Inworld Traffic count problems

[Spica Inventor]

"But how does it do that? Are people only clicking on the ones with a higher number? because it's not listed in order of traffic count. I see someone with 0 traffic that are above ones with a few hundred for certain search terms. I'm using the default search in the firestorm viewer, i don't know if that makes a difference". In world searches for things, particularly products to buy are usually done with the "Traffic high to low" selection in 'places search' using the Firestorm viewer. Why places? Because product is heavily sold at places that have some logical relation to the product. For example if a peep is interested in buying a 'magic lamp' they are going to do a place search for 'magic lamp' and order it by traffic: high to low. People equate high traffic with high quality, high value, and high popularity regardless to the actual reality of the matter and if the search results list is long enough, things at the bottom of it often times don't get looked at or visited at all. On The Marketplace it's 'relevance' because the all important popularity factor is already built into it. A search example for magic lamps.... 21 Results for "magic lamp" in Places M -*+*- Glowing Heights -*+*- Traffic : 2269 Eagle,Hawk,Raven,Shark,Orca,Octopus,Manta, Fountain, MM-Board,Sonn Inc.,fp Template,Earthly Delights,fp Texture,*The Seer*,Nana Saenz,Ithilwen MoonMaiden-Furniture,medieval fantasy, Teleport Map M BUILDER'S BREWERY - CREATORS VILLAGE of Full Perm ... Traffic : 1861 Full perm, sculpts, scripts, textures, templates, full perm animations, mesh, full perm mesh, clothing templates, tutorials, home decor, business tools, sculpties, landscaping, furniture, sculpty, build terrain Teleport Map M A R C Traffic : 1201 al3od , Roky & Can Saudi Arabia-Arab-Middle East-KSA, Jeddah-Egypt-Morocco-Kuwait-Qatar-UAE-Club Bahrain-Competitions-Gambling - Design-Games-race USA-France-Shop-reel wild.flash.no devil. /*Sky:"[TOR] NIGHT - That spells moon 3"*/ Teleport Map A Eventide Marketplace - THE Place to find Xcite! Co... Traffic : 992 A marketplace hosting official Xcite! Partners and other related vendors, featuring the very best in sexual, BDSM and other adult play items, in a relaxing environment. Teleport Map G Free Bazaar - Stillman Traffic : 859 This is a freebie store for all Residents. Teleport Map M Amulet ~ Art Sculpt Maps Traffic : 846 sculpt maps furniture dome fence spire build low art nouveau Map Gor medieval Gothic RP Lamp Petite urn tree window builder bed sex steam punk mission sensual Victorian fairy nano ornament throne mermaid magic column plant bird chair headboard bench fire Teleport Map M AtiXx Design Traffic : 417 This place shows a fantastic big area of a great offer of sculpties in different variations at low prices. You can find there for example buildings, furniture and accessories. If you want to beautify your house or land there's no better way... Teleport Map G The Wishing Tree - Architecture, Furniture& homes ... Traffic : 350 The place to find exotic & romantic buildings, homes & furniture. Discover magical palaces, houses, pavilions, temples, gardens, gazebos, lamps, silks & furnishings. Persian, Arabian, Indian, Medieval , Fantasy & RP architecture. Teleport Map M AtiXx - SOL REBELDE Traffic : 318 Full perms Sculptie Sculpties sculpty water tree garden jacuzzi fountain transat jardin, all for the garden sauna piscine pool etang jaccuzi deckchair sunbathe nabrej chair aquarium midnight mania lounger tente plage beach cash service bar grot flower Teleport Map M Night Sky cloaks eyes shapes Traffic : 294 *Subscriber Kiosk*Cloaks*Costumes*Eyes Teleport Map M * A.C.E.* Angel Creations Equipment /S.L.I. Styl... Traffic : 250 ★ A.C.E. ™_ Angel Creations Equipment ★ *Structural multi-purpose complex & Various Acessories Copyright © 2012 Trademark in Second Life https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/39811 Teleport Map G Gaia Elegance - Fine Furniture By Greek Crafters Traffic : 193 Fine Furniture, Fine Quality Furniture, Furniture with Animations, Sofas, Chairs, Tables ,Lamps, Rugs ,Carpets ,Beds . Bedroom ,Armchairs ,Hammocks, Modern and Classic Furniture, Garden and Fountains, Original Art, Pictures , Pillows . Chests Endtables, Teleport Map M PETITE ELEMENTAL JEWELRY & METAPHYSICAL MERCANTILE Traffic : 158 PETITE MESH AVATAR JEWELRY--Beautiful, high quality Petite Jewelry, petite necklaces, petite earrings, petite bracelets, fairy jewelry. Also, beautiful rugs, Lamps, Magic Lantern, Alchemist Lamp, Herbalist Workbench, Windchimes, Meditation Floor Pillows, Teleport Map M _ASYLUM_ L'ULTIMA CITTA' Traffic : 109 NUOVA LAND ITALIANA IN COSTRUZIONE, AFFITTIAMO NEGOZI ANCHE A % URBAN, ITALIA, ITALY, SKATEPARK, GAMEROOM, CLUB, LOUNGE, RENT, CONTATTARE AGNES PEXINGTON PER NEGOZI O ALTRO Teleport Map M e-brink 's Sunset Beach Arts Traffic : 55 A wonderful venue by the sea. One of the most natural sims in SL. Lighthouse, art, pottery, plants, textures, bric-a-brac, Victorian lamps, pier, rugs, carpets, ghosts, magical, Halloween, Nautical, Buoys, dock, Native American, designer clothes and more. Teleport Map M W.Winx Home & Garden @ The Deck Traffic : 16 Homes, Prefabs, Storyboard, Fantasy, Fae, Faere, Fairy, WItch, Halloween, Magic, Spell, Garden, Display, Bed, Sofa, Seating, Outdoors, Lamps, Lanterns, Candles, Topiary, Xmas, Christmas, Holiday, Festive, Celebration, Kitty Cat Play Areas, Pet, Pumpkin Teleport Map M Fox Box Traffic : 10 The Fox Box micro show house. Featuring comedy, dance, magic, illusions, mystery, wonder, vaudeville, particles, silent acts and more. Teleport Map M Midalon Plaza Traffic : 7 adboards, men, women, outfits, shoes, hair, shops for rent, clothes, houses, plants, trees, prefab, ballroom, plaza, shops, furniture and lamps Teleport Map M [-Abstract Soul-] Traffic : 3 [-Abstract Soul-] by Methias Kira Abstract Soul Abstract Art Glow Light Club Dance Dancefloor Floor Wall Garden Animated Animation Beam Scifi Science Science Fiction Cyber Cyberpunk Party Magic Arcane [-AS-] AS Teleport Map M Rustic Furniture @ The South 40 Traffic : 0 Rustic and country furniture at affordable prices! sleigh bed sofas couches armchairs chairs lamps shabby chic sex beds antique furniture dining sets sconces rustic beds country beds antique beds antique stoves fireplaces bunkbeds wingback chairs gazebo Teleport Map G free lashes hair skin Traffic : 0 free lashes hair face light free smile lashes wimpern augen kostenlos free light hair light smile facelight face lampe free body light man lashes women lashes girl lashes boy lashes fingenails free bodylight bodylight Teleport Map End of Results

