What is going on with the SL Search ???

That's kind of an odd hack, it's really a prettied up 404 page, and can be misleading when the page isn't deliberately missing. Profiles set to "not show in search" will get that, so will the links on picks that point to land that doesn't have the 30L checkbox ticked. But you'll also see it if the processes that build the profile and parcel pages get stuffed up and miss some entries.

I contacted Live chat about this today.. and they have 'heard of it'....

<insert any colourful language here>

Will it`s because of traffic. I use to be on the first page. My traffic has not change but others stores traffic has gotten higher. SL does not have a fair way of keep ahead in search. The one with the most campers wins. It the same with classifieds, the one with the most L wins.

I have been in a lot of blogs everyone loves my work. but until SL change there search and classifieds. It not about how good your item are. It`s how much traffic you get.

But remember traffic does not mean sale. I Make sure your costumer are happy and don`t worry about were i am in search and classifieds

I've been getting this intermittently for ages.

This happened to me today. My listing is still showing in Search All but a click on the link shows the Page Not Available window. My listing in Search Places still works fine. Grrrrr. I depend on search for business and usually make 10-15 sales per day. Today's sales: 0.

I talked to support and they blamed it on a non-standard character (smiley face) in the description. It was deleted and support said it would take 2-3 hours for search to rebuild and restore my listing. I am still waiting.

Something has definitely changed in the last week. My ranking for 2 plots has been consistent for months with both plots listed one after the other on some key search words. Suddenly the plots are pages apart and poeple who have never been above me in the ranking are suddenly in front. On the other hand, a few poeple, industry leaders who have allways been above me are now pages below.

Search is a bit buggered, thats my technical evaluation.

The new all search supposedly works by "prevelance". What the "exactly" entails, who knows. I used to be on page one, each day i drop farther down. Why ? who knows. I typed in the name of the stores that are now on top. It seems to be alot of 'whatevers' in the list that it brings up. Nothing to do with the actual store itself. Im quite frustrated and annoyed that no answers can be brought to our attention of how this new ALL search is actually working or what we can do to be noticed on that list.

Rankings change as people change things. It is expected.

With traffic figures on many parcels across SL (tm) showing as zero for the second weekend in succession, i'm sure search will be further affected for some.

And my opinion for the record on the camper/bot/profile pics issue affecdting traffic, if search was only governed by avis with payment info used, i'm sure it would make listing more realistic. (Although i know this would not suit every business)

I've been dropping down the rankings a lot as well. It's not totally clear yet why. It seems a bit like keywords are counting for a lot more than they used to because the people I see rising above me have parcel descriptions like "rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land rent land" etc.

It's annoying, and obviously will take a lot of my time to get back on top if it's even possible. But welcome to Search Scamming, it's practically a full time job in itself. It's not easy either, Phil purports to be some sort of big time SEO expert and his store ranks approximately nowhere in the search.

What? What sort of barbed statement is that? Doesn't #1 for "low prim furniture" and #2 for "furniture" count? (without quotes). Where do you imagine my store should be ranking?

Sorry, I dunno why I wrote that. I'm just in a funny mood - i.e. quite drunk.

LOL

I am still trying to understand the changes, because it has affected me to a degree, and sadly I see my traffic slowing down now.

With this whole BOT policy change that is happening, why does LL still keep "places" search? If you have a bazillion bots, you will still top that search.

Does anyone know if most search via ALL or Places.

Maybe I'm missing something.

"Seaarch All" is really pissing me off now.

I have 2 plots listed; in the last 7 days my main store plot which has very good legit traffic (2000 - 4000 per day), ideal keywords and hundreds of picks (via gaming) has slipped from page 2 to page 35 on the top prefab related keywords.

On the other hand, my old plot next door which just offers a tp to my new store has about 10 prims on it, pretty much the same keywords, 50 traffic a day and minimal picks, and that has moved from page 25 to rank #5 on page 1 for the top prefab related keywords.

