Unverified Accounts Are Excluded From New Search

I have 3 ALT's. All of them are set to search and none of them have payment info on file.

One owns a group and he shows up in search with only the profile link.

Another doesn't own a group and he also shows up with just the profile link.

My 3rd ALT doesn't own a group and this is how he shows up:


"Your search - FIRSTNAME LASTNAME - did not match anything we could find within Second Life.
Nothing was found in Second Life containing "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME".

Suggestions:

* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords."

But if the have used the same credit card hundreds of times, they can be identified as being the same real person, and the "alt limit" kicks in.

It seems that's true, but the details of doing that for even 10 NPI's to try to skew results is a lot of work.
10 new groups at 100L each, and each group has to have at least 2 members.. thats a long time dicking around with logging in & out, and sending and answering group invites. Even if one managed to do this for 100 group-owning NPI's, they've just wasted days of time, L$10k, probably negated any/all short term benefits, and nobody really knows if that 100 would make any difference at all anyway.

A groups has to have at least 2 members in order not to be disbanded after 48 hours, not at least 2 members to be created in the first place. If I'm just creating a group to get onto the search pages, I'm not going to be too worried about it disbanding. If the group really does need to remain in order for the alt to remain listed - well, I'm sure someone can automate the invite/respond process (that sounds a much easier bot to write than a landbot!).

OK, there is the L$100 overhead per avatar - but if you are charging say L$1000 per pick per month for your services (which would mean such an avatar could be worth L$10,000 a month if you can find 10 customers), then that is hardly a dent in the profit margin, and possibly even worth doing the group stuff manually!

Matthew

There is no evidence that they're doing this anymore.

Because New Search is a long-term replacement for old search, and you can't have a search engine that omits the overwhelming majority of the user base. It's part of an effort to move certain functions off of the main grid servers. They can't fully replace Old Search yet, because New Search is still pretty buggy and weird (plus it takes 1-3 days to update), but as much as I'd hate to lose it, Old Search's days are numbered.


If this is true, that a Linden was actually surprised that residents would be following search optimization tactics, then that Linden must have been new. EVERY system can be gamed, and people who really want to be at the top will work to get there. Some people will put more work into gaming a system, or in doing "lazy things" to make money that they probably would have been much better off if they'd put the same amount of effort into learning how to build or script, and selling original material.

Look at the parcel listing for this club. If you scroll half-way down, you'll find that they've been trying to work the object-show-in-search angle by setting up not tens, not hundreds, but literally thousands of not-for-sale prims for the sole purpose of pumping up their keyword ranking:
http://world.secondlife.com/place/95e2faa3-daca-292c-7e4a-e7105b964f83

That's determination!

And this might be the issue. Although he owns the group, the group is not set to search.

Mathew wondered the same thing I mentioned, does the lack of NPI search results affect inbound search rankings? Any way we can figure that out?

Since group names can't be reused once expired, if those users aren't included for rankings until they have a search result web page, a side effect will be wasting group names won't it?

Well I've had a recent drop in traffic but not sure if that's linked.

Fyi, this topic has spawned a blog article by Taterino Nino:

http://www.massively.com/2008/03/10/no-payment-info-no-search-weight-put-down-your-seo-bots

Fwiw, it seems to me that lately there has been a big increase in the number of store owners who want to give people freebies for putting the store in picks. This would certainly invalidate that approach to optimizing search for one's own store.

Wildefire, I agree with Matthew that this should get a Jira; we have no way of knowing whether this behavior is intended or not. I notice you have a recent one about new residents not showing up in picks ... was that created in the early stages of your researching this, and should just be updated, or is that a separate issue?
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I hope to hell this isn't deliberate. If they're going to pull a stunt like this they should give us WoW type logins where we have one login and a choice of characters to choose from.

The idea that avs are not shown in search when they have no payment info on file isn't new. There was a thread about the very thing not long ago, and we found that some avs without payment info do show in search - pretty much what's been found in this thread, if I'm not mistaken. We tried to find a trigger/flag but we didn't find it. Maybe this thread will be more fruitful.

One thought occured to me, though. Can you remove payment info from an av? It could be that the ones we found previously had payment info on file, but had removed it, and LL may have a system that flags when payment info is registered, but doesn't unflag when it's removed.

Incidentally, to avoid any confusion as to whether an av actually shows in search or not (Picks count or not), do a search on a popular business, and look at the avs that link to it. Those show in search.

