When to report a Merchant for abusing the keyword search

[Jasmine Edenflower]

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Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

Why don't you cut some slack while a good portion of merchants are going through a major disruption in biz.

Not sure if you've read anything here or not - but many have problems with another store's pics in their store pages and vice versa - listings messed up.

The "relevance" search is frozen.

Those two things, and the fact that weird stuff is happening in different ways to different merchants at different times.....geez, lighten up.

eta:  wow, just reread, and you're a new merchant.  not a great way to start - stand on your own feet to get started.  I don't see any products in your store, you might want to check that today.

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Thank you for pointing out my products aren't showing up.  When I checked using Merchant home they show up.  But when I logged out and checked again there nothing showed.

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[Irene Muni]

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Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

If one's first order of business in starting a store, is to flag the competition.....

....that's not a great way to start.

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"unfair" competition

[Rosemaery Lorefield]

Yes, there is a separate tab to search IF you actually are looking for a particular seller.

However, merchant names DO still cause unrelated items to come up in search. It happens to me all the time. Please, before you accuse of keyword spam, check their code. 

Since there is a separate function for searching by merchant, they should disable that portion of text from the standard search criteria, but they have not done so.

  "Keyword spam is the use of words (such as brand names, item names, or other terms) that have nothing to do with 

      the item listed so that the listing will appear in search results."

I'm not sure what the problem is with this definition. Just because a keyword brings up items that you are not personally interested in, that doesn't make it spam, necessarily. I do think merchants should honestly take a look at their product and be vigilant about the keywords they choose, but that will never guarantee that all items that come up will be what any given shopper wants. 

When I list something farm related, I will use the keyword "farm". No, my item is not an entire farm, but it is for farm use. If I put in something more specific, like "milking stool", then my item would be missed by many potential customers that don't know what to call the item they are looking for. Being TOO specific with keywords, without a couple of broader words, is not helping merchants or shoppers.

[Rosemaery Lorefield]

I totally agree with all of your points.

I'm a merchant but I am also a huge shopper on MP. I'm usually shopping for textures or sculpts, or god forbid, scripts. The MP is terribly annoying to find things, especially if you are not positive what you exactly want. I would never march off to LL to whine about those merchants whose items pop up. I don't think it is their fault most of the time.

Point is, LL might want to work on the search engine a bit, and the rest of us should stop villifying merchants for nothing. 

[Spica Inventor]

Store names shouldn't be showing up under the existing search categories imho. ;-)

[Rosemaery Lorefield]

Nope they shouldn't! It is completely unhelpful to anyone. As a merchant, my store name is not going to necessarily guide my intended audience to my items. As a shopper, it's just annoying to get 1000 results where most of them are based on the merchant name and have nothing to do with what I searched.

I hope they can concentrate on fixing the search function after all the DD mess is cleared up

[Deja Letov]

This is especially annoying due to the fact that they won't let us have multiple stores. I have three store names in my actual store name listing and it causes all kinds of search issues, but until t hey let us have separate stores, not a whole lot to do about it.

[Rosemaery Lorefield]

That's really annoying! I don't get what the issue is with multiple stores. Maybe they think people will spam items or something. They could take care of that issue with some kind of application process required for multiple stores. I would be ok with that.

[Petite Pixie]

I love mesh, I do searches for new items almost everyday and almost everyday someone posts a skin or outfit or item that is clearly not Mesh. I Report them all, everyone. Now I know if it's fishnet or stockings or a mesh like item I won't report it because I know some think of that as a mesh, cool. Just today I've found over 20 new items listed as mesh, I've reported them all so don't do it, it will get reported because I support mesh in SL and those who take the time to makes it. It's not fair that their work gets spammed over because some loser wants to be seen where everyone is looking. Want to be seen as a mesh designer go make mesh. Nuff Said! Also I only do a simple word search, Mesh or Rigged or Rigged Mesh.