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

Another search option is to do away with classifieds as a separate listing altogether and make the places listing fee variable and simply sort based on the amount paid by default.

Search wouldn't get any better, but it wouldn't get any worse either and as a side-benefit it would get rid of camping, alt farms and most other forms of gaming since the one and only factor would be L$ paid.

As long as LL won't step up and just lets search get spammed and gamed it's never going to come close to returning useful or relevant results.

Not all classifieds need be tied to a place, though. Services comes to mind. Special attractions. Personals. Classifieds are largely for business, and give an opportunity to elucidate on sales/specials, or other variations etc. without having to constantly change the description of the land.

Variable places is an intriguing idea, but classifieds are broader than places.

Funny..I'm the opposite. I'll look online to narrow down what I'm looking for in terms of style. Actually going to the store is dead last on my options list (in RL.) Although, I suppose I do that because my taste is ecclectic enough that I'm not going to find a couch that I like at a normal furniture store. I'll Google Image or Product search before I do a web search. What I want are images of options, I'll look closer when I see something that catches my eye.

about 1 month or so ago, my classified tp's took a huge dive due to the new search. these werent $50 classifieds either, they ranged from $1,151 to $4,551 each, and i had a few of them over a few accounts. a couple of weeks ago i stopped renewing my classifieds, and it has had ZERO effect my business.
based upon that it is obvious to me that any usefulness the classifieds had for me died in the ass when LL introduced this fucked up search system.

Is the system screwed or did it just change? Did you make any attempt to make changes to your classifieds based on some of the suggestions in this and other forums, or did you just continue to keep the ads the way they were?

the ads were always on the first page of the land and property classified listings. imo considering that i PAID to be listed in those positions i really shouldnt have to change the ads. the only thing that changed was how LL decided to list $50 ads in favour of classifieds i spent thousands of $ on. TPs went from an average of over 100/wk down to less than 15/wk immediately.

The way ads work has now changed. Just accept it's your choice to refuse to try to work within the system that currently exists. I agree that LL should not be having us play beta with this new search system, but they are and until they listen to us and do otherwise it seems it would be wise to make accommodations.

The other thing I have to ask, that I've asked time and time again is....is it really believed that people are using the new search? I can't explain the sudden drop in everyones sales but as I continue to ask around no one except forum users are using the new search. Most people I ask have completely forgotten the new search exists.

I sympathize with Nina on this.... if the search system keeps on changing, then it really has an impact, for businesses and shoppers alike.

I sympathize with Nina. If I did nothing to my ad, it would have been buried on page 40 or so in the body of search, although it would have appeared on page 4 or 5 in featured listings. When I saw which ads were coming up as #1, I figured it out fast and made the change accordingly. I think it benefited me, even though my tp numbers were still high and tp's were being counted from the old search.

I tried doing multiple ads, but they don't show up in new search - even ads that are completely unrelated to my property rental business. This definitely needs adjusting. My little ad for my club shouldn't be penalized because I have a large ad for a different business in a different category. And my ad for my building services shouldn't be penalized for my property rental business.

I really wish we had some way to know how much the new search is being used, and how it's being used.

I didn't mean to sound unsympathetic. As I stated, the fact that they are having us beta test this new system on the main grid sucks, but it doesn't change the fact that is what is happening. All I am saying is that when the rules change, even when it doesn't make sense, that you need to make changes if you still want to win.

If its anything like any other Linden's take on the forums, he probably wishes he never came here =ppPPppPP

I dropped a notecard.... and have sent a mail message to search feedback letting them know that we are still discussing this. I hope it is having some impact.

Ideally there would just be a weekly office hour like the ones for WindLight or Havok4.

nope, i dont play those games. i refuse to scramble and play this ranking game. LL can jam their classified system cos im not playing.
i _will_ cut off my nose to spite my face. i do well enough without the classifieds anyway it seems. in a sense i am glad this happened because i have discovered that classified TPs werent actually converting all that well. so now instead of sinking those thousands of $, i will instead cash them out to pay tier every month.
maybe if more people would do that LL would finally take notice?

I can't say the same, Nina. The lion's share of my folks came from classifieds. Word of mouth and a good referral policy have helped, but classifieds have a large impact on my bottom line. I am unwilling to cut off my nose to spite my face, because the environment is always going to change. There will be more competition. There will be cultural shifts. You adapt or you don't. It isn't right for LL to beta test this on us, but in some ways I understand it because not enough people use the release candidates - but for things like the 5 page bug, or parcels not listing... yes, those things should have been fully vetted before they were unleashed in the regular viewer.