When it comes to the question of whether or not an NPIOF avatar's picks are counted in new search, one thing I can comment on is that they do have 'web pages' associated with them, and their picks are on the 'web pages'. Even though they can't be found in search, if you know their UUID you can see their profile pages and all their picks.

I don't know of course if their picks are 'counted' or not by the search engine, just that the pages and picks exist as a web page within the SL search system. Also, there doesn't appear to be any difference in the data in the 'web page' of an NPIOF avatar and that of one with payment info onfile, or payment info used. What I'm getting at is, if the pages are all 'stored' together, and the pages are what the google appliance is scanning, then there's nothing within the context of the page to suggest that one page should be scanned and another shouldn't.

Having said all that, I don't know enough about search engines to know if it makes a difference, or how to test to see if it makes a difference.

-Atashi

OK so we have three issues

1) Should NPI avatars display in new search?

There is good evidence that they do not, unless they create a group, but it isn't clear whether this is intentional or a bug. Precisely why this is intentional is unclear

2) Should NPI avatars contribute to search rankings?

It has been assumed they do not on the basis that NPI's may not be appearing in search due to their profile not being available via a webpage - but there is not real evidence either way. It also appears that NPI's may have a webpage after all - so it seems pretty likely that NPI's are contributing to rankings even if not appearing in search

3) Should those opting out of the new search contribute to rankings?

If you opt out of search and hence withhold your profile details (including picks) from the web page version of your profile, it seems likely that you aren't contributing to rankings, but again no real evidence either way on this.


We really do need answers on all three from LL.

Matthew

For all three we really need clafication

I do think it is dumb to base anything based on Payment info when we are supposedly chucking it soon and going to ID verification anyhow.

This isn't true. I'm not sure what the reason is but it's not based on creating groups. I have an NPI who didn't create a group and he shows. Paid classified maybe?

All of my accounts have set their accounts to 'not show in search':

1) Has payment info and has used it, account has been around for a while, has created a group and is listed as owner in that group and another -- shows in Search with the message about not showing profile.

2) Has payment info and has used it, account has been around for a while, has never created a group but is listed as owner in two groups -- shows in Search with the message about not showing profile.

3) Has payment info but has never used it, account has been around for roughly 2-3 weeks, has never created a group and is not listed as owner in any group -- does not show at all in Search.

4) Does not have payment info, account has been around for roughly 2-3 weeks, has never created a group and is not listed as owner in any group -- does not show at all in Search.


The biggest issue I've noticed is that the accounts that do not show in search are also not showing in any of the name2key databases -- mooph, whatever zonkster uses, onrez and slexchange. The only way I could send a zonkster message to account #3 was to register her to zonkster. The only way to get an onrez purchase to her was to specifically register her to onrez. That, to me, is a bigger pain in the rear than not showing in search, since all of my accounts have opted out of that anyway.

Sorry, meant to say "good but inconclusive evidence..."

Oh, and if you are wonder why someone would opt out of search, it's so your inworld profile doesn't get hoovered up into third party websites such as

http://digging.secondlife.innx.co.jp/resident/de0f9761-90cf-41b8-8a7b-4cb161895e98

(which I just came across - sorry for using you as the sample, Ciaran).

Matthew

Through some other tests I've done, I've confirmed that information in a NPIOF's profile is not indexed. If it's not indexed, there's no way it can affect search results. Their profiles simply don't exist, as far as New Search is concerned. I'm sure this is because the profile HTML page isn't being generated for them- not even for those with the "Resident Profile" link.

Nopes... Her classified appears in the little box to the side, but her account doesn't show up in search.

I've seen others ask the question: Do the profiles of residents who ARE listed but have explicitly opted out of search affect search rankings?

I do not know the answer to this question, although, this is something that can be tested.

Hi hon! I checked Atashi's idea and found there IS a web page...



Try "Crystalline Fairey", a business/testing alt I made a week or so ago and haven't done much with yet.



Gives " Your search - Crystalline Fairey - did not match anything we could find within Second Life."

But!

http://world.secondlife.com/resident/e49dc099-3aa7-4910-b1c3-75fbb973ccf8

According to her web profile, she was born on March 1st.

So it seems they ARE in the database, just not being shown as results maybe?

You're confusing me (don't worry, it's not hard). I can find a NPIOF in the new search and I see his picks when i click the link, so what do you mean by not indexed?