WHy some advertisers can use punctuation at the start of their ad title?

Classified search results are normally sorted by price anyway, so using leading puctuations or whatever is just not very relevant anymore.

If they were sorted alphabetically by default then more people would be upset... but they're not.

-peekay

yeah but who's using the 'classifieds' search tab anyway?
New people certainly aren't - they use "Places" or "All"

SO does anyone know what the trick is to getting your ad starting with punctuation?

I think it's something to bypass those filters that were put in (if it wasn't corrected yet).

Maybe there's something there that turns up results people are looking for by using the spaces as opposed to the first word of the store name?

You are absolutely correct Peekay. No matter what you search for, classifieds always sort by highest paid. As far as "characters other than letters and numbers" I do not see any of this when searching in classifieds. I do though see things as such:
O-------Shop Here ------O
O ^_^ Eat At Joes ^_^ O
For My Store I put a big space before my title.
l~~~~Wow I can make pretty things~~~l
1.===WOOT Numbers work too===1.
l***I found a creative way to make my classified stand out***l

As you can see, no one is using non alphabetical characters. They are simply starting their classified title with a letter or number, then following it with non alphabetical characters which seems to be allowed.
I do not have a problem with this at all. I find it a very creative way for people who cannot afford a 100K classified to bring a little notice to their classified. Most people pay around 2k down to 100 for classifieds, being in the mix of around 50 others who also paid that same amount, it's just good marketing to try and make your classified stand out.

Waiting for LL to install Flashing Neon Classified Titles, Xaria

this has always been the case for land - but i thought that you were defintely not allowed to do this with classifieds and the more u paid the higher up they went - somehow this has recently changed i noticed it too - we need a Linden to solve the mystery as to how they do it when the rest of us get an error message putting a punctuation mark in front of ur name is one thing but ________________________________******!!!!!!!!!>>>>>> gets abit ridiculous LOL i dont even bother looking at those ads anymore

The sorting is done by amount paid *and* then by name, if there is more than one ad with the same amount paid.

There was indeed at least few classifieds with nothing but leading spaces when this thread was started. Easy to see if you do search with nothing placed in the query box, and 'show mature' checked... then click on the name header to get these ads with just leading spaces on the top. I don't know if they are still there, didn't check it recently.

This is my guess as well.

I am always amazed at how many people don't know that you can sort the search results in different ways by cicking the column heading... name/price etc.. So placing yourself higher in the list with padding is possible.

This is what appears on my system as of 12-16-06 at the beginning of the classifieds sorted by name:

Ok - this is the result of my search (under the ALL tab) this morning for 'CASINO' - Dec 16th 2006

Clearly it shows a whole raft of ads that have somehow managed to START with SPACES!!!

***I'm talking about the 3rd listing and onwards - as the 1st 2 are 'Places' listings.***



When I try and place an ad starting with spaces it says "NOT ALLOWED"!??!

.....here's the PICTURE!!


http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h13/refills/Picture1.png


and once again - i'll say that a LOT of people use ALL for their searches - the term "Classified" implies small ads in the back of a newspaper, and isn't where a lot of people will instinctively look for things like clubs, casinos, etc which kind of mkes a mockery of the fact people are paying big money to get listed highly in classifieds!

It's a BUG - or more like an exploit.

I've just been told by someone who's doing it - and they offered to make me ads in that way for a fee.

I'm bug reporting it BIGTIME and I suggest others do the same.

I still think these are left over autorenewed classifieds and that the new validation leaves existing ads unaffected.

This ought to be easy enough for Lindens to verify.

Absolutely not - there's more and more being added - and I actually had an IM conversation with someone who's doing it!! They said it's a bug exploit and that they couldn't tell me what it is.

Yes I noticed this about 2-3 days ago. Never saw it before then. Only saw it with land ads...never classifieds.

I was thinking, cant you post a classified through secondlife.com site? Maybe theyre doing it that way

if you want this stopped - better BUG REPORT it like crazy guys!

shameless

I've got a related prob to this too. If I go to Search>All and type in the word fashion my store, DollyRock, appears under my places listing under D as I would expect. If I type in clothes its not there. Both words are used as keywords in my description in the same way.

Does anyone know if there is a limit to how many places are displayed in a search? Is it because there are now dozens of ads from a 'Free Lindens' business that have found a way of getting round the 'no punctuation' rule in their classified ads that are squeezing others out of the listing in the All tab?

Check the blog on the changes to the search engine. For places they are using whole word searches, and for multi-word searches the implied boolean operator is "OR" as opposed to "AND", so any place that has higher traffic and one of the search words will show first.

I understand the changes to the search in terms of boolean operators but that doesn't explain why a search of just one keyword, ie clothes fails to return anything at all.

wow nothing has changed!!!

We've had the supposed update and still people are able to exploit the system and start their adverts with blank spaces to get listed higher.

And now the search system is just a mess when you try searching for anything under the 'ALL' tab.

I have just emailed Secondlife support - you may want to copy this and send it to them as well - it's completely wrong that some people are gaining this unfair advantage.

------->

Hi there - still people are somehow able to circumvent the rule that classified adverts cannot start with blank spaces!!! And they are using this to get listed at the top. To see this just try a search under the "ALL' tab (with mature ticked) for "casino" or "earn money" for example.

I thought this was going to be stopped!!

As a business owner in Secondlife I am very upset by this as it means I am unfairly disadvantaged. Those who are somehow able to exploit the system like this are getting listed top for whatever kind of product (or searched-for item or service) that they want.

Please fix this!

There was a notice about this in the blog.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/15/classified-ads-to-require-full-name/

yes exactly!!! Thats just rubbish as people are still placing ads that start with punctuation or blank spaces! It's useless!

The blog entry states that it will be fixed in a release coming at the end of the month so hang in there