Changes in Search

[Darrius Gothly]

Absent an official announcement from Sea Linden and her band of renegade Googlers .. I felt I should let you all know that In-World Search was seriously shaken up again overnight.

If you're gone from Search this morning .. well it looks like their efforts are paying off! LOL

Nail by nail they WILL make it unusable. *facepalm*

[Phoebe Avro]

LL never make announcements now on any search changes

Search phrases still don't have relevance, but I recall the search team well over year ago sing the praises about improved relevance to search phrases!

The only way you can get a search phrase to work is to use quotes!

 

Phoebe Avro

[Phil Deakins]

At first glance, the results don't look like they will be when this shake-up is completed. When Mickey has several results on the first page, then we are usually in an interim period

[Phil Deakins]

You have to remember that an engine's view (and measure) of results relevancy is different to a page owner's view of it.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Absent an official announcement from Sea Linden and her band of renegade Googlers

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Rofl, yeah right! When is the last time they even mentioned search? Personally, I don't understand why we even have inworld search anymore, it is fubar'd. Just leave me the ability to search for residents, so I can deliver my products when LL can't.

Really, it is not like it matters to me, as I've not been in my main keyword for well over a year now. Funny enough, I still sell alot. So, bite me, LL!

[Toysoldier Thor]

Inworld search has been screwed up for so long ... that provides my inworld store literally near zero additional traffic even if my store shows up on the top of search pages.

No kidding... last June Rachel helped me fix up my inworld search (made several changes to my parcel, store, classifieds, etc.) so that I went from "you couldnt find my store/products if you tried"  to being on the first page of relevent searches.

I expected this this will surely help my traffic a little.  After 4 weeks of monitoring.... NOT ONE BIT OF A NOTICABLE CHANGE IN TRAFFIC OR SALES INWORLD.  My daily store visitor count was exactlty the same.

Most SL Residents looking for product and content has longgggggggg sincceeeee learned that inworld search is like talking to a rock.  Most go to the SLM search to find product.  Some come back inworld to buy.

So - at least for me... fixing the search algorithms will not solve the problem with inworld search.  The inworld search model is just not designed to find SELLABLE BUYABLE CONTENT inworld.  Its so polluted with 1millions of other inworld rezzed items that are marked as for sale that is being used as a way of keyword gaming the inworld search.

So... it dont matter to me what they do to inworld search.

I wished they keep focusing on effective true unbiased SLM Search by Relevance.

[Porky Gorky]

Yay I am back in the #1 spot for my best keywords.

I hereby declare that Search is fixed! 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Porky Gorky wrote:

Yay I am back in the #1 spot for my best keywords.

I hereby declare that

Search is fixed! 

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If we are talking inworld search, I will say that based on my tests last night of the inworld search to find my store and the products I sell in my store, they seemed to have done something right. 

In the many different ways I tried searching for things related to me - my store showed up in the first page of results almost every time.  Of course I am limited in that my store is in a mall on mature land so that hampers how I can search, but I was expecting that.

What I do see that seems to have changed - and I might be wrong - some of my competing landscape & sculpty store merchants that were using tricks to get their stores to show up multiple times on the top of search results - is not happening now.  Again, I didnt look too closely yet but it seems that the results are filtered to only show one instance of a store.  If this is true and LL has fixed this - then I give them Kudos for fixing this.

Unfortunately, as I said in a previous posting, SL residents have been so strongly conditioned to know that inworld search was useless for product searching, most do not use it to find products.  So I dont expect ANY traffic or sales increases (just like I never saw any last year when I fixed my configurations to get me visible in the search in the first place).

But its good to see that they seemed to have got it right this time.

[Gunner Grun]

I went from 5th to 9th on page one. The biz that was at number one for months now is at number two and still has 315 keyword spamming prims. Search is so messed up.:smileysad:

[Porky Gorky]

 

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Gunner Grun wrote:

I went from 5th to 9th on page one. The biz that was at number one for months now is at number two and still has 315 keyword spamming prims. Search is so messed up.:smileysad:

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Not all keyword spamming prims are bad or unfair, they can help search be more relevant if they are not abused. For example I have over 1000 items for sale. They are all in sale vendors and demo vendors, therefore I am unable to use keywords effectively as the products themselves are not permanently rezzed on the land. So I have about 800 extra prims rezzed, all with keywords to reflect the products in the vendors. Without utilising keyword prims my store would be buried in search and search would not offer a proper reflection of the qty and type of items I sell.

Sure, people game the be-jesus out of search by using keyword prims inappropriately, but the mere presence of keyword spam prims doesn't automatically mean that the owner is gaming the system to deceive people or to gain an unfair advantage, they may just be gaming the system to make a very ineffective search engine, more effective.

[Gunner Grun]

I don't want to Hijack this thread but why is it when I put out 315 keyword spam prims using the same words as the number one guy and I mean the same took me 8 hours.  I went for the bottom of page 1 to the top of page 6.

[Josh Susanto]

I'm not clear.

You mean this thing?

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/keyword-spam-texture-prim/1857316

I don't find yours in search, but if you want to put one up for sale just to test how the search system works, I'll gladly gift you with it.

 

[Gunner Grun]

LOL:smileyvery-happy:

[Porky Gorky]

 

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Gunner Grun wrote:

I don't want to Hijack this thread but why is it when I put out 315 keyword spam prims using the same words as the number one guy and I mean the same took me 8 hours.  I went for the bottom of page 1 to the top of page 6.

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There are other factors taken into account as well as keywords, most notably land size and keyword diversity on the plot.

For your experiment to work you would need to replicate all the factors existing on the number one guys land and apply them to your own. That involves fully understanding how search works and there are not many around that do.

cough "Darrius" cough

 

[Darrius Gothly]

 

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Gunner Grun wrote:

I don't want to Hijack this thread but why is it when I put out 315 keyword spam prims using the same words as the number one guy and I mean the same took me 8 hours.  I went for the bottom of page 1 to the top of page 6.

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That's a very valid question Gunner .. and not hijacking in the least. Porky pointed the general way, but I'll focus the spotlight a bit more.

Search uses a number of factors to determine how your parcel ranks. Among these is the size of your parcel. There is some debate among us SEO folks as to whether the parcel size is actually figured into the raw calculation itself, but one thing that is not up for debate is the effect it has on other factors.

For example, when you have a fairly small parcel, you may only use a specific word 2 or 3 times in the name and description without receiving a "spam penalty". Medium sized parcels allow you to repeat a word 4-5 times without getting penalized. Full Sims can even get away with 6-7 instances. So on first blush, it's very possible that by copying exactly a competitor's keyword prims, you have accidentally triggered the spam penalty (called "Boost") on your parcel.

There are freebie tools available on the Marketplace (points at my signature line) that can tell you what your current Boost rating is. There are also a few blog posts around (including some I've wrtten myself) that explain in a bit more detail how search works and how it can be made to work for you. There are also a number of other tools available that can give you better "eyes" on Search.

Some folks believe Search is of great benefit, some find it of no real use whatsoever. But for those that have witnessed their income exactly track their rank in Search .. there is no question at all. It really depends on how you feel about it. If you find yourself immune to the vagaries of Search .. more power to you. But if you are in a business that lives and dies by Search, it would be good to spend some time reading, learning and understanding how it can be used .. just as you would use any other marketing or advertising tool.