[Spica Inventor]

Why are my posts being smooshed all together like that? hehe

[Innula Zenovka]

Are you typing them in the HTML tab rather than the Rich Text one?

[Spica Inventor]

"I dunno, and I suspect it depends on your product line and marketting strategy. Certainly my business partner and I (she's the animator, I'm the scripter, and we sell all our builds under her name) have never paid attention to search ratings, since they've always been flawed. We rely primarily on other marketting techniques. And I get all my freelance scripting work, and always have done, from referrals and repeat business. But we sell high-ticket items to a particular client base, and don't really depend on "passing trade". So it's not really affected us much. The people I know it has hit, though, are commercial landlords and venues generally, since people looking to rent store space are worried about traffic (I am, in this context, since I regard a lot of our stores more as advertising than as retail outlets), and people who run venues, since visitor counts are important when you're looking for a place to go to hang out, or so I find". Do you sell products or advertize in sims with low traffic ratings? Do you not consider traffic ratings in sims an important revenue and/or sales source for your business investments? If you use sims for marketing and sales, then the merchants and landlords will be tied at the hip when it comes to a successful business at any particular sim. So the question becomes not if you are losing sales, but how many sales are you losing for not considering traffic counts as important. ;-)

[Spica Inventor]

I might be. How do you change that? hehe

[Spica Inventor]

the rich text tab was checked so it cant be that testing testing

[Innula Zenovka]

;

ETA -- Maybe you're not using the Quote button?

[Deja Letov]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Well, techinically now, I don't get hardly any customers from search, as I don't show up in it at all anymore. Before LL made it's first major change of search, many years ago now, I was ranked in the top 10 for the word animation. Back then, 75% of all my profits came from inworld. I did an extensive survey at that time, and found that 70% of people found me thru the search engine, and more than 50% specifically for the word animation. This was a survey of about 2000 people, if I remember correctly. This is why I say LL killed SL when they changed search and why it will never be the same until they produce a valid working search engine. Plus, when you look at the concurrency and economic charts, they both start their decline exactly on the day search was changed.

