2-letter business - or how to hide from potential customers!

[Orwar]

   So recently as I was browsing Flickr, I came across a shot which had an outfit in it that I wanted to get myself. I asked the photographer what it was and where it came from - and to my horror, the store only had two letters in its name. In-world, you need 3 consecutive letters to do a search. I tried to search on the marketplace, but had no luck - whether the store has a marketplace presence or not, I couldn't tell because the search was much too unspecific and I ended up with much too many pages to flip through.

   I then went to Google, and searched for the outfit - got more Flickr hits, none of which contained any links to the in-world store. Some mentioned it came from an event though; so I went on to Seraphim to look up the latest iteration of the event, hoping the creator was still attending it. They were - but the event had just closed their latest round and there were no vendors left. Back to Google, search the store's name, and 'second life', and.. Quite far down on the page, I saw a link from the Destination Guide; and finally I could get to the store!

   Of course, one should have the liberty to name one's business however one would like, but... Weren't I as stubborn, I would never have found the store and thus never been able to make any purchase. 

   So to anyone reading this, who might be considering starting a store, venue or service... Please, don't make me(/us) track you down through Google searches for the sake of having a 2-letter name to your business!

[Paul Hexem]

Nothing is worth that much effort. Use the MP, put picks in your profile, make your store obvious. If you don't, I figure you don't actually want sales and I move on.

[Orwar]

3 minutes ago, Gadget Portal said:

Nothing is worth that much effort. Use the MP, put picks in your profile, make your store obvious. If you don't, I figure you don't actually want sales and I move on.

   The creator does have picks in their profile, with landmarks to their store... But as I couldn't find any objects at the closed event to find the owner, that route was a dead end.

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

In-world, you need 3 consecutive letters to do a search.

What gave you that idea?

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

In-world, you need 3 consecutive letters to do a search.

This is fascinating. But is it true, though? 

That's not in-world, but it's the same standard web search that's available in viewers, so... maybe it still wouldn't be useful in this case. And anyway, having a longer name does seem pretty basic SEO, so a useful tip... probably one worth sharing with the merchant.

[Gabriele Graves]

He is referring to Legacy Search.

[Skell Dagger]

This is one reason why, when crediting stores on Flickr and my blog, I'll make sure to include the creator's name if the store is unsearchable. There's one menswear store whose name is a single letter surrounded by some punctuation. Absolutely unsearchable, so I always credit that one as [creator name] for [store name]. I figure at least that way people interested in his clothing can (hopefully) find his store via his profile picks.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Skell Dagger

[Phil Deakins]

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

This is fascinating. But is it true, though? 

Of course not. Hence my post above yours.

6 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

He is referring to Legacy Search.

Then he spent a lot of time searching right left and centre for no good reason lol.

[Fionalein]

8 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Of course not. Hence my post above yours.

Then he spent a lot of time searching right left and centre for no good reason lol.

Why use lag-search as long as legacy search exists?

[Orwar]

   Huh, 8 years of SL and I never knew about that search function. I've always used the in-world one. 

[Phil Deakins]

35 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Why use lag-search as long as legacy search exists?

Because the lag search results are far superior - by light years. I agree that it's lag search though. Also, I don't think the LL viewer has legacy search.

The details are, legacy search only knows about exact phrase matches and traffic. I.e. if you search on say, 'low prim furniture', you'll get results that contain that exact phrase in either their parcel titles or parcel descriptions. You won't get results that sell low prim furniture, and describe it in their titles/description, but not with that exact phrase. It's a VERY dumb search. The web search uses an algorithm that's very much like the top web search engines, and is light years better than the legacy search.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Phil Deakins

[Phil Deakins]

10 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Huh, 8 years of SL and I never knew about that search function. I've always used the in-world one. 

It IS inworld. It's the only search system in the LL viewer and, in Firestorm, it's the first tab in the search floater.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Phil Deakins

[Orwar]

4 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

It IS inworld. It's the only search system in the LL viewer and, in Firestorm, it's the first tab in the search floater.

