failing Relevance Sort

[Namuri]

Hello Staff,

For some months I've been observing that new products on MP, no matter how often they are sold, are stuck in the relevance sorting. I also put a "test" product to test and often had it bought. But it looks like products, no matter how often they are bought, are not ranked first in the listing. As long as this problem has not been resolved, I don't put new products on MP, because my customers can hardly find them anymore.

Also, I wonder if it still makes sense to advertise three of my houses in MP, it's almost 3000L$ at months...

[Rowan Amore]

When searching ONE store, I have always changed the default to Newest first.  

From LL's blog post...

Prior to the Marketplace search upgrade, when viewing a merchant store with no search term, relevance sort used to take into account the number of sales of your items over periods of time. So high selling items used to sort to the top even if there was no search term applied. Now when viewing a merchant store with no search term the relevance sort will function the same as best selling sort (not the best selling merchant report). Since best selling only indexes the top 50k best selling items across the entire Marketplace, best selling sort will only look up data from that index. If your items do not fall into the top 50k they will all be ranked the same. This is why your best selling sort may not match your best selling reports. In short, your items will only have a sales rank if they fall into the top 50k. Best selling sort has always functioned this way and has not changed. 

Edited May 25, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[Rowan Amore]

When using product search 

Your product may not be appearing in the same position as it used to in relevance sort for product search for a number of reasons.

1. Titles matter. The title of your product needs to contain the search terms that have been entered into search.
2. How well it sells matters. This looks at the number of sales over a given period of time. 
3. Keywords included in the product listing. Keywords need to contain the search terms that have been entered into search. 
4. What features you have matters. Features need to contain the search terms that have been entered into search. 

We have adjusted the weighting of each of these factors with the last search upgrade. This is something we actively monitor and adjust and your product may have ranked higher in relevance under the previous weighting. 

 

There are recent changes that you have to take into account.  Just because it's been one way for 11 years, doesn't make it so today. 

[Lindal Kidd]

I have never believed in paying for increased Marketplace visibility. Your mileage may vary.

[Namuri]

11 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I have never believed in paying for increased Marketplace visibility. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks, but the question was about the Relevance sort issue.

[Rowan Amore]

3 hours ago, Namuri said:

Thanks, but the question was about the Relevance sort issue.

When one searches a specific store, Newest is now the default and not relevance.  Personally, that is how I've always searched specific stores.

[Lindal Kidd]

6 hours ago, Namuri said:

 

Also, I wonder if it still makes sense to advertise three of my houses in MP, it's almost 3000L$ at months...

I was referring to this statement of yours. Simply advertising on the MP costs nothing; if you're paying L$ 3,000 per month, you're paying for increased visibility.

[Rowan Amore]

 

[Namuri]

13 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I was referring to this statement of yours. Simply advertising on the MP costs nothing; if you're paying L$ 3,000 per month, you're paying for increased visibility.

Yes I know, sorry, it's just that if this BUG continues to mess up the Markeplace I don't think it makes more sense to pay for advertising among other things.

[Alwin Alcott]

14 minutes ago, Namuri said:

Yes I know, sorry, it's just that if this BUG continues to mess up the Markeplace I don't think it makes more sense to pay for advertising among other things.

what also helps is making the keywords totally relevant .. just saying.

[Namuri]

4 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

what also helps is making the keywords totally relevant .. just saying.

sorry, what do you mean?

[Love Zhaoying]

20 hours ago, Namuri said:

Thanks, but the question was about the Relevance sort issue.

@Namuri, Here is your answer.  The issue is that the "default sort" is to Newest.  Just change the sort when searching a specific store. (This could mean changing the sort AFTER the search results come back, I am not certain.)

17 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

When one searches a specific store, Newest is now the default and not relevance.  Personally, that is how I've always searched specific stores.

This question keeps coming  up.  The answer is always the same, but takes awhile for someone to give the answer.

[Namuri]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

@Namuri, Here is your answer.  The issue is that the "default sort" is to Newest.  Just change the sort when searching a specific store. (This could mean changing the sort AFTER the search results come back, I am not certain.)

This question keeps coming  up.  The answer is always the same, but takes awhile for someone to give the answer.

Thank you Love, but unfortunately I noticed that the other Stores also have the same problem as me.
Waiting for someone to come for a solution, but I've seen that it's a problem that has been happening for a few years...

[Alwin Alcott]

47 minutes ago, Namuri said:

sorry, what do you mean?

you use wrong keywords .. it will give wrong results in search, be aware that's reportable.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Alwin Alcott

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Namuri said:

Thank you Love, but unfortunately I noticed that the other Stores also have the same problem as me.
Waiting for someone to come for a solution, but I've seen that it's a problem that has been happening for a few years...

