How do you move your own items up in search so more people buy them?

[ImpendingDoom Looming]

I am curious how to get your own product listed higher up in the Marketplace search ? It seems the same merchants items dominate the top of the relevancy searches continously as if they are doing something to help this process.

 

Does anybody know?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

That position is based on an algorithm that includes item price, # of times sold, and review ratings, and perhaps some other secret sauce mixed in.

To get there you need to blog it and tweet it and sell it.  A lot.  And often.

 

[Ariel Vuissent]

I think, though I could be wrong on this, that the items that appear first are the items that are most often viewed. Typing in a very generic search term, those on the first few pages had quite a few reviews, and most of them were positively rated. That leads me to believe that it's items that are viewed and purchased frequently that appear first. Which makes sense, I suppose.

I'm not sure there's anything you can do to fairly boost up your own items in search. You can try listing them as featured items, although it costs to do so. Otherwise, I have no suggestions. Perhaps someone else will chime in with some, or will correct if I'm wrong about what makes some items appear first in search!

[Amethyst Jetaime]

About the only thing you can do is use the keyword field and enter as many keywords that you can think of that are directly relevant to your product.  Keywords are defined by LL as "Specific terms you expect this item to be found with when customers search. This field is searchable from Marketplace search and can be up to 200 characters, including commas and spaces."  Be careful though.  An item can be flagged and pulled from the listings if you use keyword spam.

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

You can do a lot just by making the TITLE have more words that people would use to describe the item. It's weighted very heavily in search, the first words are the most important ones, and if the title doesn't explain exactly what I'm looking for, I won't click.

Example: [DD] Sculpty Picket Fence ^ White Picket Fence 1 Prim Only ^ Seamless  

You are repeating the words picket fence, which might be hurting you, and you are NOT using the one adjective that describes the fence shape ... "arched" or "scalloped". If I were looking for that style picket fence, I would be using "scalloped picket fence" to see what comes up.

Also, why the wasted space with [DD], "only", and the ^ marks? No one is searching for ^

Recommended Title: Picket fence section, scalloped or arched, sculpty

Use really RELEVANT keywords, things people will be typing into the search box.

Your keywords are: Picket, Fence, White, High Quality, Seamless, Cheap, Good, Nice, Sculpted, Sculpty, Garden, Landscaping, Zaun, Decoration, Barrier, Security, Screen   (again, you need arched and scalloped in the keywords)

I'm not going to be searching for "high quality" or "cheap". If I'm price conscious, I'll sort by price.

On this item, the title says white and the picture shows dirty grey ... FIX IT!

[LarryLow Kappler]

Its still the oldest misbelief that review ratings affect the search in any way. If you look deeper into the search engine you will very quickly understand that reviews not really have any effect on the relevancy.

However a mixture of the price, the number of sold items, the age and impressions is pretty much correct. Nobody but the LL knows the other parameters but its not necessary to know these because selling as many products as possible and for a very long time must be the goal. If you do so, the items will be relevant. I personally like Neferiti's suggestions how to pimp your listings.

[Rene Erlanger]

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LarryLow Kappler wrote:

Its still the oldest misbelief that review ratings affect the search in any way. If you look deeper into the search engine you will very quickly understand that reviews not really have any effect on the relevancy.

However a mixture of the price, the number of sold items, the age and impressions is pretty much correct. Nobody but the LL knows the other parameters but its not necessary to know these because selling as many products as possible and for a very long time must be the goal. If you do so, the items will be relevant. I personally like Neferiti's suggestions how to pimp your listings.

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I'm curious how price will impact a search ranking....i would have thought in LL's interest (i.e more commission to them), they would weigh it heavier in favour of higher priced items.

Yes, impressions or clicks would count, Product title would have a strong influence and number of sales (which favours older items).....other than review ratings (which you implied doesn't count) , I'm not sure what else could influence Search rankings.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Rene Erlanger wrote:

 

I'm not sure what else could influence Search rankings.

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There are all kind of thinks you can think of that might have a possible influence on ranks.

For example:

The number of buys out of views. In case A an item is viewed 1000 times and got 10 sales. In case B item is viewed 100 times and got 10 sales. So item B is selling faster when viewed. You can give this difference in sellingspeed  + or - rank points.

What is the route the buyer took before the buy?

You can for example reward 'is the keyword that the buyer used to find the item in the title of the item? +++ or is the keyword of the item? +

Or you can reward: Did the buyer click on an enhancement that lead him to the item? If yes: reward rank

 

 

[UncommonTruth]

I havent tried listing anything on the market yet.. even so, this is good solid advise I'll use when I do. :matte-motes-smitten:

 

ETA @ OP- I looked at some of your stuff on the market, and it does look high quality. I hope you can get it seen and make a killing :smileyhappy:

[Medhue Simoni]

I play my rain dance animation, and chant. It works about as good as anything else.

