. I notified the Lindens but haven't seen a change or heard anything back yet.

James via Rika Linden just posted on the blog that they found a reason why some parcels and people would not show up in new search. It's another bug in the Google search appliance.