search engine Second Life Search Engine Complaints

[taintedxjennifer]

I'd just like to take a second to complain about Second Life's search engine. In a word it, sucks. It is the main conduit for entering locations and connecting with people outside of your personal networks. And in every aspect, it has design flaws.

People flood their sim descriptions with tags to get picked up by it and so can't give a proper synopsis about what they are about. The search engine gives equal priority to any words in that description. Modern search engines have evolved far beyond this kind of searching and are intuitive. There is no personalization or thought in the advertisements as a result, just people scrambling to get caught by the engine. Each sim puts down the same 20 tags, and the engine croaks as a result because it sees the same thing over and over. It does spit out information, but its illogical, messy, and misses a lot which leaves the user to scroll through it endlessly to hopefully find that needle in the haystack it has provided.

Its nice that we got a new environmental system to play with, but people make the place. An influx of people coming and going is needed to keep any place alive and without a way for them to get there... It all dies. It doesn't matter what toys you put out if the people aren't there to appreciate them. Second life has got to make more bridges between communities to keep itself alive, and the search engine is the biggest bridge of all. Creating more land does make more money, but people with money to buy it are typically smart with how they use it. No people, means no place, means no reason to keep investing in that land. Money is made off of keeping people in secondlife since the money they spend initially is likely offset by the advertisement costs that it took to get them there.

People still play board games, they still use text based games, and mmo's have been riddled with microtransactions and self destructive power dynamics aimed to lure in whales that will destroy them. Second life still has its place in the world as a massive online community, there is still nothing that competes with it.

😎 So basically, fix the dumb search engine please. 😎

❤️ What? It's my annoyed kitty face! ❤️

 

[Orwar]

42 minutes ago, taintedxjennifer said:

❤️ What? It's my annoyed kitty face! ❤️

   Before I even read that, may I just complain about your center alignment? Huffs.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

it's using a google appliance that's been custom done just for SL (or this was the case years ago) @Patch Linden  ya'll still using that google appliance?

[Syo Emerald]

Is this a poem or why is everything in the center?

[Qie Niangao]

Might want to augment that with concrete examples of specific search queries and the results that you don't find germane. To tune a search engine that typically would be a few million examples, but perhaps just "some" to start.

I don't think the search engine is doing what you think it's doing.

[Garnet Psaltery]

Are you bothered because some place you like or run or own isn't getting enough traffic?  Just a yes or no will do; I didn't make it through the whole text edifice.

[Silent Mistwalker]

Sorry I can't read the OP. Makes my eyes hurt to try to read centered text like that even with my glasses on.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Might want to augment that with concrete examples of specific search queries and the results that you don't find germane. To tune a search engine that typically would be a few million examples, but perhaps just "some" to start.

I don't think the search engine is doing what you think it's doing.

We also don't now which search engine the OP is using at all - the web search or "legacy" search.

[Pixie Kobichenko]

TL;DR

& the centering....

it made me think of a haiku on roids 

Edited August 23, 2020 by Pixie Kobichenko

[Cinos Field]

My favorite SL search example is when I search for, say, "furry hangout*" and going through the results, quite a few are just generic human places that have "no furry avatars" in the description.

It's very useful.

*I forget exactly what I was searching for, might've been "furry club" or such

[ItHadToComeToThis]

[Prokofy Neva]

Yes

[Jackson Redstar]

Is there a new Search out? I see a new search home page with a useless header that takes up the top 1/3 of prime real estate (if I hit search I know I'm in searcg so why do I need the top 1/3 to have a functionless grahpic to tell me I'm in search?) and a oddly made but semi function search area function box, and then everything still ports to the website earch. And if you do hit the Dest Guide link - you may or may not be 'logged in'  So I go into search I want to see Live Music going on now. Of, I can't. So I need to type in live music and only have events checked then it takes me to a page with events on the left side bar that I can then select Live Music  from the drop down ....  Me thinks Usability Studies are a good thing ...  So I am assuming this is a works in progress?

[Chris Corvinus]

People who haven't been able to read it because its centered...why do you have to show your age by being so cranky you have to complain about the text being centered and can't read it? 

Because I read it fine.

Make sure you are wearing your bifocals.

And yes, the search engine sucks.

 

Oh....this was also last year. 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Chris Nova

[Aishagain]

@Jackson RedstarA "work in progress"...hmm  that applies to so much of SL.  EEP is finished according to some and a "WIP" according to others.  Search?  I have to hope so but I very much doubt it.  I tried using it yesterday and it is one of the worst changes I have encountered in many years, excepting EEP.

I dislike this "new" search as much as I dislike the LL viewer UI.  However, I suspect we are stuck with it.  Apparently some TPV functions that used the old search are now broken (certainly this is true in FS) and it speaks volumes that the TPV devs knew nothing about this issue (I doubt if the LL devs even considered the possibility of this).

For now we are stuck with it.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Aishagain