When I say large enough to feel the effect, I would only consider some1 that makes at least a decent portion of their RL income in SL, to be in that category. If some1 is not making at least $50 a day in SL, I don't see how they can have enough statistical data to really see anything. Of course, this is just my opinion. The more some1 makes, they more relevant their data is going to be. I won't say exactly what I was making before the change in search, but I will say that it was more than enough to live on, and day to day sales only varied about 5%. That's remarkably stable for any sales based business and it was all because of a decent search engine. If my sales ever dipped at all, it was directly related to some change LL made. The data made this plainly obvious.

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I would actually go more on a quantity of sales rather than a dollar amount...simply because someone who sells 2 or 3 10,000L items versus someone who sells 150 250L items isn't going to feel the impact quite as much if traffic drops. I would trust the data of someone with a large number of transactions versus just a small handful.

I remember those good old days when search actually meant something and helped us all. I actually really liked when results were sorted by traffic count, because it let me know what sims were dead and which ones were active and alive. It seems like everything LL touches (marketplace, search, etc) it's almost like they TRY to ruin it.

 

[Deja Letov]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

"But how does it do that? Are people only clicking on the ones with a higher number? because it's not listed in order of traffic count. I see someone with 0 traffic that are above ones with a few hundred for certain search terms. I'm using the default search in the firestorm viewer, i don't know if that makes a difference". In world searches for things, particularly products to buy are usually done with the "Traffic high to low" selection in 'places search' using the Firestorm viewer. Why places? Because product is heavily sold at places that have some logical relation to the product. For example if a peep is interested in buying a 'magic lamp' they are going to do a place search for 'magic lamp' and order it by traffic: high to low. People equate high traffic with high quality, high value, and high popularity regardless to the actual reality of the matter and if the search results list is long enough, things at the bottom of it often times don't get looked at or visited at all. On The Marketplace it's 'relevance' because the all important popularity factor is already built into it.

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I didn't read your entire post because like you said it's all being smushed together for some reason and I'm blind lol hard to read. But I did read this first part and the only thing I would say is...searching the way you do makes sense for traffic to be important, but while you may search like that, not everyone does, so I don't think anyone can make that assumption that products are usually searched for in that manner. In fact, until I saw you post this message, I never even thought about clicking the places tab. Yes, I know it's there, I just don't bother with it. I've always just typed straight into search and left it at the default everything and clicked search. I guess I'm afraid of missing something  lol who knows. And of course there is no sort option on the everything tab, so I'm using their default sort, which I'm assuming is some sort of relevance.And saying that people equate high traffic with quality, again that may be the case for you but it's not for everyone. I haven't looked at traffic counts in probably a year or so, until this thread came up and now I'm watching it just to see what my own does and how sales are affected.

If everyone was searching the way you do then I can see how traffic would be very important, but I'm not convinced that everyone is, especially "noobs" just coming in who can't figure out how to make it all work anyway. i'm sure a lot are, so I don't mean to say what you are saying doesn't make sense for some, but I guess I just don't see it being the norm.

*What's funny though...when i am searching for land to buy, I always do click the land tab. I'm not really sure why I've never used the other tabs for anything. I don't even do it for people.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

 Do you sell products or advertize in sims with low traffic ratings? Do you not consider traffic ratings in sims an important revenue and/or sales source for your business investments? If you use sims for marketing and sales, then the merchants and landlords will be tied at the hip when it comes to a successful business at any particular sim. So the question becomes not if you are losing sales, but how many sales are you losing for not considering traffic counts as important. ;-)

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As I said, traffic is a consideration when we're taking stalls or ad-space (I regard all our stalls and and smaller shops primarily as advertising rather than retail outlets) but it's by no means the only one.   I don't know -- obviously -- how many sales can be attributed to adverts or stalls in particular places, but I do know how many LMs and notecards the various items give out, and we seem to best at reasonably busy bdsm and vampire themed places (our two main product areas).  

Rather to my surprise, the really high-traffic areas with appropriate themes have almost universally turned out to be waste of time (or at least hardly any of the visitors have bothered to take LMs from the boards).   I won't name names, but I guess if you visit one of  the really-well known BDSM hangouts, you're probably not that interested at the time in looking at adverts.   A quieter, though reasonably busy, mall attached to an appropriate sim or club seems a much better prospect.

