Test Out New Search, Delivering More Relevant, Faster Results

[Luc Starsider 368]

I'm glad to see search getting some love. It is definitely much needed.

I have to admit I haven't used search much in viewer 2. Only for the most basic searches, and I have often been unable to find what I was looking for, even if I knew what I wanted to find was out there. I have, however, used the marketplace to find stores I needed, fetched the location and teleported to them that way.

Since searching this way, I'm not really sure, but I don't think wildcards have worked well in viewer 2 searches. I'm wondering how wildcards will be handled in the new search? And will I find 'skyboxes' if I search for 'sky' or 'boxes'?

- Luc -

[Ann Otoole 43]

Relevance looks great. Some people will need to adjust their "SEO Strategies" though. The best strategy is to not try to cheat/game the system IMHO.

[Insky Jedburgh 0]

Yes I decided to test out the realestate search, but immediately found all I could get was a very brief overview of the properties listed in the search results, with no way to teleport to them. This would put me off looking for land to buy or rent since it would be a lengthy process to open the world map, enter the sim name of the parcel I am curious about, and then go to that sim and fly around trying to find the specific parcel I got info on in search.  Pretty much shoots down search for land sales.

Or it could be I am missing some step that people constantly using V2 eventually find out about from friends. Either way not user friendly in that way. Maybe I need to get a clue, whatever.

I did like that I could find categories of land based on criteria of for sale or for rent, and I was even to find property along the SL railroad by typing "railroad" in search while in the realestate tab.

But then I could not find the F?<&!^@ parcels.  Not much use if I am searching for land.

 

[Rodvik Linden 0]

Kind of off topic but just as an FYI chat is being worked on and is a high priority. We wont be posting details until we are ready to test it similar to the methodology used when redoing Search.

I know that answer is not as good as a date but i want to be absolutley sure we have something before we announce. Clearly its a long standing issue that needs to be dramatically improved I run into problems with it often (today in fact) I completely understand the frustration.

 

Rod

 

 

 

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Jimbo Mimulus wrote:

More Junk.

 

What happened to this ?

 

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Tools-and-Technology/Back-to-Basics-Technology-Improvements/ba-p/668918



New Chat Service Coming Soon

We’re  finally going to tackle the group chat problem that has been a Resident  complaint for a long time. Group chat can often be confusing, with  “chat lag” causing responses to appear late, or sometimes not at all.  You should start to see real improvements in this early next year. Over  the last few months, we’ve completed a number of development sprints to  prototype an XMPP service and have decided to move forward with an ejabberd deployment.  We’re targeting to have a test deployment of the new group chat service  by the end of this year, and full production deployment in early 2011.

 

Early 2011 ? ... we're nearing halfway through 2011, and STILL no news on this much needed feature.

another disappointment from the people who bring you failed teleports & failed logins

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[Sierra Trafalgar 0]

Please add an 'exact match only' mode.

My biggest gripe with the current search is that even if you type in the exact name of whatever you are looking for it still ends up buried on page five behind all the other **** that the search engine decided was obviously more relevant.

A 'sort results alphabetically' would also be hugely useful for the occasions when you can't recall/guess the exact spelling of a name .. and certainly better than a mechanical Turk's random stab at 'relevance'.

 

 

[Cerise Sorbet 123]

Insky Jedburgh wrote:

Yes I decided to test out the realestate search, but immediately found all I could get was a very brief overview of the properties listed in the search results, with no way to teleport to them

Hi, the green text in the Name column is  a link, if you click that the parcel profile will open in the sidebar. You can drag the globe tab away from the sidebar to make it a floater, if you do not want that to keep opening and closing. There is a teleport link at the bottom of the place profile.

[Persephone Emerald 48]

Thanks, Rodvik. Thumbs up for working on the Group Chat problems.

[Insky Jedburgh 0]

Thank you Cerise. I suspected I was simply missing something since I don't use V2. Now just imagine new users trying to figure that out.

