how can I improve my shops status in SL serach ?

[greek Wingtips]

As most agree the search engine is usless in the SL veiwer, is there anyone that could give me on anp hints and tips

on how to improve my standing in the SL serach engine for my shops.

 

any help would be great

thank you

[Pamela Galli]

You might want to read some of the threads in which search is discussed. There are quite a few.

[Identity Euler]

Hi greek,

You can find more information here.

Good luck.

Id

[Lyra Blackthorne]

Read the Wiki

Also much has been written here in forums...check some of Darrius Gothly's posts

[nikita Jefferson]

Wish i knew,i have been trying everything to improve mine,i have search bot and it always says the same,"parcel not found in search" it might find one of my keywords ( 1 of 7 i have for searchbot) but next search i'm out again,i would say i am out of search 90% of the time

I get " crawled "  ok but does'nt help me

I put a couple of tickets in about it but LL is not interested one bit in helping me,they gave me absolutely silly suggestions and when i told them it did nt work they just closed the case

I have spim spammer,that does'nt seem to help either at least for me,i have lots of hair in my shop,i have been open since december,if i type  hair in search i won't find myself,but i do find a shop thats been open 3 weeks now and its is small 400sqm,.mine is a full region,that shop is locked on the first page,it has one keyword "hair" and search deems that small shop more important to be on the first page of search than me and it does 'nt deem me important enough to be in search at all

 

I don't know what the answer is,i guess LL is more interested in making us pay for a classified ad,and i think they really don't care about in world merchants now they have that marketplace which has and is killing inworld businesses

[Darrius Gothly]

 

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Identity Euler wrote:

Hi greek,

You can find more information

here

.

Good luck.

Id

---

 

Ignore the advice given on that page. Even though the date on it is recent, the information it provides is beyond outdated and .. quite frankly .. dead wrong.

Study the listings of the people that are ranked high in your market niche .. try to understand what they're doing. Then copy their techniques.

Or .. hire someone that knows what they're doing.

[Phil Deakins]

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nikita Jefferson wrote:

Wish i knew,i have been trying everything to improve mine,i have search bot and it always says the same,"parcel not found in search" it might find one of my keywords ( 1 of 7 i have for searchbot) but next search i'm out again,i would say i am out of search 90% of the time

I get " crawled "  ok but does'nt help me

---

I don't know what your "search bot" is but you need to know whether or not it is searching the whole 1000 results. If it's searching the whole 1000 results and your page is not in them, then, unless something has changed, there's nothing you can do about it. That's assuming that you've done a reasonable job on optimising your page for the searchterm that you're not being listed for. I'll explain...

When the search engine processes a query, it compiles a fixed size limit "results set" of relevant pages. If the size limit is reached before the whole index has been 'examined', it stops looking for any more relevant pages and a chunk of the index isn't even looked at for matches, which means that some very relevenat pages are simply left out. Then it ranks the pages in the results set and returns the top 1000. If your page doesn't get into the results set, then there's nothing you can do about it. If your page does get into the results set, but it's not in the top 1000 after they've been sorted into ranking order, you *can* do something about it. If your page is reasonably well optimised for the searchterm, and it's not getting into the top 1000, you can be reasonably sure that it's not getting into the results set and you are screwed.

 

ETA:

Whether or not a page is being left out of the results set can often be determined by tests. One test is to do the search in quotes (e.g. "wedding gowns" instead of wedding gowns), which will only return pages that contain the exact phrase. Then check the top 1000 for the page. That's a way of greatly reducing the possible matches. Another test is to reduce the possible matches by selecting only the relevant type, such as Moderate. And, of course, the two tests can be combined - only the type (e.g. Moderate) and the phrase in quotes.

If the page is in the top 1000 for any of the tests, notice some of the pages that it outranks and then do the normal search and see where some of those pages are. You're trying to see if your page outranks one or two other pages when the results are reduced by quotes or types (in the tests), but doesn't get listed for the normal search. If that happens, then the page does not get into the results set for the normal search and there's nothing that can be done to change it. If, for the same searchterm, it outranks certain pages when the results are reduced in the tests, then it will outrank them, or be very close to them, in the normal search results for the same searchterm, IF it can get into the results set.

