Classifieds and land ads

Im sorry if this has been covered somewhere else ..if it has can you point me in the right direction. Ok heres my problem .... i have a small clothing business that im trying to get up and running , ive placed classifieds and ads on the land and none of them come up in the search , ive tried changing my keywords and even copied them from ones that come top of the list but to no avail , ive tried putting !!! and ** in front of the title on the land ad and still nothing, Am i doing something completely wrong here , cos i notice that in the main search it doesnt seem to be listed by traffic or alphabetically so how on earth does it work, cos i dont stand a chance if i cant even get my shop to show up in search .. can anybody help???

not sure Cordelia

When I look for Juicee .. I get you in the list

When I search for Clothes I get SEX as number one.

Your first key word is clothes yet the sex thing has clothes as its last keyword.

So as a search all doesnt search under traffic and a land listing doesnt require a classified payment (i.e more you pay higher you are) I personally think the search is bolloxed.

I also noted that under clothes your not listed AT ALL ... even alphabetically.

I know this as my store is next to yours and my advert is quite highup .... but then again I dont have clothes...just club lighting.

so does ANYBODY understand the search system and how it lists its items... as all ways of alphabetising the list seams to pull no results.

Marty ......

ok so my search words are clothes , fashion , jeans , corsets , flexi , flexi dress , flexi skirt , skirts ,girl , gurl , fetish , trendy , trends . ladies , ladies clothes, lady, women , womens clothes. woman, club wear

so i search for clothes .. i get nothing ... fashion i get nothing except sex adss and other land ads for stores ... mine doesnt show up unless i go to the places search and i get mine if i search ladies clothes .. it doesnt make sense to me .. i could do something to increase traffic but whats the point of increasing traffic for an ad that doesnt even show up in the general search

Unfortunately traffic HAS influence on your search listing. There are many many clothing shops in sl, but the search engine shows only 300 hits I believe. Shops/lands with the highest traffic show up in search, others don't.

ok hoorayyyyy now i know .. so i should do something to get my traffic up then .. thanks for that cos i was banging my head

fair comment .... BUT ....

The listings arnt listed by traffic ...... there are some at the top that have less traffic than those further down.

Is that a sarcastic reply on my posting? If it is I don't understand why. If you analyse the various search results it is true that some shops appear high in search without having the highest traffic count. I do not have an explanation for that. But the majority of high listed shops do have high traffic counts or have paid huge amounts for their classifieds. It shows especially when you search with generic keywords like clothes, hair or skin. Another thing is that land descriptions seem to list higher in All searches than classifieds. But when you are in the clothing business it doenst make much difference because there are so many land descriptions with the words clothes, dress, skirt. So I hope your reply wasnt meant to be sarcastic, otherwise I regret having written this response.

nope not sarcastic at all ... you shed some light on it .. although it still doesnt really make sense cos i use a land ad .. and there are people with land ads with less traffic than mine at close to the top ...i dont get it

Okay Cordelia, I'm glad. I have a succesful furniture shop in sl and appear pretty high in the listing. But only because I have some specialized products. I specifically based my classifieds and land names on these products to avoid competition when people simply look for 'furniture'. Because with that generic keyword my shop isn't listed at all. When I dug into it I found that my traffic count of about 700 isn't good enough for a good listing. I tried almost anything to get higher results, but no luck. Maybe it's a different thing in the clothing business, but for me traffic does determine listings.

Based on this, best advice I can give you is to make another classified (or include in land description) with a specialized product you have. That may attract enough people to generate higher traffic count and build your name.

Under any given keyword, the classifieds list in this order: Highest paid, traffic and alphabetical. Meaning that it first sorts by the person that paid the highest amount. Under that it sorts by traffic, if the amount paid is the same, and by alphabetical of the first two are the same.

Directory goes by traffic and then alphabetical. Or at least it used to. I've given up on tracking this one.

Edit to add: In the classifieds, a lot of people will go to the very last page before shopping. Sometimes the ones paying the highest amounts in are often 'camping' places and a lot of people have issues with them.

Note, this is how it used to be.. they may have changed something and I just haven't realized it yet.

Traffic only counts if you search under 'PLACES'

If you search under Classifed, it goes by who paid the most for the ad, then down from there.

if you use the 'general' search tab, i dunno how that works....


i pay 50 for my clothing store ad and get quite a bit of click thru's

Also don't forget that whether your lot is listed 'mature' or is listed 'PG' has a bearing on search results as well. if you have marked your lot as 'mature' then it won't show up in 'PG' searches.

It's different for classifieds. You can run a PG ad for mature land.

so are we saying then....

Classifieds - Pay for Place
Places - Traffic for Place
All - Who bloody knows as it doesnt make sense>>

Which is what we said in the first place.... or as said earlier ... the all tab takes all linto consideration i.e traffic and pay places??

*grins*

Martin

well im just as confused as when i started the thread .. oh well i do know that changing a few keywords up'ed my traffic byt 100 in a couple of hours .. so that worked at least

Cordelia, basically Marty is right:

To be listed higher in Classified ads, pay more money and pick unique keywords. If you search classifieds for 'sari' you can see that only a few people have made adverts about saris, and there's a wide spread of how much money people pay. That's what those numbers represent. The more money you pay for an advert, the higher you go on the list.

To be listed higher in Search/Places, pick unique keywords and increase traffic (lucky chairs seem to work for some people.) Search on 'sari' and you get probably the same listings as you did in Classifieds, but the numbers are different; these represent traffic at each shop. The more traffic you have, the higher you go in the list.

I think a good way to get traffic is to give out a freebie sample of your work with a Landmark and a request to be put on the shopper's picks. Also, create a group they can join for info on new designs and to make suggestions for what they would like to see you do in the future. Involve the people who do come and have good word of mouth.

Do you have a visitor tracker that lets you know when people are at your store? I think Classfied Ads are the worse way to go. Announce new products in the Forums under New Products...I have bought stuff that way. Return involved customers and good word of mouth is the way to go but it takes time.