Zhoie Zimermann Posted March 23, 2011 Author Share Posted March 23, 2011 EndoPlasmic, well i sure had an LOL at your post but in all honestly it was nicely written and most of all...VERY TRUE. I can almost hear the constant "tinker tinkering" going on at LL with regards to the MP search. Darrius, thanks for mentioning that, but i just checked my items and no they are all where i left them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 What I would like to add to Pamela's list: 6. Exclude the names from merchants from the keyword search. You could make a button for search for specific merchants, but don't bring up all products from people called 'whiskey' when I'm looking for a bottle or a glass of whiskey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 so i am going to ask a stupid question - which is something added to the list of bugginess of the new forums.... HOW DO YOU KNOW WHO THREAD POSTER REPLIED TO?? I have not been about to see where. Unless someone quotes the person they are replying to - no one knows who you are talking to / respondnig to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 Yup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 Oh .. sorry .. I MEANT to say "Yes ToySoldier, that's correct." LOL (Sorry .. I'm just in a smart-aaaaa ... ummm ... I'm being pesky, okay!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 we have given LL explanations over and over on what to fix on SLM search. I had a complete JIRA on it. TITLES AND KEYWORDS should be the only primary criteria... but its not broken only because they do or dont include fields - its how they are putting priority on the search query phrases. Pamela said it right.... if someone searches for RED SHOES ... then any item with RED & SHOES toegether as a combined phrase should be on the list first (and those with it in title and keywords before those only in one field)... then any listing with both words anywhere in these fields... then one or the other... then one of them... with this approach, you will not need to further sort it by price of item or other secondary sorts because there will likely be enough granularity from the primary method. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Couldbe Yue Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 Toysoldier Thor wrote: *snip for brevity* with this approach, you will not need to further sort it by price of item or other secondary sorts because there will likely be enough granularity from the primary method. but they don't do that inworld, why would you expect them to do it on the marketplace. inworld they can't even keep the maturity ratings clean so if you search solely for one rating you'll get it polluted by some (not all) from other ratings. hey ho.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zhoie Zimermann Posted March 23, 2011 Author Share Posted March 23, 2011 Okay ready for the dumbest question of the year? Does anything think this MP situation will ever resolve itself and sales will eventually go back to normal? (crosses fingers) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted March 24, 2011 Share Posted March 24, 2011 I often read threads about sales down or sales dead, and see that a lot of merchants are effected. I never recognised this pattern, my sales were always kind of stable (with the normal up- and downs, but overall stable or growing). But this time I also see a decrease in my sales. Not so dramatic as for some of you. But still in the last 10 days I sold about 75% of what I consider to be normal. But I'm not sure or this has to do with the changes in the marketplace. It might have to do with the earthquake, not only Japanese residents having more important things in mind. But when for example 80% of premium holders spend their weekly stipend on Linden bears to support, that is a big sum that is not spend on other merchandise. I would be curious to know if this was the reason, I'm happy to loose some sales for a while when this is caused by acts of solidarity with people who overcome a disaster. I'm less happy when it is caused by further changes to the marketplace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Machess Lemton Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Zhoie Zimermann wrote: Okay ready for the dumbest question of the year? Does anything think this MP situation will ever resolve itself and sales will eventually go back to normal? (crosses fingers) When LL stops messing with MP.:smileytongue: Back to the topic: I think it is time for LL to put back in-world and MP sale/economics data. Data like customer spending, transaction statistics etc should be open to the public. Isn't that people investing in SL should be treated like shareholders? