Hi Metazens,

one of the most important steps to develop an economy is to establish a working search - meta7 has that now!

We developed our own, web based search module, which is slightly different from what you are used to from SL. The best way to start a search is using the "Search All" tab - putting in your search term and clicking on "Search" will give you the results, sorted by categories like "Places", "Groups" or "Gear". For example, if you search for "Skin", right now while I write this text you'll find 48 results in "Gear" (usually vendor boxes), 2 results in "Places" (usually shops where you buy skins) and 3 results in "People" (like Jonny Ko"skin"en). Clicking on the results link will open the list with the individual results. When you click on the "48 results" from the "Gear" category, you'll find the results listed and clickable, when you click on one of the results, a window similar to a landmark window pops up and gives you more information (and the button to teleport directly to that result). The same happens when you click on a result in "Places", when you click on a result in "People" it will open the persons profile, when you click on a result in "Groups" it will open the group info window. (Personally I prefer to use the "People" tab instead the "Search All" tab when I search for a person, it gives the result in the old style SL format and needs less clicks and browsing.) You can use the "Back" and "Forward" buttons to browse your search results.

Now, finding something via search is only one side of the medal - the other side is making your stuff found! This is the most important thing for the merchants out there in the big world.

Lets start with people search - right now, everyone will be found, the checkbox "Show in search" in the profile is not functional.

Next: groups. These actually can be hidden from search by using the checkbox "Show in search" in the group info window.

Places: to have your place found, you need to check the checkbox "Show place in Search" in the "About Land" menu, tab "Options" (even though there you can read "M$30/week", we don't charge for that right now). In the drop down menu you can specify what kind of place it is - though this is a left over from the SL search module and has no function in meta7 yet. To get the best results, use a good name for your place ("About Land" --> "General") *and* a good description (for example, if you have a shop, list what items can be found there in the description field).

If you want single items (like vendor boxes) to be found, you need to check the checkbox "Show in search" in the items edit menu, "General" tab. Here it also is extremely important to give the item a) a good name and b) a good description! Both will be shown in the search results, and the better you describe the item, the more people will be interested in actually checking it out.

In names and descriptions, watch out for typos! For example I saw "Collat" instead of "Collar" - this does *not* help with being found in search

BTW, it will take a bit of time (maybe half an hour) for things that you list in search to be found - so please be patient.

Not working yet: searching for events and land sales.

Merchants, Creators, merchants, builders.... YES what he said, shopping is so frustrating. Also please if you sell stuff an have a store please put the store in your pics so i can click it an tp there. This is mostly how I shop lol. If i see something i must have i check who the creator is an look for their store in their pics. If I can't find you i can't purchase your wonderful creations . Since i can't im you unless you are on an nc's only get there half the time it's more difficult as well.

It would be nice if search used the object Description (either only, or in addition to Object name.) What I want search to see is different from what I want in the name of the folder sold. Searching group descriptions would also be nice.