[Jori Watler 0]

I am pretty confused here - I can easily run a TPV 2+ based program without ANY issues.   I have a workhorse of a machine, in which has over the "recommended" hardware - and I cannot run an official or Beta/Dev LL 2.+ viewer. 

 

Repeatedly I have manually cleared cache, restarted the machine, and did a fresh install to have the exact same results. 

 

You (read as Linden Lab) want us to test things, even use the public release but we've stated repeatedly the issues, yet it's no better, if anything, at least previous 2.+ SL viewers I could run, just crash on trying to do anything (read as WALK, TYPE, or CAM)

 

[Void Singer 201]

http://search-beta.secondlife.com/ for those that want to try it themselves without needing a new viewer to do it (uses openID, so may not work properly in v1x inworld browsers)

 

I'm not particularly impressed by the results, although the layout is better.... I'm not at all thrilled about the inability to sort or the fact that it still doesn't seem to take parcel size or traffic into account in any way at all.

 

I am concerned about that get more results code that auto-inserts more results when you scroll within a page a of the bottom, as it could result in ridiculous loads for people that don't know better.

[MarcelEdward Edman 0]

The video of Thorley is awesome. love it.

With endless scroll, awesome. (I bet the next will be the you maybe know these avatars when viewing a profile ?)

 

If the new search is half a good, then it will be a mayor improvement !

[Rusalka Writer 11]

This viewer (OSX) works so much better than any that have come before I can't believe it. Not only does search work vastly better, the whole thing is better. It feels like someone snuck into my house and gave me a terrifically faster connection. Textures and sculpties rez, there's practically no lag, this is a spectacular experience.

Thank you, everybody who worked on this. I am going shopping.

[Goedeke Messmer 0]

The general search results seem much better under this version. There are some people gaming the old search that are still showing up, but looking for "builder gadgets" at least pulls up shops selling such things (although I was surprised by the rankings, that is opinion and maybe bad search optimization from those vendors). Likewise, searching for theme related topics ("steampunk store") and other items is performing much better than the older search engine in v2. None of the crashing described here either (my cache is in the standard location) but the *normal* (sad it has to be said that way) crashes still appear.

 

[Lloyd Knoller 0]

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Blondin Linden wrote:

Search Results Are Saved:

Many of you have shared with us how you use search to discover your world and shop, and how you want your search results saved. We’ve all had this experience. We search for something, find an interesting event or place to go shopping, and then want to go back to our search results and find another place to go--but they are gone. When using the new Search, results are saved for 15 minutes so that you can easily go back and explore other options.

 

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Why are the results displayed in a time limited fashion and why 15 minutes? Yes,  many have "shared" with you that the clearing of search results was one big pain so how is clearing them after 15 minutes going to be any less of a pain?  It certainly takes me longer than 15 minutes to look round some shops and move on to the next. If it is impossible to make the results persist until they are cleared by the user, perhaps you need to go back to the drawing board, yet again.

 

P.S. As a paying customer, when I'm forced to start using this, I absolutely do not want to see any spam "paid adverts"  taking space away from real search results

[Ansariel Hiller 890]

What about a "Usable UI Viewer"? Beside a working search that is the most important thing that has to be fixed!

[Chelsea Malibu 88]

I'll go check it out tonight and download Viewer 2.  Most advanced users are not using the LL viewer but I'm very interested to see what it's like these days.

One question I have (well a few but the sort of revolve around this) is that it says "assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents," regarding the Google Search Algorithm.  If this is the same algorithm how does it view Hyperlinked Sets?

Another question I have is with the "relevance" on multi word searched. Google has long since moved from the need to post "quotes" around multi word indexing though it seems the SL search sometimes needs it and sometimes does not. It seem to shift from month to month. I am hoping this has been addressed since very few users even know that they need to do that for multi-word searches.

 

 

[Yoki Enoch 2]

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Insky Jedburgh wrote:

Thank you Cerise. I suspected I was simply missing something since I don't use V2. Now just imagine new users trying to figure that out.