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VonGklugelstein Alter Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Did any of you consider that a large set of customers, namely the people in Japan have a lot more important things to do and worry about than buying cartoon world merchandise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nathan Hopkins Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Yeah, that mentioned as a factor in this thread. But the OP posted about a decline for a week period the day prior to the tsunami hitting, so the phenomenon predates the tsunami by 8-10 days. But yes, it was considered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 VonGklugelstein Alter wrote: Did any of you consider that a large set of customers, namely the people in Japan have a lot more important things to do and worry about than buying cartoon world merchandise? Yes, I did. However in the past year of sales, I have had two customers from Japan. If I quadruple that number and subtract it from my usual sales, that still leaves a massive gap that is unexplained. I can however point to other events and changes that had an immediate and pronounced effect on my sales, some plus and some minus. The catastrophe that befell Japan has surely impacted the world economy in drastic ways, no question there. But a 50% drop in overall sales does not equate to the lost customers from Japan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nathan Hopkins Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Some of my few recent sales were to people from Japan (at least Japanese names and kanji in their profiles). I think SL-as-an-escape makes it hard to predict how RL will impact it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Madeliefste Oh Yeah, I'm kinda in the same boat. Generally, over the years, my sales have been rock steady. Even all last years chaos did little to set me back much, and I only really saw some larger fluctuations than normal. Last week tho, was probably my worst week in over 2 years. I would not guess that Japan has much to do with this. My guess is that St Patties day had more to do with this. I'm sure that if any1 really want to do a detailed analysis, you will find that St patties day is generally only a good holiday for bars and pubs. Generally too, because every1 celebrates it on different days, and some on multiple days, it usually last about a week long. Sorry, but I don't know too many people that drink while they are in SL, lol, or are on the pc and drunk. Well, this is my little theory. This week tho, kind of a great week so far. It is crazy how much inworld search changes. Monday, for like 1 hour, my store actually showed in a search for Animation, and it was even on the first page. Like I said tho, 1 hour later, it was gone, and has never shown in the results since. It is only because of Darius's search tool that I know this. It is funny too, cause for about 1 hour on monday, my sales were definitely elevated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Darrius Gothly wrote: VonGklugelstein Alter wrote: Did any of you consider that a large set of customers, namely the people in Japan have a lot more important things to do and worry about than buying cartoon world merchandise? Yes, I did. However in the past year of sales, I have had two customers from Japan. If I quadruple that number and subtract it from my usual sales, that still leaves a massive gap that is unexplained. I can however point to other events and changes that had an immediate and pronounced effect on my sales, some plus and some minus. The catastrophe that befell Japan has surely impacted the world economy in drastic ways, no question there. But a 50% drop in overall sales does not equate to the lost customers from Japan. I agree Darrius. I cant see that the Japan disaster would impact sales by most reporting SLM Merchants by 50%. Also, to indicate and point fingers to changes made by Brooke's team two weeks ago, many of you mechants that have a good consistent inworld sales have reported that you have not noticed this 50% drop inworld - only in SLM. My update as of today is that my sales are still crippled. I am still tracking my sales to be about 50% down from normal. As of today, my SL account shoul dbe almost 50% to its next liquidation threshold but I have not even met last week's threshold. I have almost 0 sales volume yesterday and only a couple sales the day before. COME ON BROOKE! ENGAGE HERE! Your team two weeks ago screwed something up royally in SLM ! Undo it! I suspect the SLM CRUSHER that LL COMMERCE TEAM did was adding the maturity filter for non-logged in browsing shoppers to GENERAL. even though I have only general items, I think the changes they did might have inadvertently affected a critical shopping habbit. Sadly I dont think Brooke is concerned about what changes that were put in will be reviewed and fixed. We merchants should just tough it out. Right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triple Peccable Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 I agree with 2 things mentioned in this thread: (1) Sales were quite good until this last week, and now are worse than they have been in a long time. (2) When sorting by "Best Selling", my products are listed in reverse order. It is perfectly reversed: The item that has sold the least is first, and my best selling item is last. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 @Toy - I'm gonna toss out a different theory here. Sales patterns and shopper behavior is a complex science in the RL retail market. Those that do well at it generally only concern themselves with their particular product line. Stores and chains that have a broad range of products often employ niche-specific experts that counsel and consult to help improve their market penetration. But SL is one of the most diverse markets ever. Not even Wal-Mart sells products as vastly different as we have on SLM. It could just be that the Commerce Team, hobbled by software that is non-pliable and resistant to change, is facing a situation of too much complexity with insufficient knowledge or resources. Granted, there are some VERY basic things they could do to help. But it seems they are mired in tangential tasks that do not serve the larger community of Merchants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nathan