Thank you Linden Lab and congratulations!

[Eio Tuqiri]

I've mostly complained on the forums and blogs here @ secondlife.com, so I wanted to post a message thanking Linden Lab. I can say I'm not in general happy with the direction you're taking, but I have to congratulate Rodvik Humble for steering LL in directions that made August the biggest growth month for Second Life in nearly four years.

Congratulations Rod and Linden Lab, and my sincerest thanks for an amazing creative tool!

 

[Canoro Philipp]

i will add my thanks too, i have seen Second Life moving forward in many issues, have seen a lot of improvements, and it seems there are more to come.

[Pamela Galli]

Ah I thought you were talking about the avatar Linden Lab, and was puzzled. :smileyindifferent:

[madjim]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

Ah I thought you were talking about the

avatar

Linden Lab, and was puzzled. :smileyindifferent:

---

Pamela, I do not believe that there actually is an avatar called Linden Lab.

Father "holey, not wholly" Jim

 

[Medhue Simoni]

I'll thank them when they can make a search engine that ranks things as well as it did some 3 years ago. Until then, or they even get a clue why search sucks soooo bad, I will not be congratulating any1 at the Lab. Plus, all their efforts mean absolutely nothing if we have a search engine that promote people with 512 parcels over long established merchants who own full sims. They can make all the cool tools they want, but if they keep hurting their base, SL will continue to die.

[Ann Otoole]

Sorry to hear you are still engaged in this battle. Have you considered putting all your stuff on a small mainland parcel to see what happens?

[Medhue Simoni]

We are continuously having to change things, and we have tried numerous things. I think my keywords are just an extreme case for how the search engine algorythm fails miserably. Heck, I think i still get animal places in my results. I've not actually yet, just dropped down tons of products in a tiny area, but I guess that is the only way. Why do we need to do tricks when a search engine should be able to tell the difference between a tiny piece of land and a whole sim? Plus, Yes, I always use myself as an example, but this hurts every1. Instead of thousands of people adjusting and adjusting with every screwed up change, why doesn't LL just fix their crap?

Ok, I'm off to move my whole sim into a 512 parcel. I'll take pictures for when I have to move them all back, lol.

[Willow Danube]

My heart felt gratitude/well wishes is on pending status until they, Linden Lab, fixed my billing account.

[Maryanne Solo]

Many issues still affect some people but overall I would definately say thank you also. Rodvik can be proud he's doing very well. Biggest month in four years? well that really is something!

[Phil Deakins]

We'll see how it pans out. Increases in new sign-ups isn't worth anything if it doesn't increase concurency, except stem the decline in concurency. I don't think congratulations are in order until concurency is moving up again.

If those idiotic "Linden Lab" threads, and the deletion of some related posts and threads, were anything to do with Rod Humble's changes, then the opposite of concratulations is in order.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

We are continuously having to change things, and we have tried numerous things. I think my keywords are just an extreme case for how the search engine algorythm fails miserably. Heck, I think i still get animal places in my results. I've not actually yet, just dropped down tons of products in a tiny area, but I guess that is the only way. Why do we need to do tricks when a search engine should be able to tell the difference between a tiny piece of land and a whole sim? Plus, Yes, I always use myself as an example, but this hurts every1. Instead of thousands of people adjusting and adjusting with every screwed up change, why doesn't LL just fix their crap?

Ok, I'm off to move my whole sim into a 512 parcel. I'll take pictures for when I have to move them all back, lol.

---

I don't think they will ever be able to get a search that works well for most..even 3 years ago it was messed up..

it was limited to one word search rather than looking for more than one word terms..traffic was manipulated to death with bot houses and camping.....you had to go 5 pages or more just to get past the hardest hitting traffic manipulation..you could never find anything back then either..because the front 5 pages or more had used all the keywords of crap they didn't even have at their sims.

3 years ago those stuck behind the thick line of manipulation on search  were not seen because it was gamed to death..not because their products sucked..a lot of places became the core because they had the best tricks and were getting seen..

a 512 lot doesn't cost much at all..just make copies rather than move all your stuff..then link them to the main store from there..this way if it doesn't work out you can delete that stuff there without having to move anything back and forth..

i used to love when i was at a mall and came passed someones stuff i thought was good and then seen a landmark to even more good stuff hehehe

it was like homer simpson..Mmmmmm mooore stuuuuuff hehehehehe

 

[Medhue Simoni]

I would disagree. Possibly, that has to do with what you are looking for. Gaming the search? Well, it was talked about alot, and I'm sure some people tried to game it to extremes. Other than the very early years with camping, I did not see much blatant gaming from most of the larger names. I personally engaged in no gaming at all, unless you consider giving a 1 time gift for Picks as gaming.

