Why inworld SEARCH is soooo bad!

[Medhue Simoni]

LL inadvertantly encourages the gaming of inworld search, by using search engines that are not made for SL. These engines use complex equations to figure out the density of words, some even dropping your parcel down if the density gets too high. This is crazy and totally goes against how the system should work. The equations are created to try and counter the gaming, which only encourages more gaming. Any SEO that wants to write a program to figure out what the search engine is doing can easily write a program to analyze huge sets of the results for words and eventually figure out how to game it. This inturn would result in the equations changing and the process starts all over again. This does not lead to a stable environment, nor anything that benefits any1 but the lucky few, or savy few.

Basically, If LL simply used their own prim system to rank places in search, It would be ungamable. Would people still use words that do not apply to their parcel? Sure, and with the money LL saves by not using these screwed up systems, they could just create a flagging system for the user to flag the places on their own. If a place gets enough flags, then LL should go check it out and take appropriate measures to either downgrade the parcel perminantly, or temporarily. So, if you are a clothing store, and you have 2400 prims to put keywords in, you will be ranked lower than a clothing store that has 10k prims to put keywords in. I know this is difficult for some people to accept, but it is truely the only fair way to rank any parcel. If some1 makes enough money to pay for a whole sim, they are obviously a better place than a 512 parcel that struggles to pay a few dollars for a place. This not only would result in better rankings, but also push parcel owners to buy more land.

Another major problem that I see with how our current search works, is that similar words are looked at as the same word. In our world, the word animated, is not referring to the same thing as animation. Now this might seem like a small difference, but animated is almost always referring to an object, which is not the same as animation, which is a specific thing in SL, even tho so many people still use these different words to referr to the same thing. This gets way out of control when the system also thinks that animals, and animation are the same thing. That is just stupid. So any search engine for SL would be looking for exact word matches, not any similar words.

If any1 looks carefully at the statistics of the past couple of years, it is plainly obvious that the decline of SL and Land has a direct link to the implementation of these crappy search engines that do not work for SL at all. The decline will continue to happen if LL does not connect the dots and start doing things in an SL specific way. These bad decisions to switch to these search engines results in a completely  unstable economic environment and this will continue if changes are not made. If there is 1 thing that every vibrant economy needs, it is stability.

Of course, much of these are my opinions, and you can voice yours below.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

I completely agree. Inworld store locations, which often pay for public entertainment areas, have become unattractive enough as it is thanks to the Marketplace. It would be really helpful if larger stores with a lot of content had a better search ranking than some skybox with three vendors. Not only is this unfair to those who put a lot of effort into their stores and sims, it is also frustrating for shoppers who end up in keyword-spamming places that have very little to do with whatever they were searching for.

Classified ads are another point. The current, Google-based search works great for an internet search engine with a limited number of AdWords listings, but in SL, classified ads are a lot more important. Not only because classifieds are a source of income for LL, also because a lot of residents who use the search (if not most residents) are looking to buy content. The current search puts the spotlight on things like user profiles and groups, with classifieds being barely visible. That is not very helpful for people who enter something like "plaid skirt" or "tiki hammock".

[Pamela Galli]

I threw in the towel on search. If my two sims of prefabs (and 2 sims of furniture) with good traffic and sales don't rank well in search, while 2048 parcels rank at the top, well, nothing I can do about that. LL's world, LL's rules.

Fortunately, my stuff is all over the grid so I get a ton of "word of mouth" business, so I will just settle for that. For those who don't sell stuff that is so visible, it's a different matter.

I also have three pages of enhancements on MP, tho no clue how much good those do. Can't hurt I suppose.

But I agree that LL seems to want to kill off sources of tier. It will be a very long time before I buy another sim.

[Freecilla Kuhn]

The Inworld search does not make money for LL the way the marketplace web pages do so it is not an issue.

[Catwise Yoshikawa]

I just give up with inworld search. Guess I still have inworld store for marketplace customers and for world of mouth. Since LL change it I'm lost with search, even when I look for something I search on marketplace ^^'

I understand why people are leaving lands, they just need a small land and sell in marketplace. They  will have few inworld sales anyway...

[Peewee Musytari]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I threw in the towel on search. If my two sims of prefabs (and 2 sims of furniture) with good traffic and sales don't rank well in search, while 2048 parcels rank at the top, well, nothing I can do about that. LL's world, LL's rules.

Fortunately, my stuff is all over the grid so I get a ton of "word of mouth" business, so I will just settle for that. For those who don't sell stuff that is so visible, it's a different matter.