Hopkins Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 If I do a search for "barn" under relevance, without looking in subcategories, the first page is nothing but AOs from Vista. I don't remember that sort of thing happening prior... but maybe I'm being affected by reading this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 When it is caused by changes in the marketplace, then there must be merchants who gain more sales where others loose sales. Since everybody is reporting they made less sales, to me it seems that changes in the marketplaces is not the cause. I tend to think there was less money spend on buying from SL merchants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 25, 2011 Share Posted March 25, 2011 Madeliefste Oh wrote: When it is caused by changes in the marketplace, then there must be merchants who gain more sales where others loose sales. Since everybody is reporting they made less sales, to me it seems that changes in the marketplaces is not the cause. I tend to think there was less money spend on buying from SL merchants. Madel, I would have to disagree with that theory as a change to the SLM service could as much and even moreso initiate an impact in SLM sales in a "rising/falling water raises and sinks all boats" model as opposed to a "rob peter to pay paul" impact. Example, if Brooke's team initiate a change where shoppers ability to login to SLM has been affected, they all merchants would feel a negative effect. Or if they borked the order processing or if their servers have been brought to their knees .... these all would affect all merchants. I would agree that the known change where Brooke's team has applied strict maturity filters on non-logged in browsing shoppers would moreso directly and most dramatically affect any merchants with MODERATE or ADULT filtered content (that is not me), but maybe the change caused some as yet unknown residual effect to all browsing shoppers. This would not increase sales to uneffected merchants - it would just keep them steady. So far we are not seeing this from all merchants reporting this significant and noticable change. The sudden and significant drop in SLM sales on almost the day after their change two weeks ago seems to point fingers to a LL Commerce Team change. The problem we all have is that only Brooke's team know best what it could be and so far she has been completely silent on this issue and has only provided some "sorry to hear" private IMs to those merchants that have directly challenged her on what her team has done and to FIX IT. She has said they will throw up a pretyt little banner on the SLM for non logged in shoppers to remind them they cannot see any content that has been TEENIFIED unless the shopper logs in... but I havent seen it and I really dont think this will have little impact to a browsing shopper. What really bothers me is that LL is so hard and **bleep** on covering their legal butts from their stupid TEENIFICATION OF THE ADULT GRID that they they are CYA'ing at all costs. If you go to the ebay website and make sure you are not logged into ebay... do a search for SEX TOYS. Tell me if you get any results of what LL would clearly categorize as ADULT content? I tested it already... you do. So if ebay is not being taken to court for displaying adult sold content when a shopper is not logged in, why does LL feel they must do this - which is clearly a factor to further drop SLM sales. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zhoie Zimermann Posted March 26, 2011 Author Share Posted March 26, 2011 Triple Peccable wrote: I agree with 2 things mentioned in this thread: (1) Sales were quite good until this last week, and now are worse than they have been in a long time. (2) When sorting by "Best Selling", my products are listed in reverse order. It is perfectly reversed: The item that has sold the least is first, and my best selling item is last. Well I can honestly say this is a fact because it HAS and DOES happen to me. It's something I mentioned to Brooke a week or two ago. I told her that when I did a search and saw my products, then sorted by best selling it showed my very least popular and least selling item first, literally one that rarely if ever sells. At one point it was even showing in search before I sorted by "best selling". It was showing on one of the top pages where as my very best selling product was showing 20 pages past it. Also, I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again. Things that are non search related continue to show up in search. I check page sources to see if the merchant has those words in their key words or listing data and they do not, so it is not merchant's fault. Really, if I am search for a couch do i really want to see public hair for sale? I realize that sometimes mistakes happen and need to be fixed, that is reality. BUT when something affects people's rl income and pocketbooks you would think it would be fixed much faster than it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zhoie Zimermann Posted March 26, 2011 Author Share Posted March 26, 2011 Nathan Hopkins wrote: If I do a search for "barn" under relevance, without looking in subcategories, the first page is nothing but AOs from Vista. I don't remember that sort of thing happening prior... but maybe I'm being affected by reading this thread. Nathan, this is exactly what happens in search, trust me you're right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EndoPlasmic Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 