[Deja Letov]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

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Spica Inventor wrote:

 Do you sell products or advertize in sims with low traffic ratings? Do you not consider traffic ratings in sims an important revenue and/or sales source for your business investments? If you use sims for marketing and sales, then the merchants and landlords will be tied at the hip when it comes to a successful business at any particular sim. So the question becomes not if you are losing sales, but how many sales are you losing for not considering traffic counts as important. ;-)

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As I said, traffic is a consideration when we're taking stalls or ad-space (I regard all our stalls and and smaller shops primarily as advertising rather than retail outlets) but it's by no means the only one.   I don't know -- obviously -- how many sales can be attributed to adverts or stalls in particular places, but I do know how many LMs and notecards the various items give out, and we seem to best at reasonably busy bdsm and vampire themed places (our two main product areas).  

Rather to my surprise, the really high-traffic areas with appropriate themes have almost universally turned out to be waste of time (or at least hardly any of the visitors have bothered to take LMs from the boards).   I won't name names, but I guess if you visit one of  the really-well known BDSM hangouts, you're probably not that interested at the time in looking at adverts.   A quieter, though reasonably busy, mall attached to an appropriate sim or club seems a much better prospect.

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Innula I have found the same thing. Right now I'm only renting out one space, but back when I was renting several market spaces in certain areas, I had more luck with the smaller population RP type sims than the really busy ones. Typically I think the higher traffic ones are filled with people there to "do their thing", not to shop. But the smaller ones, like RP sims for example, they are regulars, they come often, they socialize, they shop, and they want to support their sim. They tend to give me much better sales than the high pop ones.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Sales slower than usual?

Does it sort of remind you of all the "box failures" we were having at this time last year (which, when properly analyzed, turned out to be SLM failures and in-world function tampering)?

Maybe LL can't produce an exact replay of last year. But it seems like they might actually have to kick things up a notch this time, since they still haven't yet succeed in driving all of you merchants back in-world to pay more for land.

What they will have to out-do:

16 September 2011 was the specific day on which more US Citizens had a 65th birthday than ever before (yes, EVER).

So it was really an unprecedented opportunity for LL to appeal to recent retirees to drop some cash in Second Life and produce a massive wave of commissionable supply chain movement on the SLM and elsewhere.

Instead, Brooke decided (directly contrary to what she had specifically said before) to deploy some alleged DD code on 13 September.

The effects included:

1) an almost complete paralysis of the SLM, perfectly timed to render effectively useless all 1-week listing enhancements correspondingto the day with the busiest 7 days of the year for birthday items in any normal year.

2) continued borkage into the beginning of the 4th quarter, throwing a wet blanket onto both normal sales and promotional efforts for Halloween, Thanksgiving (US and Canada), Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Years festivities. 

3) A total 4th quarter apparently even more dismal than other pretty dismal ones for which LL didn't feel the need to withhold an official report.

...

So I'm starting to wonder what CTL has planned in order to avert some kind of possible recovery in the coming 4th quarter.

What I've got so far is basically just the abrupt box shutoff, still without full DD utility or support, on 1 October (interesting date, huh).

Why would they do it on 1 October? 

Just because that's the most destructive possible date.

Then why would they announce it earlier and keep pushing it back?

So that you'll get comfortable with the idea that it really isn't going to happen yet, if ever, and be caught unprepared.

And what will they tell you to do about items unsupported by DD?

They will suddenly tell you to try to sell them in-world, instead.

But why wouldn't they have said this before?

So that they can instead waste even more your time by focusing on getting you to convert everything you can to DD. 

...

OK... anybody else have something at this point?

 

[Spica Inventor]

"testing testing" testing testing

[Spica Inventor]

Nope. got smooshed again :-( This smoosh problem has been happening for the last few days or so ive noticed for me. Which makes me think that L.L. is just trying to irritate me hoping that I will just leave. I wonder if they are friends with the Yahoo peeps since I have recently been blacklisted there as well as they use similar tactics. ;-)

[Innula Zenovka]

How about doing the basic formatting manually in the HMTL tab? It's really simple -- just start a paragraph with <p> and end it with </p>

[Spica Inventor]

"Rather to my surprise, the really high-traffic areas with appropriate themes have almost universally turned out to be waste of time (or at least hardly any of the visitors have bothered to take LMs from the boards). I won't name names, but I guess if you visit one of the really-well known BDSM hangouts, you're probably not that interested at the time in looking at adverts. A quieter, though reasonably busy, mall attached to an appropriate sim or club seems a much better prospect." Naturally you are going to get more competition at the higher traffic places and especially with the 'higher end' stuff, (including LM vending) and the rent will cost more too. And if the shops are placed off the beaten track (the fun parts) that can be a problem too. LM stalls are probably a waste of money anyhow as I hardly ever see them where I go anyway implying that they don't work for the mass majority of merchants out there. ;-)