James, if you are peeking, is there any feedback you can give us about usage of search all, and whether or not search of classifieds is being used? I saw a big jump in my tp's and I would like to get a better idea of the usage. If, as you intended, search all is being used by the populace at large in meaningful numbers, we'd appreciate knowing that it is being used steadily. And thank you for letting us know about the other parcel bug you found. For some people, this IS their livelihood, and we as business owners need to know where to focus our energies and how not to make mistakes that will take us out of the system.

Thanks.

Just an update. I was a victim of the losing my listing in search bug. After adjoining two pieces of land I forgot to check the Include In Search Box for 24 hours. Later I read the blog that says there's a problem when this happens and it may take time for the property to show up again.

That occurred on Dec 17 and today my business has shown up in Places search. If you didn't think that having a listing under places was a big deal before I can assure you it is now. Immediately my ranking in all the other categories went up significantly.

As has been discussed in the camping threads, the real problem is having some unethical person use every keyword under the sun to get found, but not sell the item in question.

I think this needs to be balanced like this:

If the places designation is shopping, there should be objects for sale on the parcel. If a keyword does not have a corresponding object on the parcel searched for, then the keyword gets a negative rating. The more the keyword shows up, the more negative rating it gets for that particular keyword.

For people that use vendors to sell items, they should put prims on the land for sale with appropriately named items (or whatever solution LL comes up with). If a place that sells a certain kind of item is willing to waste prims putting down however many other items to match the excessive amounts of keywords, that is a whole other problem, but I think this would be a step toward progress, as prims are not something that most business people can afford to waste.

The thought of going through the 5000+ unique hair objects that I sell and including the word "hair" in the name to meet these conditions is filling me with dread...

But anyway... I recently pulled my $L650 ad as it was generating no noticable traffic at all... why? Despite under the new search, there being no fewer than 12 uses of the words "hair" in the ad (bless keywords), the ad never appeared in an unqualified search foir "Hair", as to get it to show, I'd have to up the ante on the ad funding it seems to make the higer end of the list...

How much higher? Double the amount and add a zero... Ouch...

We'll see how it goes, Kallisti. I feel you about the hair... ouch... but it will help immensely with new search all.

I am a little afraid - are people going to use classifieds at all, if search all improves?

We'll have to see what happens. But some feedback would be nice. I don't want to know the exact algorithm, but if it's not going to be a viable use of my L or puts my business at risk, I want to know. Unlike some folks, I *do* get the lion's share of my business from inworld classifieds. Search all... fark, I don't know how deep my rental centers' parcels are. That's useless. And the search for "apartments" turns up Zyngo sponsored by some apartment center first. How am I going to get found if people rely on search all but don't use classifieds? I really don't know.

Note the new search changes taking effect tomorrow, which reflect James Linden's suggestion way back around page 5 of this thread: If I understand it correctly, users who want to search classifieds will now have to use the classified tab, just like it was before the new search.

In my opinion, this will be an improvement. I'm not saying it will necessarily be a better shopping experience, or a better search overall, but I think it takes some of the ambiguity out of what we are getting from our classifed ad money spent. I reserve the right to take back this opinion pending this week's performance.

I understand your position Avion. I agree with it only to the extent that classifieds are actually searched! If they are not used, there is no point to advertising in them. And then I'm not entirely sure what I would do. I am fortunate to have a good number of long-term tenants but even they grow up and get land of their own sometimes. I had 3-4 of those occur in the last two weeks.

Maybe I'm nervous for no reason, but we will just have to wait and watch tp's.

I only wish they'd blend them better or something. They're a totally different color than the search results, and are nothing but titles, making them easy to overlook and easy to not care too look into. If they wanted to make classifieds valuable again they'd probably play around with it..

Also, is a 'show in search for L$10/week' option for classifieds a stupid idea?

Maybe having a classified associated with a parcel should increase the ranking of a place, and provide a certain amount of inbound links based on the amount paid. Let's say you paid enough to show up on page 1 of your category (shopping, services, land sales, etc.). You'd get x amount of links for being on page 1 of the classified search, x-1 for page 2 and so on...?

Yes I agree with you, Cristalle. We won't be able to tell until it has been running for a while.

I am optimistic, because before the new search, I got many tenants, often n00bs, who deliberately sought out the classifieds. There will now only be one way to do that. It is definitely not a perfect system, but at least it will be clearer.

If search all ends up trumping the classifed tab, then the ad revenue will dry up, and LL will be forced to tweak the classifieds yet again. Fortunately, pissed off customers who stop paying money are an extremely effective influence!