I also have three pages of enhancements on MP, tho no clue how much good those do. Can't hurt I suppose.

But I agree that LL seems to want to kill off sources of tier. It will be a very long time before I buy another sim.

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^^This^^

I have a 512 with no traffic that does not even sell buildings ranking above my sim in a buildings search, none of it makes any sense anymore & I have given up trying to figure out why.  People can find me by word of mouth or my stuff that is all over the grid. If they don`t, they don`t, I am past caring tbh.

[Medhue Simoni]

Yep, I see numerous 512 parcels ranking above my 21440m parcel. 1 of them, only has the word animation in the description, nothing else. It is a sex place. Another few more week like this, and I'll only have a 512 parcel and I'll be using the internet connection at the coffee shop.

[Pamela Galli]

Which Linden was it who spoke at the convenetion about how they had fixed search?

[Medhue Simoni]

I think it was during the commerce talk, but I rarely remember names, and I would not call them out here anyways. What blows me away tho, is how they do not see this crap in their own numbers. Either, they don't track things accurately, or they just don't. You'd think they would at least see a problem in the amount of lindens being exchanged, especially on the marketplace when crap goes wrong.

[Chelsea Malibu]

Search has a long way to go, agreed however, it works better today than it did years ago.  In fact, today's search is lightyears ahead of where it was but I do agree it needs more tuning.  One way that I see working is to limit or even buy search words.  I do agree with the object name being taken into consideration but that should only be for objects that are set for sale and those objects set for sale and not every prim of your build.

There are many ways to fix this but to do this, they need some database engineers.  As the best DBA's have a PHD, I don't see Linden Labs hiring any of them since they already work for Google, AOL, Bing and others.

[Lyra Blackthorne]

Search was fine even with the gaming of traffic and picks until a couple of years ago.  LL trys so hard to stop gaming they lose sight of the ultimate goal...a search that works

A simple exact match to prims at a location seems fair and clean.  No fancy coding setting favorites apart, land size and traffic are non-issues it is what the land holds that matches the search terms. You shouldnt have to spam land description or Shop name, keywords get counted once, you can mention it twice but it won't count more than once.  if you have products that match the searched terms then the volume of those products matching products should be what drives ranking. Why make it so complicated

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Don't have the energy for this anymore.  (maybe that's what they're counting on)....but 3 things:

1) Pics worked fine as a determiner.

2) the GO feature was invaluable for a shopper, and saw that the very first week it went into effect.

3) Product labeling, amount of real product and product set to sale is invaluable.

It is what it is....now.

Not much.

[Ciaran Laval]

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Freecilla Kuhn wrote:

The Inworld search does not make money for LL the way the marketplace web pages do so it is not an issue.

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However inworld classifieds make money for LL in a similar fashion to the marketplace and classifieds aren't getting the exposure they should. Classifieds should be on our profiles like picks are.

[Peewee Musytari]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Yep, I see numerous 512 parcels ranking above my 21440m parcel. 1 of them, only has the word animation in the description, nothing else. It is a sex place. Another few more week like this, and I'll only have a 512 parcel and I'll be using the internet connection at the coffee shop.

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Exactly, this one had graffiti in the discription, but actually it had "graffity" and It still got picked up above the correct spelling & rest of the keywords.

[Couldbe Yue]

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Peewee Musytari wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I threw in the towel on search. If my two sims of prefabs (and 2 sims of furniture) with good traffic and sales don't rank well in search, while 2048 parcels rank at the top, well, nothing I can do about that. LL's world, LL's rules.

Fortunately, my stuff is all over the grid so I get a ton of "word of mouth" business, so I will just settle for that. For those who don't sell stuff that is so visible, it's a different matter.

I also have three pages of enhancements on MP, tho no clue how much good those do. Can't hurt I suppose.

But I agree that LL seems to want to kill off sources of tier. It will be a very long time before I buy another sim.

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^^This^^

I have a 512 with no traffic that does not even sell buildings ranking above my sim in a buildings search, none of it makes any sense anymore & I have given up trying to figure out why.  People can find me by word of mouth or my stuff that is all over the grid. If they don`t, they don`t, I am past caring tbh.

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QFT. The last major change to search (may/June this year?) had a devastating effect on my inworld sales, but then so have these animals people seem to go gooey over and the marketplace (to an extent - I have a theory about that) and concurrency dropping and the economically active dropping and everything else LL does to screw us over whilst loudly proclaiming how profitable they are.

The only comment I'd make is that as a consumer I detest full regions that have every keyword under the sun.  Yes, they may actually sell these things but there's only one landing point and the stuff could be anywhere.  When I land in places like they I leave rather than go hunting.