So I am stumped now. Spent endless hours trying to gain rank on my main plot (not to mention L$20k per week on picks) and it has bombed to the depths of page 35, yet the plot I expend no effort or money on is now in the top rankings. Overall traffic and business has remanined the same so dunno why I am whining so much, plus i've stopped paying for picks as it no longer seems to benefit me, so saving money there too. Just annoys me that it all seems to defy logic.

Someone please explain to me WTF is going on?

Cheers.

My net speed drops at times, when it is low, classified and all are so slow I don't use them, places and the other tabs run faster.


On traffic, my humble 700 or so a month has dropped to 0 up to 200 at the most, I can't find my $L30 ad at times either.

Everyday i drop a page, and its not bc im making changes. I made changes only bc i seen my store drop drastically ! I look for answers, i see none. I ask lindens, they have no answers. Even told me to read forums for answers. LOL ya , what a laugh huh. There is a store that is on teh first page. That person told someone i know that a linden helped her out. Who knows. All i know is however its supposed to b working,isnt. Anyone have any answers ?

Hi everyone !

My ranking now is fine again !

What I did ? I just don't know !!!

I made several random attempts based in trial and error.

But the point is: Im sure that the fact that I'm good again is just a temporaty stage !

Everyday I search for some words such as Homes, Prefabs, Houses...that's matter of my business and everyday I see very different results.

Much more then this...I started to file every day each one of my competitors to see if some word has been change, if new keywrods was introduced or droped, land size, traffic...etc. Im trying to discover a pattern.But the pattern really does not exists.Me and my competitors just fall down and back up aparently without reason.

It sounds awfully like the LL equivalent of the Google Dance.

Pep ( http://www.google-dance-tool.com/what_is_google_dance.html )

Henry. A couple of questions...

Are you saying that you are keeping the html pages of those that rank around you, so that you can see if they make any changes to them?

If so, are you seeing relative ranking changes between the ones you are watching (including your page), without any of them making any changes to their pages?


It'll probably surprise some people here, but I never played much with the All search - not until I removed my bots a few weeks ago. I was always content my my ranking for 'low prim furniture' and I never tried to rank well for the single word 'furniture'. But, after removing my bots, I decided to have a go at it. I was ranked near the bottom of page 2 at the time, and I quickly moved up to ranking #2 for the word.

I keep copies of the html pages of people around me, and I can see the changes that they make. I can even see whether or not their changes are likely to be successful. I have only noticed 2 odd things while I've been doing it. The first was when the #2 and #3 pages swapped rankings (mine went down to #3). It didn't make sense to me, and I didn't respond because I didn't think it was correct. Sure enough, the next day they swapped back again, without any changes to the pages. The other oddity was when someone's page dropped too far to make sense, but it soon came back.

So I see occasional oddities but they don't last. What I don't see are lasting swings in rankings unless there is a reason that I can also see. So I don't think that anything odd is happening with the All search.

People keep mentioning the Google Dance, but that was something that stopped years ago, and hasn't happened since then. They changed the system so that it was no longer necessary. And that tool has been worthless ever since

Yep, knew that.

I was just wondering if LL had reinvented it; the apparent bouncing between old results and new results reminded me of Google's now superseded compromise policy of offering old listings and new listings (apparently randomly) while a new algorithm was settling down.

Pep (I used to love watching the indignant posts on the SEOWatch forums in those days too. )

Yeah, agreed with Phil on this. I saw my own ranking drop quite significantly a couple of weeks ago and I assume they changed the weightings. I looked at the people that were above me and copied some of their techniques and found myself back at the top.

If you're making random changes and don't know why your rank is moving up and down then lrn2science.

It was fun when it happened. I used my own tool for it. After they went to a rolling update, and more information came out about the datacenters, I wrote a programme to query all of them. Some interesting information came out of that which was different to what was thought at the time.

I don't see any dance-like stuff happening with the All search. It does have more than one index and different people will see consistently different results at times, but it's not a dance in the Google Dance sense - not that I've been able discern, anyway.

hehe. I remembered your post in this thread about those 'techniques' when I was wandering through the office hours stuff yesterday and clicking on av names that have wiki pages - including yours. In doing that, I saw that your own html page uses the techniques that you'd mentioned (the "abuse search" link got me there). It puzzled me, of course, but your post clarifies it