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Nov 2015

Why are hubs that are hundreds of miles away showing higher in the search rankings? My hub has good reviews, plenty of completed orders, and I’m one of the few hubs in my metropolitan area. It seems kind of ridiculous that a hub with 2 reviews and a distance of over 100 miles away would rank higher than mine for people searching my exact city. On top of that, I have the lowest prices and a plethora of materials available. I’d like to see a very clear explanation of the search ranking scoring system because this just doesn’t seem right…

Hi Justin,

Thanks for the message, I realize this is a bit of a problem.

However, after checking, I can’t see what’s wrong with the ranking ?

For me you are first to show up when looking for Charlotte (See screenshot).

Maybe you have some filters on ?

Let me know if you still have the issue !

Cheers

Hey Justin,

It would be useful to share a screenshot of what your exact search looks like. We are testing different rankings at the moment, but I’ve just checked both versions and you rank #1 and #2 in both.

Best,

Brian

Hi Guys,

I appreciate the follow-up. I noticed this issue right when I turned on my hub right after the Thanksgiving weekend. I was searching on an Apple iPhone 5S, and as you probably know, you can only see one listing at a time on a device with a smaller screen resolution. I was at the bottom of the first page at the time right after turning on my hub. I just checked again on my phone and I’m #2 which looks correct. Could there be some lag after turning on my hub?

Also, do you have some sort of search ranking blog post or something I can reference just to make sure I’m doing everything possible to rank highly?

Thanks,

Justin

Hey Justin, glad to see everything was resolved. Indeed there could be a little lag between you being active on the platform an our ranking adjusting for that (we tend to favor active Hubs over idle Hubs for obvious reasons), we don’t have any documentation publicly, but we’re working on making pointers available on a Hub level, so it can be more tailored to the Hub.

Brian

I have been having similar issue to this as well… Please see my current post on this… Also sent in a email to Customer Service too

Hi Guys,

I’m having more issues with the search rankings. Today, a customer was having an issue with the 3D hubs order widget on my website, so I told her to go to the normal 3D hubs website to place the order. I’ve attached a screenshot of “before” she uploaded a file where I was 1st in the search rankings. After she uploaded the file, my hub disappeared from the search rankings. I’ve posted the “after” photo as well for proof. What is going on here? Where did my hub go? I’ve missed a large order now because of this.

Thanks,

Justin

Hey @shookideas really sorry to hear you lost this customer, that’s never a good thing.

I’ve quickly checked the printers you have online and it looks like we’re hiding your Hub because the uploaded model exceeds the build volume of the Ultimaker 2. We do this automatically to prevent disappointment for customers. You can overrule this by disabling the hiding, it’s an advanced filter. You can prevent this by sharing this url: Online 3D Printing Service | Instant 3D Printing Quotes | Hubs of course sending her to your profile would have also worked.

Hope you can still turn this order around, let me know if we can help in any way!

Brian

Hi Brian,

You guys might want to check your calculation/orientation algorithms. Please see the attached photos of the UM2 with the file that was in question. The first screenshot shows the uploaded file in Cura and it doesn’t fit in the default orientation. The second screenshot shows that if I rotate it, it fits fine. Also, I had my Taz 5 online when this issue was going on as well and it’s build volume is larger than the UM2.

I’ll go to the advanced filters and change some settings.

Thanks,

Justin

I personally think this is a -very- broken function in the search filtering. I don’t see a filter set for Ultimaker only.

He also lists a Lulz Taz 5 on his hub which would be more than enough build volume for this print request.

So with that said he should not have been filtered out at all, and how does the search assume said customer wasn’t going to choose Lulz Taz 5 as the printer do to cost or other reasons even if it did fit the Ultimaker anyhow?

That’s a really big X by the way… Please tell me that was going to be printed in a special filament… lol

Hi Justin,

I’ll have our developers check why it didn’t show up since it clearly fits the Taz build volume. As for the Ultimaker we take 5% margin as most Hubs are uncomfortable printing at the outer edges of their build platform. We could decrease this percentage a bit, as it might sometimes be have the wrong outcome, like in this example.

Best,

Brian

Hi Justin,

We tried to reproduce the issue you were experiencing but on our end it’s working correct, after uploading the file your Hub shows up in the first spot.

Are you still experiencing this issue?

Brian