Since a lot of the larger sellers have turned into virtual department stores, what I'd like to see is a way that a group owned parcel in a region could be divided up and still maintain the bonus given to relative to the whole area.  That way people might actually parcel up their areas properly and put the relevant items together.

Now that would make me happy.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

(Back from surgery and yes, I have some thoughts on this topic)

First off, let's discuss the issue of "Gaming". In-World Search is, after you cut through all the BS and emotional smoke, nothing but a very low-cost advertising system. The whole point of In-World Search is to let people find the stuff you sell. The whole point of Advertising is ... to help people find the stuff you sell. Pretty much the same thing, aren't they?

When a Merchant "Games" search, what they are doing is spending more (in the form of time, consulting fees, device costs or prims) in getting themselves a better "Advertisement". Up to a point.

When "Gaming" becomes a real issue is when a Merchant uses those techniques to attract traffic and shoppers to their store for things they do not sell. Some people feel that just getting pixels in the door is the way to gain income. While this may be true to some extent, it is also a massive negative against the Merchant in the long run. Many businesses that engage in this level of Spamming quickly find that their spike in sales plummets and eventually drops to near zero. Furthermore their days are spent dealing with angry people, numerous complaints and ... the bane of SL .. DRAMA! In short, their "Gaming" has turned into a destructive element in their business and made their income and enjoyment vanish.

So let's go back to the former type of Gaming .. improving your Advertisement in In-World Search. In the "Real World" bigger businesses buy bigger ads. Smaller businesses buy smaller ads. No one has any problems with Wal-Mart purchasing full-color multiple page inserts while "Bob & Janes Eclectic Imports" purchases a tiny 2"x3" 2-color ad in the weekend section of the paper. It's just the way the business world works.

Linden Lab has continually attempted to apply a Search System to what is, in reality, an Advertising function. They really are not the same .. not in the least. Because of this mismatch at the front door, there have been all sorts of money and time invested in trying to shoe-horn one into the other. The results have been an ever growing and increasingly unweildy system that doesn't meet the needs of anyone and generally pisses everyone off. They (LL) really has found some dedicated and intelligent people to try and make In-World Search work, but it's a failed project simply because it's using the wrong tool for the job.

What is REALLY needed is a system that lets In-World Store owners turn their Parcel Object Listings into an elegant and easily created "Store Listing", complete with pictures, descriptions and detail similar in usefullness and presentation to what is seen on Marketplace. Then in conjunction with this new Store Listing Service is a logical and easily nagivated system for Advertising your Store and its wares under the categories that apply to your products. Bigger stores could purchase bigger ad space, smaller stores would either settle for the standard size basic listing or perhaps opt for a slightly better enhanced listing. But above all else, the purpose of the system would be strictly for advertising your products or services ... and advertise them in standard groupings that everyone could understand and use.

Rapid Web Page creation isn't Magic. SLM takes some basic form data, a few pictures and turns it into a very elegant and easily understood web page. Doing the same with the entire contents of your In-World Store would be just an extension of the same concept. The benefits to the Merchant would be massive, and would serve to produce a slick, elegant and classy presentation for even the least web-geeky Merchants around.

More to the point, "Gaming" isn't something that can be done in a system like this. If you want better exposure ... PAY FOR IT! That money goes right into LL's coffers and in turn makes sense. Everyone gets a Store Listing for their Store, and those willing to spend the extra time to add some refinement to their store listings is rewarded with a centralized and standardized format that not only adds a perception of sophistication, but helps bring people In-World to shop again.

Yes, this is a "Project" .. a Big Project. But I strongly believe that one of the legs that will support Second Life (and all Virtual Worlds) going forward is the Commercial Virtual Goods Market. Linden Lab has the critical mass of sellers and buyers to make a project of this size both possible and rewarding. Personally I believe it would also be one of those Stellar Achievements that has set Second Life ahead of all the "Also Rans" in VW's to date.

So anyway .. just my two cents worth. Personally I'm content to keep reverse engineering In-World Search and making money doing so. But in reality, I'd much rather we ALL make out better, improve the shopping experience and help stabilize what can be one of the most important facets of Virtual Worlds ... Virtual Goods Sales.

[Freecilla Kuhn]

Classifieds are in our profiles... if you still use V1.23

[Darrius Gothly]

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Freecilla Kuhn wrote:

Classifieds are in our profiles... if you still use V1.23

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Classified Ads (as they currently exist) are severely broken. Not only do they provide no categorization method (they use a semi-borked search method) but they provide only text and a single simple image with none of the traditional advertising copy or image methods AND they have a pricing structure that makes no sense whatsoever. They often reach into the thousands of L$ per ad  .. purely for the ego-stroking satisfaction of having the "First Place" position.

