Yet another All search oddity

Because of the recent changes in the All search rankings, I decided to do some testing with a 512 parcel. For the test, I wanted a searchterm that didn't return too many results, so that I could easily see any ranking changes as I made changes to the parcel's html page (parcel name and description, and the objects' names and descriptions). I chose "chesterfield furniture".

I used that phrase for the parcel's name and description, and placed 10 prims on the parcel (set to show in search but not set for sale), each of which used that phrase for its name and description. So the only text that I put onto the html page was 22 repetitions of "chesterfield furniture". I added 2 Picks to it - one from me and one from my main alt, so the html page had 2 IBLs with that phrase as link text.

When the parcel had beed crawled and indexed, it ranked #1 for the phrase and #2 for the word "chesterfield". That wasn't too big surprise, but what happened next was.

The rankings were no good to me because I wouldn't be able to see any ranking improvements following changes to the html page, so I decided to use a different phrase that returned more results - but not too many. I chose "dining room furniture", and I changed everything to that phrase. I also removed the 2 Picks and added them again for the changed parcel. After the crawl and indexing it ranked #10 for "dining room furniture". I'd rather it had been lower but I could work with that. What really surprised me was that it was still ranking #1 for "chesterfield furniture" and #2 for "chesterfield", even though those listings showed the new parcel title and description, and the page was the new one. That's the oddity.

The profile pages of me and my alt had been crawled and indexed and showed the new picks, so they shouldn't have been affecting anything to do with "chesterfield furniture".

Altight. Maybe it takes time for things to work their way out - different dataservers to be updated, for instance. But that was the day before yesterday, and the page still has those old rankings as well as the new one. It is still being ranked for those searchtermss when there is no instance of the word "chesterfield" anywhere to do with the parcel.

The only thought that I've had that might account for it is the serverside caching of query results, so that the results we see are not from fresh queries of the search system - maybe.

While I was writing this, I've just seen another oddity - double listings. At first I thought that the page had dropped to #3 for "chesterfield" - it has, but that's because the #1 ranked page is listed twice, as are other pages when Any Category is selected.

Whatever LL is doing with the All search, they are doing a very poor job of it at the moment.

If you search for "porcine" you'll find my search-test parcel I don't remember what I was testing, though. The only thing left are some odd search terms.

A likely story. You're just trying to get to Ursula like everybody else.

((/me takes note of a kink he'd omitted from his smutty-enough-parcel project.))

I'd be very interested in what becomes of the "chesterfield" rankings over time. I'm surprised at this result, but now I'm guessing that the rank may persist for as long as Pick IBLs last after the last login of the agent with that Pick. Which of course would mean that one could hugely manipulate results in new and disgusting ways.

Come to think of it, the double entry could be an artifact of the same mechanism. Maybe they changed the parcel or something, and both the old and new ones are showing until whenever the clean-out occurs. (Except... probably not a changed *parcel* exactly, because we know that wipes the rankings on the next crawl... don't we?)

Hey Phil!

After my chat with you yesterday you got me thinking about optimising the search parcel.

this is a copy of my post on another thread but i would love your opinion on it since you started this thread. I think I understand how the search works now but i would love to make sure

I've had that happen before too....

We moved to a new place. Pretty much everything was the same except for the location. My old lot - now renamed "FOR SALE 4098sq meters - L$3500 Monhtly" or whatever and totally empty save for a tier box and covenant giver - kicked my ass in search for months. On several occassions my ORGINAL location (a mainland plot - unused by me for many months) was showing up for my search terms as well.

With Google (who provides the algorhythm for sorting in the All Search now), this is not uncommon for databases to "fall back" to old versions from time to time when updates are going on and things are shuffling in. Also, inbound links take a long time to go away too. They aren't recalculated nearly as often by google - so they get added and removed at different intervals.

At least "traffic" has no bearing on search anymore. And it opens a whole new sub-business in SL now - SL-SEO (Search Engine Optimization). lol

It had never occured to me that a person's profile page doesn't change until they log out or in again, but my alt stays in more or less 24/7, and her page didn't change from the first to the second pick version in 2 days. So I logged her out and in again and her page was changed in the next hour or so. But that isn't the cause of the persistent "chesterfield" rankings because she never had that word in her picks. I'd made a mistake She only had the word "furniture" in her picks for that parcel until her page changed to the current "dining room furniture" version, but I didn't want to cloud the story by mentioning it.

Yes we do know that The Google system was written with the undoubted assumption that pages wouldn't completely change as mine has done (from the chesterfield version to the dining room version), so its workings may make use of that assumption, rather than treating each crawl/indexing as being all there is and building a whole new index for it.

It did cross my mind to see if I could use it to spawn a load of top rankings for many long-tail searchterms (your "new and disgusting ways" - just out of curiosity - but it would have sidetracked what I'm doing, so I'm pressing on with the testing.

You do realise that you've just confirmed the benefits of Qie's "new and disgusting ways", don't you?

Google can fall back on earlier databases because it's that big and, whilst there is more than one datacenter in LL's system, I doubt that the thing is big enough to fall back on earlier databases. Also, both results ('chesterfield' and 'dining room') are returned by the same datacenter.

/ derail

My whole sim is out of the All search this morning. Support (Live Chat) was very nice, but there isn't anything they can do. She said they are aware of the problem and are working on it. She also said things can pop out and and back in any minute, which seems odd to me. I assumed I would have to wait for another crawl and indexing.

The parcels still show in the old places tab, but not in the All search.

/end derail

when did this happen?
Also, if traffic has no bearing, why are people still using traffic bots?

Hi E.

Rankings in search seem to be changing at the moment and some really odd top rankings are showing up. For instance, one person reported that a 16m plot with one prim on it is suddenly at the top of the results for one of her target searchterms. The best I can suggest is to dig up the notecard that Honeybear sent out to shop tenants (I wrote it) and apply that to the parcel and items.

She's right. Earlier today I saw Lok's missing from the results (normally #1 for 'low prim furniture' and #3 for just 'furniture', but gone from both), but only for a minute or so.

Btw, right now I see you at #7 for 'low prim furniture' - your highest position

Thanks, Phil. That's comforting at least.

While I was on with Live Chat I asked if this was the result of LL working on changing the All search, or just a bug. For what it's worth, she said is that it seems like a bug.



Yay!

Thinking more on that, and on Rygel's post...

Until this lot, I'd never considered the possibility of words persisting in the database - both content and link text - but, since the system doesn't expect total changes of topic in pages, that could well be what's happening. Old/removed words could be reasonably expected to say something useful about the page. It could be that words from both content and IBLs remain in the database for the page ad infinitum, or until some sort of 'fresh start' occurs.

Years ago, Google used to do an update more or less monthly, when the whole index was refreshed. New pages that had been crawled but didn't show in the results became rankable after the update. It became known as the "Google Dance" for a particular reason which I won't go into here. Even though someone over at the XStreet forum thinks that it still occurs, it stopped years ago when they went over to a rolling/continual update system. But the GSA system may do an overall refresh once in a while - maybe automatically or maybe when the operator tells it to. In between times, it may be that words from pages and IBLs to the pages remain in the database *for* those pages. That may be what we're seeing with this oddity.

The double listings have gone, btw, so that was just a briefly-lived glitch.