At MorphMarket it's our job to make it as easy as possible for reptile, amphibian and invertebrate breeders and keepers to connect. And with 4,000 breeders and 50,000 animals from across the world in our marketplace, there's a lot to search through!

We recently rolled out a big upgrade to our search capability. Previously the search box gave no feedback as you typed into it. The new version has several benefits:

• It automatically completes your search so that you don't have to type as much and are less likely to typo. It also helps you discover what's on the site.
• It suggests several kinds of searches over the Ads. You can search for ads by Title, Category or Trait.
• You can search for Stores and not just Ads. You can search all the stores in a Category or even jump straight to a store page by Store Name or Owner Name. This option only displays if there are 3 or less matches. Stores included in this search are the same ones included in the Seller Directory, which requires active ads and/or membership.

It's worth noting that context matters. If you're already in a subcategory, suggested options will be limited to those applicable to that section. This helps to narrow down the overwhelming number of matches across all areas of the site.

The advanced search filters are still available, of course, which you can utilize instead of or subsequent to one of the searches above.

Two years ago, we introduced the MorphMarket ratings system. Since then we have gathered approximately 50,000 ratings on buyers and sellers making it one of the most valuable tools in the world of herp commerce.

We will be discontinuing the option for sellers to opt-out of the ratings system. This choice was provided when we launched first launched the system, but we will no longer support it moving forward because we believe it's unhelpful to the kind of transparency we want to promote in the marketplace.

In reality, using this feature has always been a bad look for the seller. It's better to have a few negative ratings with professional responses than to hide them all-together.

In two weeks, we will be removing this setting from all accounts. If you wish to permanently deactivate your account you may do so by contacting support.