Arwen Serpente

Thank you Froukje for opening a new JIRA. I was so frustrated when the existing ones were closed without direction to the one that they are keeping open.

omg just looked at my store. I now have items 2,106 according to the sidebar with 1060 matching (my store should have 1060):

If you click through the related items at the bottom of the Fat Pack page, the dresses show and are active. But they don't show, as you've said, on the main store page. Nor do they show in search. This happens with my related items as well - if a product is there, it can be clicked and the listing is there even if the product is invisible when looking at the main store, or when using search. Edited to add: Polenth Yue did provide a workaround earlier in this thread : "I just had this. It was the latest item I'd added, so I noticed it had gone. There is a workaround if you know which item. If you go to the inworld inventory where it's still showing the product as listed, you can right click menu and "Edit Listing". This will bring up the edit page in the web browser and then you can just click "update" to get the product to reappear." It's great if you know which item is invisible.

There is no solution that is known at this time. There is a JIRA where you can add your comments and add yourself to the watch list to stay up to date on what LL may say. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234180

I saw your thread Samara. I wasn't sure if the two issues were related or not since mine are unlimited items and not limited. Most likely though, since it is all about item count and visibility, they are related. Since the MP isn't communicating what changes they are making to the MP code (if they are working on it as they promised), this will remain a mystery until they fix it. For stores with unlimited items, the totals by category and price have always been static unless the Merchant lists or unlists an item. I check every day and have never seen this kind of bouncing around and error. I've never seen my listings just completely disappear when they are actually there. When I add something new, I see the total go up by that amount. If I unlist something, it goes down. This bouncing around is very recent - last 24 hours as far as I can tell since I check every day and multiple times a day while I work. Your issue with limited items has been going on for a while now, so maybe whatever fiddling the engineers are doing to fix that issue is messing up the rest.

Overnight, the total items in my store grew to 1129 (I have 1060 items in reality) and matching shrank to 1049.

This is ridiculous. I just started looking by category and counting. Every time I return to the total page, I suddenly have more items! I'm up to 1074 now and should have only 1060. And now 1078! Edited to add - up to 1082 now! Wish my sales would increase this fast.

I'll give that a try. Are you seeing the number of items in your store jumping around? I can't believe the variations I'm getting. There should be 1060 in my store (see the JIRA for a blow by blow of the jumps). I just checked and it says I have 1066 (in the sidebar) and 1053 matching in the heading next to it. Totally off. Edited to add: Thank you! that workaround was successful. Unfortunately, I can only identify 1 of the 4 that were missing (like you a very recent listing). I have over 1000 listings and can't identify the others. Edited to add: lol, now total items are 1069 even though matching says 1054. I have NO idea what those extra 9 items are.

Thanks for testing !

This is one of the strangest bugs I've encountered in my 15 years as a Merchant. The MP is erasing items from listings/search/manage listings. I lost 4 this morning. These are regular, unlimited quantity items. Maturity settings have been checked and it is not related to it. I can only identify one since I have over 1000 items. Using that one example - it is active in my MP inventory, it can be purchased through a link from a prior sale, it does register in transactions when sold, confirmation email is sent when sold. It shows up in Google when searched and the Google link works. BUT it/they are completely invisible on the MP. As I watched over the past couple hours, the item count gradually increased BUT the items remain invisible. In fact, on the most recent refresh the count shows MORE items than I actually have listed. May want to check your stores to see if it is happening to you too. I filed a support ticket, but they cannot help. I filed a JIRA if you are interested: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234180 Edited to add: if you want a good laugh, look at the JIRA. It would be funny except this is a real business, not a game.

ETA - estimated time of arrival or as LL likes to say "soooooooon" Thanks for posting the link to your JIRA. Added myself to watching.

As Wulfie says, nothing wrong with filing a new JIRA and gathering support. However, be aware that all the JIRAs/bug reports filed regarding this issue (and there were almost 2 dozen by my count) have been closed. The most recent comments are they are working on it with no ETA. As said, this issue has been repeated over and over, pleas to LL for help have not been addressed, only promises made.

