Marketplace Beta Search - New Information

[Arwen Serpente]

Thank you Grumpity. With regard to the definition of "relevance", all I wanted was a simple explanation in layman's terms, but in lieu of that your description of the "secret sauce recipe" does satisfy me to a certain extent.  With regard to the "best selling" bug and also the "missing items in stores" bug (that needs to reindexed), when should we be looking for those to take effect in the Beta Search site?

 

[Polymath Snuggler]

::does her best to hide a girlish grin::

Sometimes a little flash of technical speech helps illuminate that a programming team is not in fact a bunch of gnomes sitting in a dark room and performing juggling tricks with the dials of the machines they're supposed to be adjusting.

It is a notion that easily seeps into people's heads when they see something as not quite working, since few venture into the dark depths of devland with flashlights.

 

I'll keep poking at MP Beta and providing meaningful feedback once this latest round of digital creepy-crawlies have been hunted down and squooshed.

 

-Regards,

Liz

[Sassy Romano]

---

polysail wrote:

::does her best to hide a girlish grin::

Sometimes a little flash of technical speech helps illuminate that a programming team is

not

in fact a bunch of gnomes sitting in a dark room

---

I'm pleased that you've been so suitably enlightened.  I know that I speak for myself and many of the other commentators, that we've NEVER thought that a team of programmers is a bunch of gnomes sitting in a dark room.

You may reasonably assume though that users of the forum who do not have the last name Linden may have in the past, or still be active in example roles such as:-

 

• Programming (various languages)
• SEO specialists
• Product Management
• Project Management
• Software Test
• QA
• User Experience Specialisms
• IT Security
• IT Systems Management
• IT Architecture
• etc.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

.. and some of us LIKE being visualized as gnomes secreted away in dark holes deep within the Earth ...

*GRINZ*

[Polymath Snuggler]

I never thought of the Linden team as such. 

I was just happy that Grumpity dared post a technical reply.  Perhaps the humor of my post was lost~

 

At any rate!!    Onwards!!

[Darrius Gothly]

*takes a deep cleansing breath...

I will say again Grumpity, it is very refreshing and enjoyable to see so many posts with so much valuable content signed by Lindens. Keep it up please. But with that said, I'd like to add a slight bit of input to the manning of the tiller.

Relevancy is indeed a deep and complex subject ... when zoomed in at the highly technical details. Over the years I have found that people don't always want the deepest darkest tech specs though, often they just want a general treetops fly-by.

I think what we are looking for is something more along the lines of "We think recent sales are higher in relevance, followed by those with good ratings and then finally those with the most views in the past 30 days." That sort of global overall priority ranking among the available inputs would satisfy a pretty major group of us.

May I coax you into giving us something along those lines that is "official"?

[Pamela Galli]

Seems to me Apotheos, who invented SL Exchange (which became Xstreet), had search relevance pretty well figured out. 

[Darrius Gothly]

If only we had perfected the brain-sucker before we let go of him .. eh? *SIGH*

[Grumpity Linden]

---

Arwen Serpente wrote:

Thank you Grumpity. With regard to the definition of "relevance", all I wanted was a simple explanation in layman's terms, but in lieu of that your description of the "secret sauce recipe" does satisfy me to a certain extent.  With regard to the "best selling" bug and also the "missing items in stores" bug (that needs to reindexed), when should we be looking for those to take effect in the Beta Search site?

 

---

Best Selling:  we'll keep you updated on the progress.  

Reindex: it will be a slow rolling reindex, and we will post when it completes, but don't hold your breath yet! Certainly before this goes to production

[Grumpity Linden]

---

I think what we are looking for is something more along the lines of "We think recent sales are higher in relevance, followed by those with good ratings and then finally those with the most views in the past 30 days." That sort of global overall priority ranking among the available inputs would satisfy a pretty major group of us.

May I coax you into giving us something along those lines that is "official"?

---

Darrius, what you're describing are boost factors we might use in sorting relevant results.  This is a formula we tweak but it uses a weighted combination of sales data and various fields' matches to searched terms.  However, this is just the frosting on the relevance recipe, and because there is a rich tradition of trying to "game" the search results, we really can't give too much away .  I will reiterate that the learning algorithm in the new search system will take conversions into account so we will continue to adjust the ingredients of the frosting once this goes to production.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Grumpity Linden wrote:

---

I think what we are looking for is something more along the lines of "We think recent sales are higher in relevance, followed by those with good ratings and then finally those with the most views in the past 30 days." That sort of global overall priority ranking among the available inputs would satisfy a pretty major group of us.

May I coax you into giving us something along those lines that is "official"?

---

Darrius, what you're describing are boost factors we might use in sorting relevant results.  This is a formula we tweak but it uses a weighted combination of sales data and various fields' matches to searched terms.  However, this is just the frosting on the relevance recipe, and because there is a rich tradition of trying to "game" the search results, we really can't give too much away

.  I will reiterate that the learning algorithm in the new search system will take conversions into account so we will continue to adjust the ingredients of the frosting once this goes to production. 

---

Tradition? HAH!! I'd frame it more as Religion! *grin*

By "conversions" I assume you are speaking of the number of times a product is viewed rated against the number of times it is purchased. Since you are using those factors in weighting Search, can we also have them provided in the form of viewable charts or tables?

Even though in the strictest sense, adjusting your product's listing to improve conversions could be called "gaming", it is also the intended path for any Merchant to follow to help improve their sales. (And improved sales is why we're all here anyway, right?) So if we have the same data to consider, and if we can get it presented in a way that makes sense (instead of the useless "since the dawn of time" number we have now), we can pull our load easier and ... as a beneficial side-effect .. increase the total sales volume and add more to LL's pocket as well.

