How to kill your business without really trying

Two days ago, I bought some more land that would join the land my store is on, and some other of my land, making a much bigger parcel for the store. When I joined them all together, I had to redo the name and description, but I forgot to make sure that it would continue to show in search. The next day (yesterday), I discovered that the option was unchecked and it wasn't showing in search, so I checked it. That mistake cost a significant amount of RL money by then, but I caught it soon enough.

It immediately showed up in the Places search, and I was pleasantly surprised at how soon it showed up in the new All search again - and back in the #2 position for my main searchterm - where it belongs according to the algorithm. I'd expected to have to wait for the next crawl for it to show up again.

Today I found that it had dropped from #2 to #41. At first I thought it had dropped out completely, and that I would have wait for a crawl, etc., but for some reason I looked further down, where it should never have been, and there it was. That was some hours ago. Right now it's not listed in the All search at all or, if it is, it's too far down for me to go searching for.

Takings are waaaaaaay down, and since it's my RL livelihood, it matters a lot. I've been onto concierge support, but nobody there knows anything about search. I've emailed search feedback, but I don't hold out much hope of getting answers from there, because it's a feedback system, and not a support system. And I've given the details to Jeska in a notecard, preceded by an IM telling her that it was coming. I know she accepted the notecard. So far I haven't heard a word back from either the feedback people, or from Jeska, and I'm left feeling gutted, and wondering what can have caused it to drop from #2 to #41, and then out altogether.

Happening so soon after I left the Show in search option unchecked for about 18 hours is too big a coincidence, and I'm hoping that it's just temporarily fallen foul of the system - crawling, indexing, maybe deindexing, etc., and that it will be back to normal in the next day or so. It's not a change of settings at their end, because only mine is affected.

That extra piece of land that I bought turned out to be hellish expensive.

The moral is, if it really matters to you, don't forget to check *everything* when making changes to your land.

Some information that it's provided is that the new All search is used a >>>LOT<<<. I get plenty of people returning to my store, and people coming from recommendations, but furniture isn't like clothes for repeat business, and keeping the takings up needs plenty of people coming from search. Being very low down, and out of the new All search, looks like reducing the takings by well over 50% , and maybe well over 2 thirds.

You're absolutely correct Phil. Even though I was renting my landlord named my land what I wanted with all the descriptive words I chose. Almost two weeks ago he changed all the land around and it ended up back to his name. He did this as he was preparing to sell it to me. Unfortunately he then left town and we haven't been able to complete the transaction.

I went from some of my busiest days to rock bottom overnight. This is despite being high in the classified rankings. It has taught me that more people use the places search than many of us realized.

I hope he gets back soon!

Right now, I'd welcome it if most people used the Places tab search. I'm usually at #1 in there. Unfortunately, my losses are from the All search.

It's an odd thing to do - disappear when selling land. I hope he gets back soon for you, too.

But wouldn't it be the places search that is affecting it in all search?

I'm confused. Can you explain further how this has affected your search? Why did it fall so low? or do you even know?

sounds like another parameter may have been discovered. Sorry to hear it gotcha that way.

Wow, Phil. You really did fall off the radar. I have a feeling it will take another day for re-indexing. You're probably caught between indexes.

That's my inclination too, Cristalle. Tomorrow may see things a lot differently.

I don't have the answers, Bradley. I've tried to get some, but nothing so far. It's the All search that I'm completely missing from now. I'm at #1 in the Places tab. My thinking is this...

LL do different things at different times/frequencies. They create new traffic pages on one cycle, they have the search crawler running on another cycle, they create parcel pages on a cycle, they create profile pages and various other things on cycles. The cycles are not necessarily timed the same. So I set the land not to show in search, and at various times the various pages for it would have changed - maybe some did and maybe some didn't change before I set it back again. E.g. it might have been dropped from the traffic pages, and other pages, in the period is was set wrongly. When I set the checkbox correctly, it came back into the All search for a while - not immediately, but quite soon. So it was still indexed at that point. Hoewever, its 'no search' setting could have coincided with a crawl, and the fresh data took over later. That should leave it out completely, but it wasn't out - it was at #41.