It's already back up. Does anyone know what they did? I don't see any differences...

It's that other 2% that's a kicker - unlisted products cannot be redelivered. Just tested.

Thank you Caren. Your post reflects the feelings of many Merchants who are troubled by this change and do not know how to manage it. Some days, I wonder if there is even an MP team at all. The silence is deafening.

Caren, I also tried some of the tips that I received. My results were not good. The products lost any visibility they had with the original titles/keywords/features. Even restoring them to their original wording did not bring them back to the prior positions. They are now stuck even further back. I will wait and watch to see if there is an uptick in sales for the changed items over the next week before I make any other changes. From my POV, if the changes that have been made to the MP coding are so extreme that over 5 million listings need to be reworked to benefit from it, then the problem lies with the coding, not the listings.

Because those quotes went to the point that LL knew there would be negative impacts. It's a good quote and speaks to the hope that they will be able to find a way to improve listing rankings by store. So it does show that they want to correct the errors of the current changes. Having said that, I'm skeptical of how they will do the change since they want to minimize older items popping. Those items have long histories as reflected in the Best Selling Merchant report, so older items could be seen first, just by virtue of how long they have been selling and not how popular they currently are. I can only speak for myself, but the original Relevance algorithm worked well.

I agree with you that a full rollback is not going to happen. I've acknowledged in my post earlier today. We come at this from different angles which is fine. Your preference is to act now on your best instincts. Mine is to watch and see where this goes, and then adjust. Different strokes for different folks...

Polenth, I know you are being helpful and optimistic and realistic, but please acknowledge that revising listings is a huge task. Especially for Merchants with hundreds and thousands of products. This isn't about "resistance" it is about man-hours. Please don't underestimate that. We do not have clear, specific instructions from LL about revisions - the factors are the same factors they always were, just weighted differently (and we don't know the specific weightings - that's their "secret sauce"). We've always been encouraged to have clear titles, fill in features, etc. Their instructions have not changed. When I see specific instructions like "5 words in a title" "always include a color if relevant", or "use full sentances /phrases/single words (who knows) in features", then I will have more confidence about revisions. To start modifying listings while LL continues to "tweek" is really a waste of time. When the dust settles and there is clear direction, revisions may be possible. I do appreciate the testing done by individuals and posted here. It is helpful. It is also only directional. Changing a thousand listings based on a few Merchant comments in the Forums is not a task I am confident will pay benefits. When I started to see the advice here in the Forum, I tested a few revisions - with no change, no positive result.

I wonder the same thing. Right now, when using search, it "appears" that older products do populate the top spots.

Agreed.

Glad you're optimistic, Yeya. Sadly and obviously, I'm not so optimistic. I agree with you regarding "intent". I don't think the changes are malicious, but they are aware of the negative impact - they indicate it in their post several times: "We recently made changes to the Marketplace that had some results that our community was not expecting." "When using product search Your product may not be appearing in the same position as it used to in relevance sort" "When viewing a Marketplace store page or the product search with relevance sort enabled and no search term, you will get unexpected results." "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." They know there will be winners and losers with these changes. It isn't so much dependent on the size of the store, but how an item fares with the new factor weighting, and if a product breaks into the top 50k. As far as they can report so far, it is successful and increasing their revenue. So some Merchants are winning, we just don't know which ones and how large or small they are. They refer to future "tweeks" which yes, means a work in progress, but to me a tweek is a small move, not what many here have been asking for. Edited to add: If they do have big changes planned, I hope they will communicate to the community before making them. They tend to like the "ta da!" of implementing change and announcing after. Communication from LL over the past 6 weeks has been very poor, leading to the post "What the heck happened to my Marketplace store".

