Unverified Accounts Are Excluded From New Search

Yes, this has nothing to do with the People tab, which is Old Search. This is all about New Search (the search box in the upper-right corner of your viewer) or the "All" tab in the old search (not the one labeled "All (old)."

Not upset at all.........just not going to give out the name of a new resident to SL that I just made friends with to a total stranger without his/her prior consent. I know I wouldn't appreiciate that if it were turned around. That's all.

SuezanneC, I don't think you have your images in the right order- your description doesn't seem to sync up with the pictures.

EDIT: Now they do.

When you are searching for a person, why would you use "all".............even "all (old)"?

Already fixed before you posted your correction.

Why wouldn't you use all to search for a person?

Because the search box in the main viewer window is an All search.

I use the new all search as my first search option for everything now. That's just me though. Often for people it doesn't work which would seem to have to do with the inconsistencies Wildfire is finding.

Okay...........so my way of searching is less buggy.

thanks.

(Thanx Suezanne, I just figured out what you all meant by HTML... and yes)

At least I'm learning stuff, LOL.

I almost always use the 'People' tab if I'm searching for someone...

Well I just did a quick run through with my alts and with people standing around the welcome area and it looks like Wildefire is right. I have a non-payment alt that's a year old who doesn't show in the new search. I don't even see her regular resident profile either. Every person with payment info on file shows up fully in the new search. Age verification doesn't seem to be a factor at all.

/me found the same thing... None of the no-payment on file people I searched had a web profile in search.

But might they still be indexed for pick links? Just not displayed as a result?

So how much then does a payment on file person get compensated for including a place in their picks?

How much does a non-payment person?

Before the new search, actually, over a year ago, I know one vendor who gave a free outfit once a month to a random person of their group who had them in picks.

With the new search, what is the L$ value of that? Especially in this light that minimizing alt/bots contributions to it means it's possibly of more value?

Same findings here - has this issue been raised in jira? It should be a bug until we here something definite from LL.

Matthew

Even if it's a bug, why get rid of it?

I know I pointed out to a Linden that the new search was being actively gamed by "pay you to have me in your picks" schemes and they were surprised at the time. This effectively cancels - most/a lot - of that cheating out since it's NPIs that are most likely to take advantage.

Search ranking doesn't have to take all input fairly, the input just has to be representative and limiting to only payment info on file is a large enough representative sample of the population that is - on the whole- less likely to be bribed into using their picks (and LL has direct control of how many alts they will allow on the same payment info).

NPI business owners only loose out their own pick, every payment info resident who has the business in their picks still counts, so there's no real disadvantage there at all either. If anything they (and everyone) benefit from anything that causes bigger stores to not be able to burry them in the bottom of the search results.

They could have solved by omitting the picks for NPI, but this works too. It's a good thing in my opinion, unless you're interested in buying your way to the top result.

That in and of itself says a lot,

So now you have to get traffic bots

AND add your place to their picks

AND provide payment info for each of them.

Geez gaming the system is starting to be work.

Hoy, I just ran a search on my alt, Trilliannas Ninetails (Yes, I've listed her as my alt in her profile!) All it gives me is the link to her profile and not her picks.. unlike Raudf. Trill doesn't have payment info on file.. which is totally futzed, considering when I made her I entered the info. 0.0;

Can't be on age verification, because I verified her when I verified Raudf.

I think Wildefire is right, if you are unverified (no payment on file) but you've created a group, you show up in (new) Search. My two alts are verified so I can't check.

Anyone have an unverified group-owning alt they can check up in the new search?

Doesn't the first example contain a misspelling in the name entered in the Search window? As entered, the surname is Blackflag, and the name suggested in the returned info is Black flag, with a space. That could affect your results.

The only real way to prevent abusing the search is to only count premium and conceirge members in searches for products.

This is because people can create hundreds of avs and make them "payment info used" by doing a single small linden purchase for each av.
Those people wont do that with premiums as it requires a contineous payment to LL.

I think it says "Did you _mean_ Black flag, as if to correct Blackflag 'cause nothing appeared with that name.

How much of the population in SL is Premium or Concierge?

I have a no-payment, unverified alt who is currently invisible in search. I'll have her start a group and in a few days we'll see, that should be a fairly definitive test of the group founder theory.

There are actually two issues here

i) NPI accounts not appearing in the new search (both under All and People)
ii) picks under NPI accounts not contributing to parcel rankings

Now, even if you agree with (ii) for the reasons you outline (i.e. stopping people from mining the search engine), (i) still seems extremely unfair and a bug needing to be fixed! But as many have said, some NPIs do add a lot to SL and it is unfair to lump them with bot runners just because they don't have a suitable credit card for SL!

We are, however, only guessing that (ii) is the case since it appears that there is no web accessible info for NPI's so no related web pages for the google appliance to index, but that isn't confirmed.

Although that does raise another question - if a (payment info) account opps out of search (e.g. because they don't want their profile to be openly accessible over the web), does that means their picks are not used in ranking parcels?

Moreover, as it appears that an NPI account can get around the above problems simply by creating a group.- which does suggest this whole thing is an error by LL rather than an attempt to inconvenience bots.

Matthew

Less than 1% of all accounts ever created.