The problem I have with the current system is that there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. I have a 512+ parcel with only 3 items on it. It is not ranked at all for the word animation, at least I stopped checking after 50. If you search for animations, again no sign of it. If you click places, that parcel is number 3. How the heck does that happen? That does not make any sense. Ok, so today, I figure I will play around with this. I place some 200 animation items on that parcel. Guess what happened? I could not find the parcel anymore in a search for animation, animations, nor any other subcategory. See, there is no consistency. How can any1 gage themselves using this search? Before, you could see your own progress. If you did all the right things, you climbed. Here, now, It is a total crap shoot. And, I imagine that is exactly what the consumers see.

If I was higher ranked, I'd still be complaining, cause it does not matter if I succeed all on my own. That is impossible. I only succeed if SL succeeds and that aint gonna happen with this search engine. I been saying for years now that all SL's success or failure can be linked completely to the search engine. Why has SL not recovered much from the disaster of 2010? Cause they have made absolutely no major change the how the search engine works. I been pleading with any1 and every1 to analyze the decline carefully, because all my facts I see about the decline point directly at the search engine change. Most economic graphs show the decline starting the very day that the search engine was changed. SL is not going to recover until LL realizes how important a working, consistent search engine is. IMHO

 

[Phil Deakins]

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

it was limited to one word search rather than looking for more than one word terms..

traffic was manipulated to death with bot houses 

---

Ah, the good old days

I wrote my traffic bots system so that it would log bots in and out, but always ensuring that there were a few spaces for people to arrive in the sim. I needed customers to be able to arrive, of course, and, although I owned most of the sim, there were still a few small parcels owned by other people. When people left the sim, bots would log in, and, when people arrived in the sim, bots would log out.

It was a joy to watch it in operation. And then, the day after I'd completed all the tweaking etc., LL posted that traffic manipulation would be banned a few weeks later!

It's nice to reminisce once in a while 

[Phil Deakins]

@Medhue.

A year or more ago, larger parcels were literally favoured in the GSA search, but I haven't even considered search in the last year so I'm well out of date.

1. Are they still using the GSA?

2. Are you sure that larger parcels aren't favoured any more?

[Medhue Simoni]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

@Medhue.

A year or more ago, larger parcels were literally favoured in the GSA search, but I haven't even considered search in the last year so I'm well out of date.

1. Are they still using the GSA?

2. Are you sure that larger parcels aren't favoured any more?

---

No, they changed it, but I don't remember what they are using now. It might just be a different version, cause it gives basically similar screwed up results. Hey, at least I'm actually in the search results somewhere, cause I spent more than a year without being in search at all for my main keyword.

I seriously doubt that the size of parcels get much favouritism. If they get any, it is minute.

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

I would disagree. Possibly, that has to do with what you are looking for. Gaming the search? Well, it was talked about alot, and I'm sure some people tried to game it to extremes. Other than the very early years with camping, I did not see much blatant gaming from most of the larger names. I personally engaged in no gaming at all, unless you consider giving a 1 time gift for Picks as gaming.

The problem I have with the current system is that there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. I have a 512+ parcel with only 3 items on it. It is not ranked at all for the word animation, at least I stopped checking after 50. If you search for animations, again no sign of it. If you click places, that parcel is number 3. How the heck does that happen? That does not make any sense. Ok, so today, I figure I will play around with this. I place some 200 animation items on that parcel. Guess what happened? I could not find the parcel anymore in a search for animation, animations, nor any other subcategory. See, there is no consistency. How can any1 gage themselves using this search? Before, you could see your own progress. If you did all the right things, you climbed. Here, now, It is a total crap shoot. And, I imagine that is exactly what the consumers see.

If I was higher ranked, I'd still be complaining, cause it does not matter if I succeed all on my own. That is impossible. I only succeed if SL succeeds and that aint gonna happen with this search engine. I been saying for years now that all SL's success or failure can be linked completely to the search engine. Why has SL not recovered much from the disaster of 2010? Cause they have made absolutely no major change the how the search engine works. I been pleading with any1 and every1 to analyze the decline carefully, because all my facts I see about the decline point directly at the search engine change. Most economic graphs show the decline starting the very day that the search engine was changed. SL is not going to recover until LL realizes how important a working, consistent search engine is. IMHO

 

---

i can agree with a lot of what you say..my opinion was basically what it felt like for me 3 years ago..

i've always been a huge shopper since i came to SL..it's just part of what  i like about it i guess..my search used to be open all the time..

my point was i don't think they know what to do when it comes to search..and i agree it is one of  their biggest problems..

i search for something now and i don't even get the amount of pages i used to back then..

i think a lot have given up as far as shopping and turning to the market because the search sucks so much..

myself included..

i'm not saying the search is better now than back then..i'm just saying it was never good for me hehehehe

so off to the marketplace where i don't have to travel around hoping the search got it right and what i want is really there..

i can just turn on my music stream i like and do it from my sl home..

in truth ..to me that is sad because now i don't see a lot of sl now like i used to..

