For some time there has been a link on the Marketplace’s home page that allows you to switch over to the new search feature. That link is gone.

New Marketplace Search

The Lindens explain why here: New Second Life Marketplace Search is Live. As of 8/15 the new search is ‘SEARCH’. The old searching infrastructure is retired.

I’ve been using the new search. I think it produces more accurate results. The Lindens say it has a learning ability and will get more accurate with time… OK, we’ll see.

The old and new search allow(ed) the use of Boolean operators; AND, OR, and NOT. The description of these operators in the knowledge base says,

• AND –Narrows your search by requiring both words to be included in each search result.  For example, a  search of “red AND green” returns only results containing both the words “red” and “green”.
• OR –Broadens your search by only requiring one of the words to appear in each result.  For example, a search of “boats OR planes” returns results containing: only the word “boats”, only the word “planes”, or both the words “boats” and “planes”
• NOT –Narrows your search by excluding results that contain the words after the NOT operator.  For example, “summer NOT winter” returns results that contain the word “summer” but does not show any results containing the word “winter”.

Boolean search operators must always be written in CAPITAL LETTERS in order to be recognized by the Second Life Marketplace search.

I think this change is a good thing. I also expect we will hear some screams.