[Chelsea Malibu]

Far, far from worthless, you just didn't take the time to learn how it works.  You may want to check out: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Commerce-Forums-General/Thank-You-Search-Gods-for-making-it-work-again/m-p/452021#M46163

 

 

[nikita Jefferson]

Sorry i did nt respond back to your post, i have no idea how many pages the search bot searches,all i can say is i bought from one of the posters

I got rid of it because i found it too depressing to see the same every day "parcel not found in seach",i can always tell when i drop in search,i will have a small rush he hee two visitors at once then nothing for hours.

I sometimes wonder just how important keywords are,i searched "hair" because i have lots in my store ,to see if i came up,which i did 'nt

But on the first page of search and this is every day with no change,there is a shop that has 3 ads, that shop is spit up in 11 pieces and those 3 shops on the first page  are all the same shop,just chopped up pieces side  by side,and all they have for a keyword is hair and nothing else

Also the same group that owns that store has another hair store and that store shows twice on the first page when searching hair,so 2 stores take up 5 spots on the first page of search when searching hair,and they are locked there,with just hair as a keyword,i have hair too but it does' nt get me in search,

i ll give you my keywords here and let me know what you think,everything i have down is in the store,i am not keyword stuffing

adorable skins, shapes, avatars, hair, skin, amacci, A&A hair, jeans, bikini, shoes, boots, stiletto, SLC clothes, male hair, male clothes, top,  eyes, tartan, satin, neko boots, neko, dresses, dress, hair, skin, shapes, shorts, skin

I have looked at other shops that show well in search and their keywords are 'nt much different than mine,my boost is 0

I tried support  but i might as well bang my head against the wall for all they want to help

I am on a full sim, those 3 shops on the front page of search are 400sqm each well not 3 shops but same shop split up

[Phil Deakins]

Before tearing all of your hair out on it, you do need to know whether or not your parcel is being listed in the top 1000 - for each of your searchterms. I assume that you got the tool from Darrius, so ask him. If the tool doesn't search all the way down to 1000, then you need to do it by hand.

If your parcel isn't in the top 1000, then you need to filter the searches until your parcel *is* in them. In other words, you need to do the tests that I described in my previous post so that you know whether or not there is actually anything you can do about the problem. If it turns out that there isn't anything you can do with that parcel, you can stop tearing your hair out and resign yourself to the situation. It's pointless keeping on trying if there really isn't anything you can do with that particular parcel.

Reminder: If the limited-size results set gets filled before the whole of the index has been looked at, then the matching/relevant pages in the part of the index that hasn't been looked at are left out. If your parcel's page is in that part of the index, there is nothing you can do to change the situation for that parcel.

In that circumstance, the obvious question is, how do I change my page's location in the index, so that it get looked at sooner rather than later? The answer is, you can't. LL feeds the pages to the search engine (the GSA) and that must be done is some order or other. That's the only place to make an effective change, but we have no ability to do it. What we can do is change the parcel; i.e. get a parcel that will be fed to the engine in a very different place in the order. Experimenting with different parcels, NOT in the same sim, ought to be worthwhile.

 

ETA:

I'll give an example of what I mean by filtering the search, etc. Some time ago, I had the situation where one of my parcels wasn't listed in the top 1000 for its main searchterm. But when I filtered the results, so that only Mature parcels were listed, my parcel's page ranked on page #1. The pages around it in the rankings also ranked on page #1 when the results were not filtered, but mine didn't even get into the top 1000. In other words, my page outranked those others when it was in the results set - when it had the opportunity to compete with them, but that only happened when the results were filtered. When I filtered the search, my page got into the results set, but when I didn't filter the search, my page did not get into the results set.

The effect of filtering the results is to leave out many relevant pages because they don't match the filter; e.g. they are adult or PG, but the filter selects only Mature. It means that the engine goes much further into the index to fill the results set and, when that happened, *my* page was included. Without the filtering, the engine filled the fixed-size results set before it reached my page, and my page could never get into the results.

That could be happening to your page and you could tear your hair out for a long time without any possibility of success. That's why you need to to find out if your page is in the top 1000 and, if not, you need to do the tests - so that you know what you are dealing with.

NOTE: The fixed size of results set is almost certainly larger than 1000. When Google started, they used a 40,000 page results set, ranked them and returned only the top 1000. The engine that SL uses is a Google engine (the GSA) which definitely uses a fixed-size results set but, since it's only a mini-engine, it's like to be a *lot* less than 40,000. It could even be as low as 1000, but it's most likely to be a bit more than that.