Problems with in-world search on gsa3

Searching with the new google server gave me a response of: Problems accessing search on gsa3 (status 500). Please try your query later. In SL, later is the equivilent of 2 seconds as time flies very fast. Of course, the message didn’t go away. I wonder what the problem is. Today is a Saturday and a lot of people have off today. It is also pretty late. Nothing has been reported on the blog either.


I was pretty optimistic about the new search when it was still in beta. I was thinking that a lot more people would be able to find my products. I added descriptions to everything trying to get keywords in here and there. It turns out that it wasn’t all that much helpful.


I’m getting about 50 unique visitors a day on average. The weekends usually bring in a few more people. I keep wondering why it is so tough to get new eye balls to come and check out what I have. The people that do come appear to stay for a while to look around, so there does appear to be an interest once they get here.


Looking at the popular places in SL, most of them seem to advertise free Linden Dollars. I suppose a lot of people are hurting bad for money these days. Perhaps the sub-prime real estate bubble is affecting everyone in SL as well.


I tried the camping chair thing, and it appeared that the same person would come and camp out all the time. I feel like I paid 1000 L$ just to have one new pair of eye balls look at my shop.


I need advice on how to get more people to come around. I just don’t know where to find that advice. Should I hire someone to host events? Should I continue to rent out smaller stores accross the grid? What about advertising in different places? Perhaps the way I’m advertising could be improved.


I’m in it for the long haul, but I just can’t seem to find anything to improve my sales, let alone my traffic. Each month my sales get lower and I end up paying more to Linden Lab to cover the costs of operation of the simulator that I purchased. I need to at least break even.