   ... ... Oh. I think I've spent a grand total of 2 seconds looking at it and thinking it was to access the in-world browser for the MP, which I disabled because of how laggy it was. Well, all right - I guess there is a way to find stores with only 2 letters in their name. 

    ... Try to hide from me now! cackles maniacally.

[Selene Gregoire]

25 minutes ago, Orwar said:

 ... Try to hide from me now! cackles maniacally.

This is where I live but which one do I live under? 

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, Selene Gregoire said:

This is where I live but which one do I live under? 

   Never tell a Swede that you live under a rock. This is what'll come to mind: 

   Pardon the low image quality - Grådvärgar don't like being photographed. 

[Marianne Little]

If I ever have a clothes store, I will have a unique name. Did I tell you all that I could not find "Not Found" skin store? Guess what you get when you try to type that. Blogposts and threads about missing inventory....

I would use a name generator, and alsy test to type in the name on the MP, to avoid stores with the same name.

[Fionalein]

2 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

I would use a name generator, and alsy test to type in the name on the MP, to avoid stores with the same name.

Na much more fun with the two Salts and Caboodles

 

[Orwar]

2 hours ago, Fionalein said:

Na much more fun with the two Salts and Caboodles

   There are two Caboodles? 

2 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

If I ever have a clothes store, I will have a unique name. Did I tell you all that I could not find "Not Found" skin store? Guess what you get when you try to type that. Blogposts and threads about missing inventory....

I would use a name generator, and alsy test to type in the name on the MP, to avoid stores with the same name.

   According to some business blog from a while back when I was pondering what to call my RL business, one should -under no circumstances- use one's last name. Come to think of it, they pretty much just listed things you shouldn't do, until the one actual suggestion was 'create something unique!'. But how could I not use 'Furlgrimr' for my business ventures in SL? 

[Marianne Little]

46 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   There are two Caboodles? 

   According to some business blog from a while back when I was pondering what to call my RL business, one should -under no circumstances- use one's last name. Come to think of it, they pretty much just listed things you shouldn't do, until the one actual suggestion was 'create something unique!'. But how could I not use 'Furlgrimr' for my business ventures in SL? 

And I found your store easy by typing in "Furlgrimr" in MP search. 😉

I should call my store "Jevgenigkeit". But it is too long. I thought it was a German word until I googled it. I must have made it up myself.

Lazy typists will shorten it to "JK" anyway. 🤔

If I sold mesh bodies or heads, I would call it "WAMA". World Advanced Mesh Avatars. There are some hits in real life like a radio station named WAMA, but search those letters and "Second Life", and it would give an unique answer.

One must have something special in Second Life, it does not have to be special all over the world. And not copyrighted like Disney or Adidas, of course.

[Selene Gregoire]

5 hours ago, Orwar said:

   Never tell a Swede that you live under a rock. This is what'll come to mind: 

   Pardon the low image quality - Grådvärgar don't like being photographed. 

Although I am somewhat on the short side, I'm not a dwarf and I'm definitely not gray.

[Sasy Scarborough]

I did a whole post on the Names thing, about making sure you research before picking one for so many reasons. The two character limit is a known thing for Legacy search, but probably not so known now, in either. 

The problem with this coming off credits, is that I wonder if the two characters are the actual store name or just the abbreviation they have used to name the items, a lot of bloggers use the clipboard function to save time on crediting, which is a horrible thing because it gives no proper information, and I have seen stores not name individual items, just put down the sizes, or colours and sizes, deciding the info in the package and folder was enough. 

I am glad they credited at all, but crediting to nothing is almost as bad as not crediting, you should not have had to search that much,  wrong slurl an out of date link is one thing, two letters and nothing, not so easy.

[norajulian]

I don’t blog, and I’m sure it’s never take off, but either posting a LM to the store or the creator name would be SO helpful. I know that for events, bloggers typically do, but my goodness there are so many different abbreviations anymore. Although it doesn’t sound like the user in question is a blogger, it’s still something to put in the bucket for later.

 

I’m glad you finally tracked it down!