Those are the sort of things that I'm thinking, but I really don't know how it could have gone from #2, to #41, and then completely out. I do think there are 2 indexes though, and it could have fallen into a piece of very bad timing. I'm not totally devastated yet. That'll only happen if it doesn't recover in the next day or three.

Dropping from the traffic pages alone wouldn't have caused it to drop to #41 earlier today. It started life higher than that, with very little in the way traffic and very little in the way of Picks. It has a lot more Picks now, so losing the few links from the traffic pages wouldn't have changed its ranking to that extent.

When you joined them all together you created a new parcel ("web page" with a different "UUID", which invalidated every pick/incoming link you had since those all point to a parcel that now no longer exists..

Your new ranking is as it would be without any incoming links.

In web terms, you moved the URL to your site and your ranking won't be restored until all the incoming links update to reflect your new URL. Something that the backend hopefully takes care of automatically.

Ohhhh OUCH. Thanks for that info, Kitty. I was considering joining my second parcel to the larger store parcel, just for ease of maintenance. Not sure I will now.

Probably a bad idea, yesh . Although Phil's bad luck would give you an idea on how long it takes the backend to update the pick's links (if at all, if not that's a bad bug).

Change of ownership could trigger the same behaviour which would explain Bradley's misfortune as well (in which case deeding/undeeding land would also be a bad idea after a store is established).

I echo Oryx's exclamation - OUCH! That's something that didn't occur to me at all. Maybe I really should look a lot lower down and see if it's still being listed at all. I'll do that..... I looked and I appear to have made a mistake earlier. It's ranked at #40 right now, and I probably simply missed it through not expecting to find it on the page before #41.

Picks may be a very serious problem. I've look at my Picks and my alt's Picks, and in the location box - the 1-line box below the description - they say "No Parcel. Seymour (217, 121, 251)". No parcel! Damn! That really sucks. It looks like I have to start again with link building.

At least we've learned from this, and Oryx has been saved from it

[added]
Since that 1-line part of the Picks is changed, it's possible that it could change again to what it should be.

Heh, no kidding. Now, would the same issue apply if I changed the name of my parcel to reflect Search/All parameters? I'm thinking that the parcel itself hasn't changed... so would all existing picks and/or landmarks be invalid once I changed the name of the parcel?

I hope a solution is found to this. It isn't in LL's best interest to scare shopowners from expanding their land. I'd hate to imagine everyone having to go through this with each little change they make in their land.

Changing the name won't have anything but a positive effect, if it's changed for the better - searchwise. The name and description is people's existing Picks won't change though. The only Picks that will be affected are those that are added after your name alteration.

No, changing the name of the parcel shouldn't hurt it - I've changed parcel names a couple of times, only to see it get better. I don't think it eliminated the underlying picks at all.

I'd leave at least one "old" pick though, just to see if it ever gets around to updating the link to the new URL and if it doesn't make a "critical" JIRA entry on it (with the repro).

I have to say that it's damned ridiculous that you can't add to a piece of land without killing off its search rankings. The next day or two should show us how things are - whether it's a case of starting again, or merely waiting for the system to catch up. I'm not going to do any link building yet. I want to see how it progresses naturally in the system.

Coolio, thanks guys.

Re: parcel combining/subdividing... I would think that this is a MAJOR issue and should be submitted in JIRA. I nominate Kitty since she explained it so well in the first place.

Changing my name from "Bradleys Bamboo Bungalow" to something much longer but more descriptive had a huge positive impact on my store. I kept the signs at the store the same, just changed them on the land parcel. Unfortunately with my land change situation I have nothing, but fortunately it's only temporary.

I've left them both Kitty, and added a new one to each. I want to see it too. That's all the link building that I'm going to do for the next two or three days.

I hope it's *very* temporary.

I agree with that - after we see how it works out. I can add my personal experience to it in support.

I think it's best to first wait and see what happens to Phil's existing picks in the next few days.

If they don't update then it's a bad, bad bug.
If they do update, eventually, I think they'd just close the issue with "by design" even though it's still a rather devastating few days for those affected .

It's shaping up to be a 50% reduction in takings for the day. That's very useful information that's come from it - the All search produces around 50% of (my) takings, which I think is a lot more than people thought.

Me too. I'm not nearly as affected as you since I don't depend on my store for my RL income. I just earn some extra entertainment money each month. You are an inspiration though.