[Spica Inventor]

testing

testing

testing

[Spica Inventor]

Well thanx

that worked

[Spica Inventor]

testing in html testing in html

[Spica Inventor]

testing testing

[Innula Zenovka]

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Spica Inventor wrote:

 Naturally you are going to get more competition at the higher traffic places and especially with the 'higher end' stuff, (including LM vending) and the rent will cost more too. And if the shops are placed off the beaten track (the fun parts) that can be a problem too. LM stalls are probably a waste of money anyhow as I hardly ever see them where I go anyway implying that they don't work for the mass majority of merchants out there. ;-)

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No, you misunderstand, I think.   When we set up stalls or shops, we set them up properly, wherever they are

However, I don't normally expect many sales from most of them -- they're there more to get keep our brand and products in front of people, and it's a pleasant surprise when someone buys something there.    We expect to make almost all our actual sales from three shops and the marketplace (partly because almost all our stuff is both the sort of thing you'd want to check out properly -- BDSM furniture or vampire anims -- and partly because a lot of it too expensive to be an impulse buy for most people).

However, while I wouldn't expect to get many sales from a vendor or small shop in most places, I would expect to have some indication that people weren't just walking past it.    And my impression is that, at the really high-traffic clubs and venues, that's exactly what they tend to do.     

I shouldn't be surprised, I guess; I mean, I hardly ever buy anything from vendors or shops at clubs, but what I do often do is think, "that looks interesting" and grab a LM to go and take a look in the main shop later.   My impression is that people are far more likely to do that at rather quieter places than at the really busy ones.   

We do pay some attention to the figures in search, but when considering new places, my partner and I now tend to go and check the place out two or three times over a week or so, to get some idea of the feel of the place and if we think it's worth bothering with.  We both find that more reliable than the simple traffic count.

[Deja Letov]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

 

We do pay some attention to the figures in search, but when considering new places, my partner and I now tend to go and check the place out two or three times over a week or so, to get some idea of the feel of the place and if we think it's worth bothering with.  We both find that more reliable than the simple traffic count.

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Same here. I will go and just stalk a place for a week at different times of day to see how many dots I see on the map at any given point. If it is a club, I also keep an eye on if the DJ's try to promote the merchants there by reminding people about them, etc. There are a ton of things I would consider in a possible location over a simple traffic number (especially since so many still use bots).

 

[nikita Jefferson]

I just don't understand  traffic at all,it makes no sense, i have a large shop on a homestead, actually my shop is more like a mall made up of individual shops which contain my creations and also affliate shops which are all mine and not rented out.

My traffic count should be around 6000 if individual teleports were counted but as i understand it they calculate the amount of time an avy spends there to calculate traffic numbers.

As i said my actual count of raw visits should be around 6000 or more, the highest i have seen it is almost 1000 a couple of weeks ago , now it is down to 410, it was down to 300 odd the other day.

As for search, there was a time i could never find myself in search, i put in a ticket and all they said to do was leave space after the comma in the keywords.

LL was no help at all and i truly believe they do not care about free search because there is no money in it,some pay upwards of $800 US a week for classifieds and then from the highest it trickles down but they make a huge amount of money from classifieds,so why should they care about free search.

I took out a classified for a while and bingo ,i appeared in search, 1st place in one keyword, about 3rd for another, but lesser in others but i am fairly close to top,.and it has remained constant even though i have no classified anymore,although i do take one out for a week every once in a while.

Classifieds do work but i usually just make back what i spent on the classified ,so in the end it's not worth it

 

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Deja Letov wrote:

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But I did read this first part and the only thing I would say is...searching the way you do makes sense for traffic to be important, but while you may search like that, not everyone does, so I don't think anyone can make that assumption that products are usually searched for in that manner. <snip>

If everyone was searching the way you do then I can see how traffic would be very important, but I'm not convinced that everyone is, especially "noobs" just coming in who can't figure out how to make it all work anyway. i'm sure a lot are, so I don't mean to say what you are saying doesn't make sense for some, but I guess I just don't see it being the norm.

 

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Very true.  When this topic came up (a lot) years ago, several posters said they purposely search low to high because they like finding "Mom & Pop" type stores, stores off the beaten path, and purchasing from smaller merchants to encourage them.

As for me, I never use search in world to purchase anything.  I either go to stores where I know and like the merchandise, find something on the MP and then go in world to check it out, or check out something of interest I may receive in group notices.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

Still wondering if the search that is being discussed is the 30L/week "Show in Search" from the land tab, free search - meaning we do nothing and still show up somehow, or some other type?

Thank you anyone who can clarify this for me, please.