[Rene Erlanger]

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UncommonTruth wrote:

I havent tried listing anything on the market yet.. even so, this is good solid advise I'll use when I do. :matte-motes-smitten:

 

ETA @ OP- I looked at some of your stuff on the market, and it does look high quality.

I hope you can get it seen and make a killing :smileyhappy:

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2 million products listed? Even once you distribute the products into their individual branch categories...it's still a lot in many instances. (the popular markets).

If you're know how to get your stuff top of the search rankings...i would say you could make decent sales per month.....but i doubt it would be a killing!

Aside from the creators of Meeroo foods, I doubt if any Merchant comes close to selling $5000 USD worth of goods on Marketplace in any given month. Once upon a time, I could have showed you a good many In-World Stores that were pulling in that sort of money in a variety of different market sectors.

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

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UncommonTruth wrote:

ETA @ OP- I looked at some of your stuff on the market, and it does look high quality. I hope you can get it seen and make a killing

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Thanks. I realized my niche was going to be low-prim, cheap, high quality decorations, with the occasional texture pack if I am playing with graphics, or a bit of clothing. And an occasional freebie.

They are getting seen and bought enough to pay for my premium membership, the rent on the parcel, buy things I need or want in SL, tip people occasionally, and withdraw a few bucks a month. It's a self-supporting on-line game for me.

[ImpendingDoom Looming]

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Nefertiti Nefarious wrote:

You can do a lot just by making the TITLE have more words that people would use to describe the item. It's weighted very heavily in search, the first words are the most important ones, and if the title doesn't explain exactly what I'm looking for, I won't click.

Example: [DD] Sculpty Picket Fence ^ White Picket Fence 1 Prim Only ^ Seamless  

You are repeating the words picket fence, which might be hurting you, and you are NOT using the one adjective that describes the fence shape ... "arched" or "scalloped". If I were looking for that style picket fence, I would be using "scalloped picket fence" to see what comes up.

Also, why the wasted space with [DD], "only", and the ^ marks? No one is searching for ^

Recommended Title: Picket fence section, scalloped or arched, sculpty

Use really RELEVANT keywords, things people will be typing into the search box.

Your keywords are:

Picket, Fence, White,

High Quality

, Seamless,

Cheap, Good, Nice,

Sculpted, Sculpty,

Garden, Landscaping, Zaun, Decoration, Barrier, Security, Screen

 

(again, you need arched and scalloped in the keywords)

I'm not going to be searching for "high quality" or "cheap". If I'm price conscious, I'll sort by price.

On this item, the title says white and the picture shows dirty grey ... FIX IT!

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FIX IT!? I am glad that you do not represent the average buyer nor a sucessful merchant on SLM whom I would want to base a business plan on. People buy by visual impulse mostly, specially on the lower priced items. I never read a description of an item costing less than 50L because if it sucks I simply delete it. Keywords are not nearly as relevant as the number of sales in a 48(?) hr period so what you put there is really not important. The way the search engine works you could put blue and since its a color like red it will give you results with red in it as well. The only way to shop s to drill down on subcategories and browse the best selling ones and pick a picture you like and click buy. This is why I made the thread. I do not need help with keywords, I want to know how to move my items up in the page ranking like some other merchants in my industry do. There is no way that a specialty item can remain a top seller in a main category for months on end without some fudging by the merchant. If not, it would mean that more people than are active members of SL would have this given product in their inventory and since it is a building supply part I find it odd that I have never seen it used on any buildings for sale like some of the old best selling items..Those you could find everywhere because the sales were actually real for the most part.

 

Think I am wrong? Just go search for the word Blue and watch and learn.

 

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

The way the search engine works you could put blue and since its a color like red it will give you results with red in it as well. 

Uh, no. Look at the page source. I searched for "blue" and those few red items that show up are using the word "blue" as a keyword.

As a buyer, I'm unlikely to click on them because I was looking for a BLUE item, not a red one. Keywords need to be concrete adjectives that are relevant to that item, words that people are likely to type into a search field, not vague things like cheap, high quality, or awesome. You have 200 characters to influence the placement during search.

I don't worry about being high on the list when people are browsing by specific categories, because LL keeps tweaking the variables there. I concentrate on showing up when people are searchng for something specific like a black rooster or a red hen. When they do, I'm right there. It pays the tier.

[Polenth Yue]

If you're looking for exploits to get to the top of the ranking, a public forum run by Linden Labs isn't the best place to ask. If you're looking for non-exploit ways... listen to Nefertiti. Sorting out product pictures, keywords, title and product descriptions does help move things up search, because it helps people find it and buy it. Redoing some of my older listings resulted in a noticeable sales spike.

[Josh Susanto]

All else being equal, the more stuff you list, the higher will be your highest ranking.