Once per week we receive a Coupon Flyer in our mailbox that has full-color single page ads (and coupons) for many local merchants. Surprisingly these ads are fairly effective .. and they're a very low-tech holdover from days gone by. In a purely online digitally distributed environment such as Virtual Worlds (and Virtual Goods Marketing) there are so many other very effective, attractive and up-to-date methods that would not only provide real advertising, but structuring it in a logical cost-per-space and cost-per-eyeball manner would generate reliable income for LL and result in an advertising medium for Merchants to showcase their products.

We desperately need real advertising. Not "neat techie tools" but real honest-to-gosh advertising vehicles that bring a sense of legitimacy and sophistication to one of the common uses of Virtual Worlds. We don't need to fear monetizing VW's .. it's already happened. All of the "Other Grids" are running headlong into making sure they support a monetary system or they risk losing out in the long-run. If SL just takes a few extra steps and embraces this life's blood activity, it will go a long way toward cementing their leadership position against all competitors for a long time to come.

[Freecilla Kuhn]

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The whole point of In-World Search is to let people find the stuff you sell.

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Well no, the point of the search is so people can find anything they are looking for, not just things to buy but places to go to do many various activities or meet people with the same interests or experience places that don't exist in real life or places that do exist in real life that they don't have the time or ability to visit in real life... etc. Virtual goods for sale are a must for a virtual world if it wishes to be successful but it is only the first step which SL has already accomplished, (well thanks to a lot of hard work and free work from it's residence that is).

[Darrius Gothly]

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Freecilla Kuhn wrote:

Well no, the point of the search is so people can find anything they are looking for, not just things to buy but places to go to do many various activities or meet people with the same interests or experience places that don't exist in real life or places that do exist in real life that they don't have the time or ability to visit in real life... etc. Virtual goods for sale are a must for a virtual world if it wishes to be successful but it is only the first step which SL has already accomplished, (well thanks to a lot of hard work and free work from it's residence that is).

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Finding "stuff" .. to do or visit or just explore is best served by a publication like the new Destination Guide. It does have a Search element to it, but it also has a need for categorization as well. (People probably don't want to see a list of art expos if they're wanting to explore open water boating events.) I believe they've made a good start with the new Destination Guide. But the end goals, stuff to do or see vs. stuff to buy, are radically different goals .. different enough that having them served by the same service just doesn't make much sense.

When SL was smallish, like 500 Sims or so, a general Search made sense. But SL is not that easily encompassed anyomre, so IMO it's high time to specialize the discovery/advertising services to suit their actual needs.

[Peewee Musytari]

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Couldbe Yue wrote:

 

The only comment I'd make is that as a consumer I detest full regions that have every keyword under the sun.  Yes, they may actually sell these things but there's only one landing point and the stuff could be anywhere.  When I land in places like they I leave rather than go hunting.

 

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I agree with you about the misuse of keywords, though the keywords I meant was the ones I was typing into search. It seems that the system now searches for every listing that any of variation of each of the words and throws them all up whether they are relevant to what you are looking for or not. In the same way that was mentioned earlier, animations and animated are 2 completely different things & are not just alternate spellings.

If there are listings that have an exact match to the keyword combo that you type in, those are the ones that should appear at the top of the list & all the variations can be listed after that. The old system was far from perfect but it did at least get that part right.

[Gunner Grun]

I figured out how to get on page one in the search right away. Took about a week of testing

[Freecilla Kuhn]

Products can be seached in the Marketplace, things to do or see in the Destination Guide, everything in the Inworld search.

How many searches do we need already?

Many places don't make it in the destination Guide and many people perfer an inworld store to a web page Marketplace listing so they need to be visible somewhere. I agree the Inworld search is a mess and hard to use most times but it is useful for finding real world companies, universities, RP places and a host of other places that again are in the MP or DG.

[Medhue Simoni]

Welcome back, Darrius? Glad to see the quacks didn't use you for spare parts.:smileyvery-happy:

[Darrius Gothly]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Welcome back, Darrius? Glad to see the quacks didn't use you for spare parts.:smileyvery-happy:

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Thank you Medhue (Medhue ... Medhue ... Medhue ...) Wait a second (second ... second ... second) Is there an echo in here (here ... here ... here ... )

OH CRAP!! I am missing a few parts (parts ... parts ... parts ...)