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Yeah, that was quite the hoot. Now how many clicks was that to tp to a parcel? I lost count.:matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

[Darrius Gothly 704]

My first impressions are not good. (Like that's a shock, right?)

For example, I used my favorite search term ("teleporters") and find that the classifieds are offering me sex related items .. because my default maturity ratings are GMA. Well, it includes breedable animals and land too. *sigh* (But no Teleporter results that are obvious.)

But my main concern? It's on a much deeper "Meta" issue.

There is virtually no form of viable advertising for businesses in Second Life. Yet the flow of money that keeps Linden Lab's doors open and paychecks bankable comes directly FROM the commerce engine at the core of SL. In recent past, those businesses savvy enough to realize how Search could be employed (leveraged) to improve their business revenue have done so. While some complained and many insults were hurled hither and yon, the simple fact is that those willing to invest the time, effort and money in using Search as a form of advertising .. did so. And they saved their businesses in the process.

"Relevance" is a great form of qualification when you're searching for information, perhaps even when you're wanting a new sight to see. But since time immemorial, commercial systems have shown that advertising is the most effective way to find the sources of products and services.

From my perspective, once again an issue has been "fixed" ... in a way that cripples a tool that was beginning to benefit the businesses that feed life into Second Life. After they killed off "Sightseeing" Sims, after they killed off Educational contributors, after they shut out the sophisticated long-term customer in favor of the Holy Grail "New User" .. I am left wondering what that New User will come to do and see? With Search now being removed as a viable tool for businesses to gain better exposure, I am even further confused.

But then .. what's new?

[Cerise Sorbet 123]

Yoki Enoch wrote:

Yeah, that was quite the hoot. Now how many clicks was that to tp to a parcel? I lost count.:matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

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It was two clicks. You really cannot count to two?

Adding -- I just loaded up a V1 viewer to refresh my memory, and it is the exact same two clicks, one to highlight the search result of interest, and a second to teleport.

[Aquarius Paravane 1]

There isn't room in that box to describe all the errors here. I will add my own comment below.

[Blondin Linden 0]

 

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Yeah, that was quite the hoot. Now how many clicks was that to tp to a parcel? I lost count.:matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

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2 Clicks. One on the link which opens the side panel. And then another on Teleport. Easy as!

[Yuriko Nishi 0]

this new search has one major problem i can´t really track down.

it happened a few weeks ago on the marketplace too when there was a big change to the search.

 

in old search when you searched for "fitness" you got some gym and workout related stuff, like expected.

 

the new search gives you 1976 results (182 in the old search) that mostly have nothing to do with fitness. like furniture, hair, breedable pets etc.

 

it gives you everything that "fits" into a small parcels, or has a resize script that helps you to "fit" it to your shape, black pants with "fitting" shoes etc...

 

bad if you wanna sell fitness related stuff like me and get kicked off the search from place 1 into oblivion (and not even by competition, but from completely unrelated stuff! i checked around 25 pages or so)



show stopper imo, but no one cared about the jira i created for the marketplace search, so why am i writing this again?

[LuckyCreations1488303085 0]

Please either fix the problem where the bottom of the search page is cut off, or allow search to be opened in our web browser. In the Real Estate search, I am unable to select the rest of the preferences for my search, because they are cut off on the bottom of the search window, and I'm pretty sure there should be a mainland choice in the land type section but its probably cut off. The left section of the page isnt scrollable like the right side of the page is.



[Cerise Sorbet 123]

Yuriko Nishi wrote:

in old search when you searched for "fitness" you got some gym and workout related stuff, like expected.

 

the new search gives you 1976 results (182 in the old search) that mostly have nothing to do with fitness. like furniture, hair, breedable pets etc.

Hi, I can see the trouble there. Keywords are matched using stemming, and "fitness" will match "fit". The word "fit" has so many meanings that maybe "fitness" should be excepted from stemming, if the search engine can make exceptions like that!

[Dilbert Dilweg 306]

This Video comes to mind when I use new Search

 

http://front.moveon.org/eli-pariser-filter-bubble-ted-talk/