I think if we brought it to the new CEO's attention that it has never worked or needs fixing that maybe this one will hear..

he seems to react a lot faster than the past ones..

in my opinion..the market is really what is doing the damage to inworld..

i couldn't tell you much about the search today ..because i don't use it like i used to..

 

 

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

it was limited to one word search rather than looking for more than one word terms..

traffic was manipulated to death with bot houses 

---

Ah, the good old days

I wrote my traffic bots system so that it would log bots in and out, but always ensuring that there were a few spaces for people to arrive in the sim. I needed customers to be able to arrive, of course, and, although I owned most of the sim, there were still a few small parcels owned by other people. When people left the sim, bots would log in, and, when people arrived in the sim, bots would log out.

It was a joy to watch it in operation. And then, the day after I'd completed all the tweaking etc., LL posted that traffic manipulation would be banned a few weeks later!

It's nice to reminisce once in a while 

---

LOL and you loved the gloating..i used to get a kick out of how you bathed in the forum abuse you used to get..you were soaking it up with a huge smile and using it for soap  LOL

[Phil Deakins]

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

The problem I have with the current system is that there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. I have a 512+ parcel with only 3 items on it. It is not ranked at all for the word animation, at least I stopped checking after 50. If you search for animations, again no sign of it. If you click places, that parcel is number 3. How the heck does that happen?

---

Note: I've just seen your post that says that they changed from the GSA. This post still applies though so don't stop reading when it talks about Google.

It's been a long time since I posted stuff like this, so it may have faded from people's memories.

It does make sense. Apart from when there are only a small number of results, a search engine only returns a certain number of results, regardless of how many results there could be. In fact, a search engine usually doesn't know how many results there are. The normal number of results they return is 1000. You can see this by doing a search on Google and noticing the word "About" at the top of the results. For instance, do a search on Google for the word "pagerank". At the top, it says "About 413,000,000 results", but if you page through them, you won't get any further than 1000.

This is what causes the effect you see, where you are ranked near the top when the results are affected by filtering out everything except Places, and not ranked at all without the filter.

When Google processes a search query, it gathers results from its database, but it stops gathering results when it has about 40,000, and any matches that it hasn't yet reached in the database are left behind. It sorts the 40,000 and returns only the top 1000 of them. That's how Google originally worked, and it's pretty much how the GSA will have been designed to work. The number of matching results can be so huge that it's impossible to gather and sort them all, so a limit has to be applied to the gathering - that 40,000 limit.

That's the reason for the word "About". What Google does when it's gathered the (about) 40,000 results is see how much of the database it looked in to get them, and work out how many there are likely to be in the whole database. E.g. if it only got through a quarter of the database to get 40,000, then there are likely to be "about" 160,000 results in the whole database. That's how the "About 413,000,000 results" number for the "pagerank" query is arrived at.

So when you do an unfiltered search in SL's engine for your keyword/phrase, the results include all matches, and the gathering limit (whatever the limit is in the SL engine) is reached much sooner than it would be reached with a filter. It means that many good matches are not reached in the database, and are not included in the results. But when you filter out everything but Places, the gathering has to go further into the database before the limit is reached, and many results that weren't reached without the filter are now included. When sorted for relevancy, some of those that were previously left out now rank very highly. And that's the effect you see. I've seen it myself in the past, as have many people.

That description of how Google gathers results from the database sound very simplistic but it's exactly how Google originally described the way their engine works. It's also how Google's working was described years later, when asked about that word "about". No doubt they have made improvements to things over time, but it still has to have that set gathering limit, which is why they still use that word, "About". And that's the thing that causes your high ranking with a filter and no ranking without one.