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. The new behavior, as described, applies to "all stores".  Search by a store, and "newest" comes first, not "relevance". Change the search results to "relevance" after each search, and you should get relevance for that search. Apparently, you may have to do it every time you search a store.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Alwin Alcott said:

47 minutes ago, Namuri said:

sorry, what do you mean?

you use wrong keywords .. it will give wrong results in search, be aware that's reportable.

@NamuriI have also seen multiple Forum posts explaining that Keywords do not really work the same anymore, and if you use less keywords, the search will instead work better for the "text" in your product description, than if you add keywords. (You just have to make sure to add the information to your product description if it is not already there, so the search indexer will find it.)

[Namuri]

4 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

you use wrong keywords .. it will give wrong results in search, be aware that's reportable.

wrong keywords? I simply want to understand why "Relevance" sort no longer gives me the houses that I have sold the most, it puts everything at random. Is it understood now?

[Namuri]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. The new behavior, as described, applies to "all stores".  Search by a store, and "newest" comes first, not "relevance". Change the search results to "relevance" after each search, and you should get relevance for that search. Apparently, you may have to do it every time you search a store.

but I don't have to do it, I have my Store, so my customers should know that.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Namuri said:

but I don't have to do it, I have my Store, so my customers should know that.

Exactly, it is a "general communications issue", to let everyone know better - both merchants and customers - know about the new sort behavior.

There are some updates coming, who knows if they will change this behavior again? Certainly not me.

[Namuri]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Exactly, it is a "general communications issue", to let everyone know better - both merchants and customers - know about the new sort behavior.

There are some updates coming, who knows if they will change this behavior again? Certainly not me.

This is very wrong behaviour. I've been selling on MP for 11 years, something like this has never happened to me. Hopefully someone fixes it. Thanks for your time.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Namuri said:

wrong keywords? I simply want to understand why "Relevance" sort no longer gives me the houses that I have sold the most, it puts everything at random. Is it understood now?

was free advice, but if you don't mind your items will get taken offline when you meet a angry MP customer  by finding your items in irrelevant searches, don't change it, and don't complain here. 

[Namuri]

2 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

was free advice, but if you don't mind your items will get taken offline when you meet a angry MP customer  by finding your items in irrelevant searches, don't change it, and don't complain here. 

Complain what? I've been selling on MP for 11 years. Never had a keyword problem. Thank you.

[Namuri]

I wrote about my problem to Second Life Support and they replied like this:

"We recently made changes to the Marketplace that had some results that our community was not expecting. So we want to clear up confusion about the Marketplace and go over our current and upcoming changes.  

Recently we made a change to the default sort for merchant stores to "newest first" instead of "relevance." This was done to prevent old or outdated products from being the first thing shoppers see when visiting a merchant store, and we have seen increased sales across the Marketplace as a result. 

This is just one of the tweaks we have made to the Marketplace and we have plans for further updates in the near future that we hope will continue to improve the Marketplace experience for both shoppers and creators. 

To clear up some of the confusion around how the Marketplace works and give more insight on how to best use the Marketplace, we have put together some answers to frequently asked questions. 

When using product search 

Your product may not be appearing in the same position as it used to in relevance sort for product search for a number of reasons.

1. Titles matter. The title of your product needs to contain the search terms that have been entered into search.
2. How well it sells matters. This looks at the number of sales over a given period of time. 
3. Keywords included in the product listing. Keywords need to contain the search terms that have been entered into search. 
4. What features you have matters. Features need to contain the search terms that have been entered into search. 

We have adjusted the weighting of each of these factors with the last search upgrade. This is something we actively monitor and adjust and your product may have ranked higher in relevance under the previous weighting. 

When viewing a merchant store

Relevance sort requires a search term to really function in the way it is intended. When viewing a Marketplace store page or the product search with relevance sort enabled and no search term, you will get unexpected results. 

Prior to the Marketplace search upgrade, when viewing a merchant store with no search term, relevance sort used to take into account the number of sales of your items over periods of time. So high selling items used to sort to the top even if there was no search term applied. Now when viewing a merchant store with no search term the relevance sort will function the same as best selling sort (not the best selling merchant report). Since best selling only indexes the top 50k best selling items across the entire Marketplace, best selling sort will only look up data from that index. If your items do not fall into the top 50k they will all be ranked the same. This is why your best selling sort may not match your best selling reports. In short, your items will only have a sales rank if they fall into the top 50k. Best selling sort has always functioned this way and has not changed. 