Feedback is important Grumpity. Trust me when I say yours has been wonderful to have and very calming too. But we need more, and we need specific forms of it to help us do our jobs better. Conversions would be one of those critical essential things .. and something we have needed for a long long time.

[Grumpity Linden]

It is one of the many things we have on the list of Marketplace bugs and features and quite outside the scope of the BetaSearch project.   I can neither confirm nor deny that this will become a reality.  

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Grumpity Linden wrote:

It is one of the many things we have on the list of Marketplace bugs and features and quite outside the scope of the BetaSearch project.   I can neither confirm nor deny

that this will become a reality.  

---

A post .. from a Linden .. that leaves me with an honest smile and even a chuckle. Happiness inspired even!

LOVE IT!

[Polymath Snuggler]

::takes the "maybe someday" reply and runs with it held over her head like a trophy::

[Marina Ramer]

I dont know what smart update you Lindens had made now, but please now that you **bleep**ed soemthing with the listings now. Doesnt matter anymore apaprently how many sales you may have on one product or neither how many reviews. The product syats forever in same place or jsut go back but enver forward. I am monitoringe ach day my christmas trees, I sell over 60 per day of them and all of them are on page 4 on search since exactly the day you runned this "update" you did. They also egt reviews daily, many of them, and none of them increases the sales ranking, now for reviews, not for sales number. I am quite angry about this really.

[Polymath Snuggler]

This is the BETA search thread.  The beta search is not live.  It's not affecting your sales.  It's beta.  What you are describing is a known set of bugs within the beta project.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-10799

&

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-10830

 

They're both being worked on.

If this behavior is persisting in this environment: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/  Please document it and post a JIRA BUG report about it.

[MarmelaGramela Doesburg]

Well - this theme really interested me because all search functions of Second Life, inworld or marketplace are basically crap - sorry my french.

So I try a search on the beta site for "gacha* AND mesh". This should alone bring hundreds of results of my own listed items. Of course..they were omitted ... same unrealiable search as before - (or is my syntax wrong?)

It would really be nice to have something that works and doesn't show me 100 items that I have not asked for, as it is now. When I enter an exact item title..I want THAT item not all sorts of other stuff that may have one word similar....

[Grumpity Linden]

A quick note to let you know that we're also working on making exact match work when adding quotation marks around a search term.  So, for example, searching for "mesh" would not return any fuzzy matches and you wouldn't get Mash or Mush in your search results.  We will update when that change goes out, and this should address some of the requests voiced in previous comments.  

Thanks! 

[Darrius Gothly]



[Polymath Snuggler]

Is there any way that search syntax can be explained in something that's not a wiki page for the average SL user?  I mean all these syntax improvements are great and all ~ but it's not like the average user has the technical know-how or willingness to comb through a wiki page to learn how to use something~  A sentiment that I've mentioned before, and is becoming apparent in the random comments throughout this thread.

I honestly get stumped myself with the correct use of [ * ] [ NOT ] [ AND ] etc~   and I'm supposed to know what I'm doing.

As a shopper I just want to search for mesh shoes and be done with it.

Not wonder if the search is supposed to be:

"mesh shoes"

"mesh" AND "shoes"

"mesh" AND "shoes" NOT DEMO

"mesh" AND shoes* NOT DEMO

Note: I still don't know which of the above searches will do for sure~  and it's nearly impossible to test due to the difference in ordering of results when using Boolean Search terms: This hasn't been fixed yet right?

In particular, I've never been clear on how SL search handles spaces in search.

 

Mind you perhaps I'm just being paranoid~  But ~ This level of complexity is what I'm dreading.

[Whirly Fizzle]

---

polysail wrote:

Mind you perhaps I'm just being paranoid~  But ~

This level of complexity is what I'm dreading.

---

Advanced JIRA search is the best thing since sliced bread.  But maybe I'm biased...

[Grumpity Linden]

Since we can't all be like Whirly (which is really too bad) we plan on adding a link to a short Search How-To that enumerates available syntax and gives some examples.   Thanks!

[Sassy Romano]

---

polysail wrote:

 

As a shopper I just want to search for mesh shoes and be done with it.

Not wonder if the search is supposed to be:

"mesh shoes"

"mesh" AND "shoes"

"mesh" AND "shoes" NOT DEMO

"mesh" AND shoes* NOT DEMO

---

Well this one in particular could have been solved a LONG LONG TIME AGO because a mesh item has a mesh flag set on upload and the user interface should have a checkbox for "Mesh", just as it has them for the type of permission.

A user should NOT have to even put the word mesh anywhere in the search description, we don't have to put "shoes AND copy AND modify" do we?!

Why search has never thus far taken advantage of a richly populated field that is so commonly asked for is beyond my meagre comprehension.

(silent expletives not aimed at you polysail)

[Domsson Lean]

Sorry if this came up before, didn't have time to read through the 8 pages, but here goes:

What I'm wishing for ever since the introduction of mesh is a search filter for "100% mesh only" (and maybe also "no mesh"). Given the fact that products have a field for this, this should - hopefully - be trivial to implement.

[Domsson Lean]

One more thing came to my mind. I once wrote a lengthy post about issues with the marketplace search (focus on how reviews seem to affect a listing's position). I wrote it up in 2012, so not sure if it still applies, but it includes lots of actual practical suggestions on what could be improved and how:

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Product-Reviews/td-p/1582283/page/2#M24887

It is a long read, but there is a tl;dr at the end, so maybe just check that. To directly bring one suggestion over here, I would love to see the "Was this review helpful? [Yes] [No]" buttons actually have an effect - one that also influences the search algorithm.

Late edit: Reading the initial post again, I just realized that my comments are pretty much out of place, as they are not within scope of this project. Sorry for that. I'll just let them sit here anyway, because I don't like deleting stuff. Just ignore me for now.