Search, what happened ??

[johnboy Snoodle]

I have just purchased some more land next to me so that I may expand a little, but since the day I purchased my sales have dropped something like 95% !!!!!  I am sure it has something to do with my new land and the search engine, too much of a coincidence that ALL sales should suddenly drop by such a vast amount the second I set up the new search on the extra land.  If you want to stay in business then DO NOT BUY MORE LAND or Linden will screw you.

[Darrius Gothly]

There are many nuances and "rules" to adding land to your existing parcel. If the one you bought was larger than the one you already owned, when you "Joined" them you lost the UUID and thus all the search history accumulated for the old parcel. If they were the same size, it's a 50/50 shot as to which UUID survived. (Although sounds like you came out tails on the coin flip.)

In-World Search has been borked for some time. Although many of us have been quite explicit in our dislike for the "improvements" they've made .. LL seems to prefer screwing people over rather than actually helping them out. Meh! Go figure.

There's lots of good advice available .. I've blogged about a number of things that might help you out as well. A good bit of it can be done both free and by yourself .. if you're willing to spend the time learning and doing. In the meantime, best of luck with getting back in Search. It is possible, it's just not as straightforward as one would hope.

[Opensource Obscure]

You joined the new parcel to the old one, and you did it the wrong way?

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johnboy Snoodle wrote:

If you want to stay in business then DO NOT BUY MORE LAND or Linden will screw you.

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A good, reasonable advice. Heh. 

[Jo Yardley]

I dont think it has anything to do with how much land you own.

My sales have not changed and I've bought plenty of land.

You may have accidently copied the keywords and description from the new land when you added it to your old land.

Check the description of your land.

Another possibility is that the old land had a shop that attracted a lot of customers who visited your shop as well but now visit wherever the shop moved to.

[Linda Brynner]

Hi,

Yes i agree search can drive someone really mad.

That kind of sudden drop of sales happens to me every other 14 weeks, so it does not necessarily have to do with your purchase. It has to do with the way you are using your search keys in both your land decription and sales vendors.

When you bought that new land and you joined it as one piece, your whole sales history, name and description is taken from your largest plot. However when you have not joined them and you have copied the same land name search keys into the new parcel, then it can cause this deep drop.

What happens.

SL's search is based Google's Search Appliance, version 6, GSA6.

Using too many exact search keys in both land descriptions and sales vendors can result in an automatic penalty in your search rank. Especially when the use of small and capital letters is duplicated exactly too should you not have joined the parcels and used the same name and keys. This is how Google deals with websites as well. Each parcel you have is basically a 3D website competing against eachother.

GSA6 has another trick. It can filter out certain letters and letter combinations. Somehow this filter is changed frequently at about 14 weeks to my experience, but i keep an eye on it. When i see a 95% drop in one day then i know it is that moment.

So what i do, is rolling the use of some search keys every 14 weeks (or in between) and i seem to be back in business again.

But i agree the search can really drive someone absolutely mad.

[Ferenc Nachtigal]

Darrius Gothly "If the one you bought was larger than the one you already owned, when you "Joined" them you lost the UUID and thus all the search history accumulated for the old parcel. If they were the same size, it's a 50/50 shot as to which UUID survived. (Although sounds like you came out tails on the coin flip.)"

Linda Brynner "When you bought that new land and you joined it as one piece, your whole sales history, name and description is taken from your largest plot."

Not exactly, you should always join towards the land from which you want to keep the name,description, traffic UUID, search rankings. If you have land a and land b and you want to join them and want to keep the info of land a, edit terrain and drag from land b to land a and then join

[johnboy Snoodle]

Just to clear a few things up, I did not join the land as the main one is for the shop and sales and the 'new' land is for rentals, the only thing I have done is to divide the new land in three parcels and placed as residential, the old land is still the same as in key words and is still in all catagorys so nothing has changed regarding search (he says with a laugh)  one of my other parcels of land in another area though is still good and shows good sales so somehting is wrong somewhere and I dont think it is to do with the land I have always had, the land next to the new land that is.  Just hoping Linden get things back to normal so I can pay this months tiers that they grab every month, funny that, Linden never seem to suffer in getting money from their sales :-) 

[Phil Deakins]

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Ferenc Nachtigal wrote:

Not exactly, you should always join towards the land from which you want to keep the name,description, traffic UUID, search rankings. If you have land a and land b and you want to join them and want to keep the info of land a, edit terrain and drag from land b to land a and then join

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You are mistaken, Ferenc. It doesn't make any difference how you join the land. What matters are the sizes of the two parcels. The largest size always survives the join; i.e. nothing changes with the largest of the two, except a few options, but the smallest of the two effectively disappears.

I know this because it was my joining of two parcels some years ago parcels that brought the problem to light and caused LL to reprogram it that way. Prior to my experience, one of the parcels always survived the join and the other disappeared, but even the programmers at LL didn't know which would survive and which would disappear. They delved into it and it turned out that the oldest parcel was the one that survived, regardless of size, and there was no way for us to know which of two parcels was the olderst. They dealt with it very quickly so that the largest of the two is the one that survives the join.

[Darrius Gothly]

 

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johnboy Snoodle wrote:

Just to clear a few things up, I did not join the land ...

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Sounds like the first thing you need to do then is check that your Boost rating hasn't changed. (Boost is a mysterious number they assign to a parcel that somewhat reflects their approximation of the "spaminess" of the parcel.

There are a couple of good Freebies on the Marketplace that will give you the current Boost value. (One of them is mine btw)

 

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johnboy Snoodle wrote:

Just hoping Linden get things back to normal so I can pay this months tiers that they grab every month, funny that, Linden never seem to suffer in getting money from their sales :-) 

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LOL Ummm .. well ... I believe this is "normal", at least based on their actions and silence, it seems to be their intention to leave it this way.

 

[Zanara Zenovka]

You say your sales dropped, but did your traffic drop? Do you have a visitor counter running to tell?

You need to work that out first before you assume the problem is search; there are so many factors.