With that in mind, we are currently working on a change to allow best selling to now index each merchant’s store individually instead of just the top 50k items. This will allow shoppers to see any creator’s best selling items when viewing a store page. We hope this will be a better long-term solution than the previous relevance sort and clearly communicate to shoppers what are the most popular products in a creator’s store. 

As always, we are also continuing maintenance and have a planned release Monday April 10th to fix a bug impacting merchant product listing enhancements. 

We have seen good sales results with our current changes and are very excited for our upcoming improvements. As is the industry standard for online marketplaces we will continue to improve and make changes based on our own internal data and community feedback. Our top priority is the best experience for our Marketplace creators and shoppers and we hope these changes will bring us closer to that goal. As always, if you find that Marketplace isn’t working the way you’d expect, please let us know!

Happy shopping and selling!"

 

Once, typing "Japanese temple" on the search, some of my houses immediately appeared at the top. Not anymore now. These changes have only messed up the Marketplace.

Thanks to all

Namuri

Edited May 25, 2023 by Namuri

[Love Zhaoying]

31 minutes ago, Namuri said:

Once, typing "Japanese temple" on the search, some of my houses immediately appeared at the top. Not anymore now. These changes have only messed up the Marketplace.

Thanks to all

Namuri

You provided a lot of information, but not whether you followed the advice given in the information, and given by others.

1. Did you make sure that the sort is not coming back with "newest first"? Quote: 

"Recently we made a change to the default sort for merchant stores to "newest first" instead of "relevance." This was done to prevent old or outdated products from being the first thing shoppers see when visiting a merchant store, and we have seen increased sales across the Marketplace as a result."

2. Have you tried modifying - even removing - your keywords? Seriously.. that is a suggestion others have tried which worked for them.  Especially keywords that are not in the text of your description.  Even if you get that to work better, the search result will probably still come back "newest first" (See #1).

A large part of what you posted was exactly what Rowan quoted previously.

If you haven't tried checking and changing the search from "newest" to "relevance", maybe you are just missing that you may need to do that now?

Also note in your quote:

"With that in mind, we are currently working on a change to allow best selling to now index each merchant’s store individually instead of just the top 50k items. This will allow shoppers to see any creator’s best selling items when viewing a store page. We hope this will be a better long-term solution than the previous relevance sort and clearly communicate to shoppers what are the most popular products in a creator’s store."

I hope the above information, which you quoted, gives you hope that they will "make it work more like you are used to".

From everything I am reading, that you quoted and others posted - it is not actually "broken", it just works different now and YOU (and maybe even your customers!) have to adjust for that change.

[Rowan Amore]

21 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You provided a lot of information, but not whether you followed the advice given in the information, and given by others.

1. Did you make sure that the sort is not coming back with "newest first"? Quote: 

"Recently we made a change to the default sort for merchant stores to "newest first" instead of "relevance." This was done to prevent old or outdated products from being the first thing shoppers see when visiting a merchant store, and we have seen increased sales across the Marketplace as a result."

2. Have you tried modifying - even removing - your keywords? Seriously.. that is a suggestion others have tried which worked for them.  Especially keywords that are not in the text of your description.  Even if you get that to work better, the search result will probably still come back "newest first" (See #1).

A large part of what you posted was exactly what Rowan quoted previously.

If you haven't tried checking and changing the search from "newest" to "relevance", maybe you are just missing that you may need to do that now?

Also note in your quote:

"With that in mind, we are currently working on a change to allow best selling to now index each merchant’s store individually instead of just the top 50k items. This will allow shoppers to see any creator’s best selling items when viewing a store page. We hope this will be a better long-term solution than the previous relevance sort and clearly communicate to shoppers what are the most popular products in a creator’s store."

I hope the above information, which you quoted, gives you hope that they will "make it work more like you are used to".

From everything I am reading, that you quoted and others posted - it is not actually "broken", it just works different now and YOU (and maybe even your customers!) have to adjust for that change.

Hopefully, with the clean out of old items and stores, this will make the new.system work better for everyone.

Personally, I think they should have shut down the MP completely for a few days and did everything all at once.  Can't even imagine the whining we'd hear then.  😂😥

[Love Zhaoying]

30 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Hopefully, with the clean out of old items and stores, this will make the new.system work better for everyone.

Personally, I think they should have shut down the MP completely for a few days and did everything all at once.  Can't even imagine the whining we'd hear then.  😂😥

My guess is, the announced downtime is either for a new database, and/or a complete reindex.