Shop OnRez Update: Improved Search

Update: The update is done. Sellers, look here to learn how to list in multiple categories.

We’re updating Shop’s search engine today to help improve the quality of results returned when browsing or searching on the site. Some of the noticeable changes will be:

• See exclusive items in search results! Now you’ll see the items your special sellers have made exclusive in your search results. They remain available at http://shop.onrez.com/item/exclusive, a page which is being updated for improved navigability.
• Did You Mean? When you enter a search term, Shop will suggest some alternate spellings that would bring more results. This works for names when searching for sellers as well.
• More Like This! When you find an item you like, follow the “See more items like this >>” link to see similar items you might also like.
• New sort option: Sort by item name
• When you search with keywords, all of the words must match for an item to appear. Previously we allowed some items to show up even if they did not have all keywords if a particular keyword was very important. (If you searched for “little black dress”, we might have returned some items that were just black dresses.)

Sellers, improve your search results by following these tips:

• Pick a category for each of your items. You can list in multiple categories, by adding tags, but the category selected will get the best results. We’re publishing the list of tags we use for categorization, so you can easily supplement your main category with additional ones, for when your Capris are also Denim!
• Correctly specify whether your item is men’s or women’s using the checkboxes when editing your items.
• Use images for your listings. Items without images will have a lower position in search results. Items with web images will be preferred on the web, and items with in-world images will be preferred when searching from in-world kiosks.

We will be upgrading Shop OnRez’s search over the next couple hours and will continue to tweak during the day. During the update, new listings will not appear in search results immediately.

This entry was posted by Becky Carella (Digi Vox) on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 11:20 am and is filed under Announcements, Shop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.