Make Marketplace keywords merchants use on product listings visible
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Polyhistor Serpente
Many stores either accidently put in the wrong keywords (especially with bodies they don't regularly support or no longer make clothing for) or possibly even intentionally do it. This leads to a lot of results that are useless to the person attempting to find things that will work for them, essentially making searching for some types of items frustrating.
Currently there is no way to actually be certain they are doing either or there was some kind of search issue because the key words they fill in are not visible. Currently you can only guess and assume blindly then flag it for keyword spam and let Linden Lab sort it out.
It would be very nice to be able to somehow let the shoppers see this. Ideally in a way that is similar how you can see keywords/tags/hashtags/etc on various forms of social media posts.
That way not only can you see if they are manipulating the system skew search results or being careless with a copy paste template but it likely would make it easier for external search engines to index the pages and give relevant search results too driving even more traffic to product listings.
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Gemma Rabbit
Love this idea. as a creator i find this to be a no brainer positive for the world. there are far too many places that abuse the goodwill of others, reselling products not of their own making for a quick easy buck and game the tag system. the flood of those people ends up crowding out the original creators. like jackie's store, that appears to be reselling other peoples works as her own. its downright shameful.
jackiewallace Resident
Unfortunately, I can't agree with this initiative. I understand why you'd want to see the keywords, but I believe this should be up to the creators on the Marketplace, as they are the ones trying to sell their products on the platform. I've come across more than a few users who intentionally buy extremely low-priced products just to leave negative reviews about things the seller never even claimed about the item.
As a creator, I’d like to point out that no one is being forced to buy anything on the Marketplace. Everyone has the opportunity to create whatever they need for their avatar themselves. Creators spend years learning how to make quality content, while they are constantly exposed to trolling from one- or two-week-old alts, simply due to human malice. Personally, I would even go as far as to restrict the review system so that only those with sufficient knowledge could write reviews in a fair and competent manner.
Polyhistor Serpente
jackiewallace Resident I understand your concern, but the suggestion wouldn’t take control away from creators. It would just make the keywords which they already input transparent. This could actually reduce unfair flagging by helping shoppers see what terms were used before reporting, instead of guessing blindly. It could protect creators from false assumptions, not expose them to more of them.
jackiewallace Resident
Polyhistor Serpente The keywords used on the Marketplace are nothing more than search optimization. You can’t see that in a Google ad either. What would be much more important is to fully separate demo products from full versions during searches. Let’s introduce rules for customer safety: if a creator becomes unreachable to their customers for an extended period of time, they should permanently and irreversibly lose their right to use the Marketplace.
Polyhistor Serpente
jackiewallace Resident I appreciate your perspective, but I think we may be talking about slightly different things here. This suggestion isn’t about limiting creators but is instead about making the keywords they already input visible to shoppers. That way, users can better understand why a listing appeared in their search and avoid false flagging or making assumptions.
Comparing it to Google ads isn’t quite the same, since the SL Marketplace is a community facing shopping platform, not a closed corporate ad system. Shoppers rely on keywords to find products that actually work for their avatars and when results are cluttered with unrelated listings it becomes frustrating for them and unfair to creators who tag responsibly.
While unrelated to keyword visibility, I did want to clarify something you mentioned. Separating demos from full products is already a feature built into the Marketplace. After running a search, look on the left side of the page under the categories. There’s a checkbox labeled "Demo Items" that you can tick on or off, and then click "Refine search" to apply the filter.
Ultimately, this idea is about improving clarity and reducing confusion for both shoppers and sellers. It isn’t taking control away from anyone.
jackiewallace Resident
Polyhistor Serpente If my previous wording wasn’t entirely clear, it may be because I intentionally chose not to express my point in overly rigid terms. I believe it’s important to separate two aspects of this discussion.
On one hand, we have the creator - the seller - who owns the rights to the content they produce. This includes not just the product itself, but also the images, the description, and the keywords they carefully choose. All of these elements are protected under copyright. On the other hand, we have the buyer - the user - who is browsing the Marketplace to find products.
From a strictly technical and legal perspective, there’s no inherent reason why a buyer should have access to the internal marketing strategy of a creator. In fact, keyword data shouldn’t even be visible in the source code. Revealing this information could open the door for malicious users to misuse it, whether by targeting sellers for harassment or by exploiting their work in a competitive context.
This is a marketplace, and like any marketplace, competition exists. Keyword strategies are part of how creators position themselves, and giving everyone access to those strategies could unfairly strip away the advantage of those who have taken the time to think critically and act strategically.
Transparency is valuable - but only to a point. We shouldn’t pursue it so far that it begins to penalize competence and creativity. Some parts of the system should remain behind the scenes to preserve fairness and protect the efforts of creators who act responsibly.
Your store has four products, all of which are windlight settings. So in reality, you’re selling know-how based on system-provided configurations, the copyrights of which you only partially own, as under copyright law they are considered derivative or compiled works. Consequently, you don’t actually have any 100% original product listed on the Marketplace - at least not at the time I checked your profile. I know this might not make me very popular with you, but I believe professional consultations about Marketplace matters should be left to actual creators.
KyleWForrester Resident
I've seen a lot of great ideas on here, but unfortunately this is one I can't support. There are people out there who have nothing better to do than go around and flag stuff. Sadly, I've been on the receiving end of this.
Polyhistor Serpente
KyleWForrester Resident Totally fair to be wary of false flagging, many of us are. That is actually why showing keywords would help, if people can see what was used then there’s less confusion and guessing. This would generate fewer mistaken reports for honest creators.
Right now, most people (other than those that knew the work around I saw in another comment) are flagging based on search results alone, with no clue if the tags might have even caused them.
KyleWForrester Resident
Polyhistor Serpente OH NO....he flagged My stuff intentionally.
Polyhistor Serpente
KyleWForrester Resident People who want to maliciously abuse the flagging system will likely do it with or without visible keywords. Honestly, they’ll even feel more confident doing it when keywords are hidden because they won't have something immediately in front of them proving that they are making a poor choice.
Making keywords visible would actually discourage bad faith flagging, prevent mistaken flagging, and truly honest creators are given a chance to defend their listings with transparency before it is even flagged.
Luscious Conundrum
KyleWForrester Resident I fail to see how making the tags visible would make this a problem; anyone seeing the tags will be able to see that the flag is bogus, unless the creator is indeed abusing the tags for discoverability, in which case, tough luck, buddy.
Stevoid Resident
It is possible to see what keywords people are using by viewing the source code of the page. But I agree, would be nice to make it a feature of the actual marketplace.
marxman1313 Resident
A proper tagging system would be great honestly.
Peter Stindberg
There's a cool browser extension for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sl-marketplace-enhancer/ and the open source repository with links for other browsers than Firefox: https://github.com/dvask/sl-marketplace-enhancer
Sasy Scarborough
Great idea, in the interim if ever curious, right click any marketplace listing, and choose inspect and then scroll down (not far) and you will find KEYWORDS and all the words they have put in as their keywords and then see exactly how 'rarely an accident' it is.
Imbolc Sirbu
Very good idea, and useful, that would be great
SL Feedback
tracked
SL Feedback
Hello, and thank you for your feature request regarding making Marketplace keywords visible on product listings. This is indeed a valuable suggestion that could greatly improve the shopping experience by reducing keyword spam and making searches more relevant. Another resident has previously brought up this idea, and we are merging your comments to expedite our review process. We have set this feature request to tracked, and while we cannot provide an estimate on when it might be implemented, please keep an eye on future updates. We appreciate your input and hope you continue to share your ideas to help improve Second Life. Thank you!
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