Zhoie Zimermann wrote: Triple Peccable wrote: I agree with 2 things mentioned in this thread: (1) Sales were quite good until this last week, and now are worse than they have been in a long time. (2) When sorting by "Best Selling", my products are listed in reverse order. It is perfectly reversed: The item that has sold the least is first, and my best selling item is last. Well I can honestly say this is a fact because it HAS and DOES happen to me. It's something I mentioned to Brooke a week or two ago. I told her that when I did a search and saw my products, then sorted by best selling it showed my very least popular and least selling item first, literally one that rarely if ever sells. At one point it was even showing in search before I sorted by "best selling". It was showing on one of the top pages where as my very best selling product was showing 20 pages past it. Also, I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again. Things that are non search related continue to show up in search. I check page sources to see if the merchant has those words in their key words or listing data and they do not, so it is not merchant's fault. Really, if I am search for a couch do i really want to see public hair for sale? I realize that sometimes mistakes happen and need to be fixed, that is reality. BUT when something affects people's rl income and pocketbooks you would think it would be fixed much faster than it is. Honestly, someone said it in another thread, and I think it has some merit. The "relevance" of items in search may just be "irrelevant" to LL. It's quite possible they feel that a broken search will make merchants frustrated enough to buy enhanced listings since, as I stated before, if your items can't be found in search, then you aren't making any sales. I'm sure that seems like a conspiracy theory to most, but is it really so easily explained away when talking about Linden Lab? As far as "fixing" any mistakes that have been brought about by Brooke and the Commerce Team: 1) They actually have to view it as a mistake and acknowledge that they made a mistake (not very likely) or 2) It has to affect the RL income and pocketbooks of the only people that Linden Lab cares about which, obviously, is themselves. Search is broken. It's obvious search is broken. The people in charge of making it right either don't beleive that it's really broken (think clueless), or don't really care. Or both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 26, 2011 Share Posted March 26, 2011 We have beaten the dead SLM SEARCH BY RELEVANCE issue over the Commerce Teams head so many times that I am sure they are replaying it in their dreams. And yet we still get statements from Brooke ina recent marketplace update that they need to put in tools to better track and assess what is wrong with search. I know for a fact that one of the biggest issues is that they put a high weighting on the popularity of the item is sales... # of sales... not $value of sales even. THEY SHOULD NOT BE PUTTING ANY WEIGHTING ON THE PRODUCT's SALES HISTORY OR $VOLUME. Not that Brooke's team is reading... but here is a perfect example that I can see so clearly - over and over - on my own line of products and how they show up in Search/Sort by Relevance... I sell Landscape Scuply packs... 6 of them to be exact. They all range around $900L. I also have an item on SLM that is a DEMO KIT of samples of all these packs that I sell for $0L. Before I tell you what happens on SLM Search, I will tell you that - By Far in an order of magnitude of like 5 times the sales of my next best seller, my $0L DEMO Pack is my top seller. Far behind in sales but clearly my best seller (over two times the sales of the next pack) is my oldest pack called rocky terrain. I personally dont think it is too much different a pack then any of my others - except it is my oldest. I will also tell you that with the few exceptions of keywords that uniquely describe each pack, almost all the packs use pretty much the same set of keywords, title words, order and structure of words in the teo critical keywords/title. So... when I do search by relevance for query phrases that would likely be used by a shopper to find my packs - even phrases that I know would be pretty much bang on in synch with my keywords to any of my lesser selling packs ... Guess which of my listings shows up first almost ALL THE TIME? My Demoo pack.... and somewhere around the same place in order... my Rocky Terrains pack. Even though I was looking for my volcano pack or hoodoo pack... these other two show up around and often before the pack that I targetted. As such, its telling me that the SLM Search By Relevance has a strong weighting on the popularity / sales frequency of the item - and even a higher sort weighting/priority than the two critical fields of KEYWORDS and TITLE. I suspect that the LL Commerce Team is using the TITLE and KEYWORDS fields to "search" for relevant listings... but they drop the ball when they stop using the relevance of the phrases to these fields in the SORTING of the results. They search filter by TITLE & KEYWORDS then sort by item sales volumes and other fields. THIS IS WHERE SLM SEARCH IS BROKEN! But supposedly Brooke states that (like all our beloved governments love to do on thorny issues they dont want to deal with) her team needs to study the problem more. AKA - her team does not want to fix the problem. Then the question is.... WHY? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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