One more thing. The reason I've talked about Google is because LL uses a Google search engine (the GSA). They were talking about using a different one but I don't know if they made the change. Even so, there still has to be a gathering limit, so what I've written still applies.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

LOL and you loved the gloating..i used to get a kick out of how you bathed in the forum abuse you used to get..you were soaking it up with a huge smile and using it for soap  LOL

---

Ah... more reminiscences

I used to enjoy those "debates". Thank you for reminding me of them 

I'm actually sitting here smiling....sigh....the gold old days

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

LOL and you loved the gloating..i used to get a kick out of how you bathed in the forum abuse you used to get..you were soaking it up with a huge smile and using it for soap  LOL

---

Ah... more reminiscences

I used to enjoy those "debates". Thank you for reminding me of them 

I'm actually sitting here smiling....sigh....the gold old days

---

i remember when i was newer and actually tried to debate it against you..lol

then i got wise..i was like..wait he loves this too much..stop ceka just stop.. hehehehe

[Phil Deakins]

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

LOL and you loved the gloating..i used to get a kick out of how you bathed in the forum abuse you used to get..you were soaking it up with a huge smile and using it for soap  LOL

---

Ah... more reminiscences

I used to enjoy those "debates". Thank you for reminding me of them 

I'm actually sitting here smiling....sigh....the gold old days

---

i remember when i was newer and actually tried to debate it against you..lol

then i got wise..i was like..wait he loves this too much..stop ceka just stop.. hehehehe

---

LOL yeah

[Medhue Simoni]

Yeah, you explained this before, and just because Google does something a certain way, it does not mean it is right for SL. To say that it makes any sense at all is to say that Google does it right. Making sense is not about how it works, it is about how it should work. We pay to have our parcels ranked. When you pay for something, you expect it to be there in every single query relevant to it. I do not care if LL says or Google says there are limitations, we didn't have these limitations before. To use an engine with such limitations is straight out stupid for a system such as SL, and any1 that spent more than a few minutes thinking about it could have seen the problems that it presents. My major question to LL would be, "Why does it take years for so called professionals to see such a major mistake, especially when it cost your corporation millions of dollars?"

[Qie Niangao]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

The reason I've talked about Google is because LL uses a Google search engine (the GSA). They were talking about using a different one but I don't know if they made the change. 

---

I, too, would be interested to know if they ever did make that change.  I'd heard that they intended to switch to Lucene and integrate the whole in-world mess with Marketplace search, but obviously that integration has gone nowhere (and Marketplace itself has had no substantive improvements for at least a year).  

I was given to understand that GSA licensing itself was orders of magnitude higher than they'd predicted--and that wasn't counting the (then?) high cost of staffing even marginal GSA competence.  So they had incentive to dump it, but dunno if they finally did.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

@Medhue.

A year or more ago, larger parcels were literally favoured in the GSA search, but I haven't even considered search in the last year so I'm well out of date.

1. Are they still using the GSA?

2. Are you sure that larger parcels aren't favoured any more?

---

No, they changed it, but I don't remember what they are using now. It might just be a different version, cause it gives basically similar screwed up results. Hey, at least I'm actually in the search results somewhere, cause I spent more than a year without being in search at all for my main keyword.

I seriously doubt that the size of parcels get much favouritism. If they get any, it is minute.

---

They were intending to change to an open source engine (I've forgotten its name), so that they could actually deal with the code. They were completely locked out of the GSA, and could only affect things from the outside.

I have to say that I don't have much confidence that LL won't screw up a search engine when they can actually change the code.

Even so, the SL engine's database is a lot larger than we would imagine - so much so that they took measures to reduce the size, such as not creating pages for avatars that haven't logged in for a while - 30 days, I think it came down to, or it might have been 15 days - I forget. And that being the case, a gathering limit has to be applied, so that long post of mine is applicable, and that limit is the reason you see what you see.

Because of that limit, I tried to figure out ways of getting my parcels indexed earlier in the database, so that they would always make it into the results, but I don't think there is a way that we users can cause it to happen.

[Cerise Sorbet]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

The reason I've talked about Google is because LL uses a Google search engine (the GSA). They were talking about using a different one but I don't know if they made the change. 

---

I, too, would be interested to know if they ever did make that change.  I'd heard that they intended to switch to Lucene and integrate the whole in-world mess with Marketplace search, but obviously that integration has gone nowhere (and Marketplace itself has had no substantive improvements for at least a year).  

I was given to understand that GSA licensing itself was orders of magnitude higher than they'd predicted--and that wasn't counting the (then?) high cost of staffing even marginal GSA competence.  So they had incentive to dump it, but dunno if they finally did.

---

Yes, they got rid of the Google back end with the new search interface introduced in May. The interface on the web search for V1 viewers looks almost exactly like the Google based one, but it is now a simulation that really draws results from the new system. They originally said that there would be no support for 1.23, then they changed their minds.