These are my key takeaways from the LL "What the heck happened to my Marketplace store" post: 1. Newness is now the default sort for stores 2. Weighting of key factors going into Relevance has been changed 3. Indexing to the top 50k items in the MP is now a key determinant in Best Selling (and possibly Relevance - not clear on that) 4. LL has increased revenue from these changes. So, all the changes have been intentional. And are working as expected. They knew it would have a negative impact on a segment of Merchants, and did it anyway. They did not communicate any of this in the past 6 weeks. They say they are still "tweeking" which means they have no intention of reverting to the prior coding. So, the bug reports (JIRA), support tickets, forum posts have been shouting in the wind, because it is all working as expected. So all the time and energy that went into reporting for the past 6 weeks has been a waste. LL's lack of communication during those 6 weeks was irresponsible. They could have/should have addressed the feedback a month ago. The only real bug has been the mess with enhancements - which WILL be fixed. It won't matter what we call out or comment on - it is all part of the plan - the plan is working for some Merchants (apparently) and for LL. If there were changes/fixes, this is what I'd ask for: 1. Re-visit, revise, re-balance weighting of key factors going into Relevance. The new weighting appears to favor Titles (and simple ones at that) above all else. Volume, recency of sale, rating have all been buried. In effect, to benefit from the new weighting, Merchants would need to revise listings - and that is an unreasonable expectation, especially if LL "tweeks" weighting again. 2. Indexing to 50k items is ludicrous - that's under 1% of the MP items. So an item has to be in the top 1% to matter in sorting results. Given that the order of products in stores PRIOR to these changes made some sense when sorted by Relevance or Best Selling, indexing must not have been used or used in a different way. So now, most stores will always see a jumble for Relevance/Best Selling because they will never reach this new 1% threshold. Get rid of it. 3. If 1 & 2 are done, then the Relevance/Best selling sorts would work again and could be reinstated as the default. The only reason it was changed to Newness was that they KNEW these changes messed up so many stores. I have little hope at this point that meaningful revisions will be made. LL says they are seeing increased revenue from the changes, so to them it has all been a success.

Good to know, thank you. But Relevance and Best Selling are still broken when looking at specific stores. First it defaults to Newest even if selection says Relevance or Best Selling. Then toggling to another sort and back to Relevance or Best Selling - the results are not Newest first, but they are not Relevance or Best Selling either. They are completely mixed up. So, we have no way of knowing if general search is returning the correct Relevance sort or not. I don't know the entire MP so I can't tell when I look at it. But it would be odd for it to be correct when looking in general versus looking at a specific store. Edited to add: I don't recall seeing so many adult listings (body parts) when looking at general Relevance. I do recall seeing certain large stores which are not showing up now. Edited to add: I just looked at the tweet again. I don't see any reference to Relevance or general search. Where is it? The tweet refers only to specific stores. Relevance and best selling were not fixed. All that changed is the default search in a store to Newest, which has been working correctly all along.

Yes, Love, you got it. They implemented two changes on March 27, but didn't give anyone a head's up except on Twitter: 1. Shopping cart now holds up to 99 items 2. The default sort is now Newest, not Relevance. While many like to shop by Newest (I do all the time), it is not the right way to do a default sort - Relevance (when calculated prior to the changes to the MP in late Feb/early Mar) was a calculation that took into account recency of sale, volume, rating, and match to search terms. It is very close to the Best Selling sort (the two have always been a bit confusing). When they made this change to Newest as default, if you were already set to Relevance, the sort will show Newest and not Relevance until you toggle to a different sort and then back again to Relevance. I filed a JIRA about this error and it was promptly closed as "expected behavior". Relevance allows new products to rise through the ranks as they sell. So if a product is popular it will eventually lead the list in Relevance. For Merchants, given we have very few ways to monitor our performance, Relevance gives us an "at a glance" record of how the items are doing. First thing I do every day is to look at Relevance to see how my items are moving. Defaulting to Newest only shows newest first, and since newness is transitory, the item will very quickly be replaced by the next new item and eventually lose visibility. For shoppers, impulse buying is very common - when Relevance was the default, they often bought the items ranking highest (and often new popular items); with Newest as the default, they will buy what they see first. They may never toggle to a different sorting method and may miss otherwise very successful and popular items. The April 6 maintenance did something unspecified to the "backend". With no blog post and no news so far from LL, we don't know what that was. What we do know, is that none of the bugs that have plagued the MP for over month have been resolved.