Second Life Forums Archive - Traffic (it's about time I understood it)

Bolton Vanmoer

Registered User

Join date: 6 Dec 2006

Posts: 7

01-22-2007 11:47

Ok, I am sure this has been covered, but i can't find an answer. How does traffic work? What gets a hit? Can 1 person give multiple hits during same visit and how long does someone have to be on your land before you get a hit off them?

Kitty Barnett

Registered User

Join date: 10 May 2006

Posts: 5,586

01-22-2007 12:41

/327/67/161401/1.html

From: Kitty Barnett

There have been a couple of threads recently asking the exact same thing.

http://forums.secondlife.com/showth...ghlight=traffic explains both the official Linden answer, and my attempts which seems to suggest it works very different now.

All you had to do was click search and type in traffic: /invalid_link.html

SuezanneC Baskerville

Forums Rock!

Join date: 22 Dec 2003

Posts: 14,229

01-22-2007 13:59

I posted the remainder of this post in the Linden Answers forum, but received no answer. Since we weren't supposed to bump posts in Linden Answers, I finally sent a forum PM to a Linden forum moderator and received a reply that they would forward my post to a developer for possible response.

Later that day they closed the Linden Answers forum.

The question of just what traffic numbers mean has come up many times and many replies point to a rather out of date article in the Knowledgebase. In the hopes of preventing this question from being answered by a link to that article I'm going to quote the entire article here:

From: someone

What is Traffic (Dwell)?This document was originally written on 09-24-2004 by Haney Linden, and updated on 03-04-2005 by Jeska Linden. Please note some of this info is out-of-date and kept for historic purposes only—specifically, we no longer have monthly US$ Developers Incentives, but the general principles of traffic still apply.

What is Traffic ? (Dwell)
Linden introduced "traffic" or "dwell" as a way to reward residents who create popular locations. Each night a pool of $L is paid out to landowners in proportion to the number of avatars visiting and the amount of time spent on any of their parcels. The dwell that any one avatar triggers in a day is divided up proportionally to the time spent on any given parcel.
The total dwell generated by an avatar is the same whether they spend 5 minutes or 24 hours in SL on a particular day.

· An avatar must spend at least 5 minutes on a parcel for any dwell to register. Landowners who own several parcels next to each other may benefit from joining them in case some avatars spend less than 5 minutes on any parcel.

· Each month, Linden offers a $US reward to the 2% of landowners who receive the most dwell - in proportion to the dwell their properties received. In August of 2004, US$2,308 was distributed to 36 landowners.

· Dwell on group land also counts. The nightly $L that results from dwell on group-owned land is distributed equally to all members. However, the dwell "points" that count toward the monthly US$ awards are distributed to the members who contributed land allocations to group land, in proportion to their contribution. This offers a better chance for someone in the group to receive some of the US$ awards. We started tracking this September 1st so the September US$ awards will reflect group land.

· Both visible and invisible Private Islands receive dwell.

· The nightly L$ pool and the monthly US$ pool increase regularly, based on the growth of Second Life.

· Dwell also determines which "Popular Places" are selected each night. You can see these by clicking on the Find button and selecting the "Popular Places" tab. They also appear on the Map as a "thumbs up" icon.

· The dwell of all avatars count, including the 7-day trial accounts.

Group Dwell
Some more information about Dwell and Groups:

Group members who contribute land allocations get credit towards these awards in proportion to the amount of land allocation they’ve contributed. The daily $L that results from traffic on group land is paid to all group members equally.

Private Islands also receive traffic and in most situations it goes to the owner of the island. The exception is if the Private lsland is set to a group, then the group members will equally share the daily L$ dwell. However, when calculating the monthly reward, all traffic goes to the owner. Private Island owners should make sure that the same group does not own land on the mainland, otherwise the traffic won't be counted correctly. Also, if a Private Island is transferred then the traffic for that month won't count towards the monthly award.

Another piece of text that gets mentioned when the question comes up is said to be found in the F1 help:

From: someone

How Traffic Works.

Imagine that every Resident has one point of traffic they can bestow each day. For their presence somewhere to count, they must be at that location for at least five minutes. So if a Resident logs in for five minutes and stays on a parcel of land for that time before then logging out, that parcel earns one point - because they spent all of their in-world time there.

Now lets say the next day the same Resident logs in and spends one hour in one place, and one hour in another place, then logs out. Each parcel they spend time on will get half of the traffic, so each will earn 0.5 points. So even though the Resident spent far more time in each location - they earn less dwell than the place she spent five minutes at the previous day.

Finally, on the third day - they log in and spend eight hours in one place, and two hours somewhere different. The first venue will get 0.8 points, and the latter will get 0.2 point of traffic.

So - the traffic generated by a Resident has nothing to do with the length of time they spend somewhere. It is based on the proportion of their in-world time they spend somewhere.

Nite Zelmanov brings up these points:

From: Nite Zelmanov

These posts all point to a KB article that doesn't explain the traffic number at all. It says how you give out traffic, but not how the actual parcel traffic is calculated for display. Does each day show the previous day's total? Is it cumulative in some way? Averaged? Who knows?!?

Kelly Linden says:

From: someone

In theory traffic works like this: each person has X traffic to give, independent of how long they are online. That X is divided among all parcels they spent time on according to how much of the time they were online was spent there. Very short times on parcels are discarded (traveling over a parcel doesn't count)
...
It is a 437 line perl script.

The explanation that an avatar gets so many points that get distributed to each parcel in which the avatar spends over some minimum amount in proportion to the percent of time they spend on each parcel is not real complicated, but it isn't complete, and some folks don't believe that this is actually the case, and offer alternative explanations of how traffic is calculated. Here is Kitty Barnett's post of that nature:

From: Kitty Barnett

I thought I had explained what the result was.

I started thinking the knowledge base article was how traffic actually worked, the only thing I was personally curious about was how many traffic "points" an avie got assigned in a day so I logged my alt on and let it idle for about 15 minutes and logged it off. The next day the traffic read 17 which wouldn't account for places being able to get 60-80k+ worth of traffic.

Next was letting my alt idle for much longer than the original 15 minutes which according to what the Lindens keep telling, shouldn't affect the generated traffic in any way as long as it's the only place it visited that day. The next day just showed the amount of minutes I left it idle.

Next was letting it idle for 5 minutes there on the parcel and then idle for just under an hour somewhere else which if the article were true should give a negliable rating since it spent 10 times more time on the second parcel than it did the first. The result just reflected the number of minutes.

Idling along with my alt added twice as much which definitely contradicted the article since I'd be logged in for the better part of a day and only spent 10 minutes idling/testing so whatever I added should have been close to nothing, not the equal amount my alt did.

Take a look at what's on popular places at different times throughout the day, and make your own average of how many people are on the sim during the day and then multiply by 60 minutes and 24 hours and you'll get a number that's on the same order to what their traffic reads the next day.

I honestly prefer the old way, it puts greater value on social gatherings since whoever attends those isn't likely to idle online 24 hours a day and their traffic would be more valueable; with the way it seems to be right now, it doesn't matter if you attract a zombie or a live person, they're worth the exact same in terms of traffic.

Is it possible the traffic calculation method has been changed to something along the lines Kitty suggests and the support and documentation staff haven't been advised of this change?

Nite's questions "how the actual parcel traffic is calculated for display. Does each day show the previous day's total? Is it cumulative in some way? Averaged?" bring up points that the explanation of how an avatars points get split up don't cover at all.

Perhaps the confusion over the matter could be reduced by making public the 437 lines of perl code, or whatever piece of source code is actually currently responsible for generating traffic numbers. I'm sure the that with over two million residents to look it over someone would figure it out.

I think a proper answer to this question requires responses directly from the programming staff responsible for writing and maintaining the traffic code; preferably from more than one person to see if their answers agree with each other. The explanation should be complete enough that one can perform tests and verify whether the actual displayed traffic figures reflect the intent of the traffic algorithm.

-------------------------

Good luck on ever getting a complete explanation of the traffic system.

_____________________

-

So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them.

I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to

http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne

-

http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03.

Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard,
Robin, and Ryan

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Johan Durant

Registered User

Join date: 7 Aug 2006

Posts: 1,657

01-22-2007 19:03

It could be that they're purposely obfuscating the details so as to prevent gaming of the system.

_____________________

(Aelin 184,194,22)

The Motion Merchant - an animation store specializing in two-person interactions

SuezanneC Baskerville

Forums Rock!

Join date: 22 Dec 2003

Posts: 14,229

01-22-2007 19:26

From: Johan Durant

It could be that they're purposely obfuscating the details so as to prevent gaming of the system.

Yes, quite possible, but it would be real simple for LL to say: "We aren't going to tell you how traffic works, because it would allow gaming of the system, so don't waste time asking again."

_____________________

-

So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them.

I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to

http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne

-

http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03.

Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard,
Robin, and Ryan

-

Yumi Murakami

DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat!

Join date: 27 Sep 2005

Posts: 6,860

01-23-2007 10:34

I think the above describes the old Dwell system, which is now no longer used.

The traffic ratings shown in the Search window seem to just be 1 point per avatar per minute. (And I think they have always been..)

VBMeister Young

Registered User

Join date: 19 Jan 2007

Posts: 13

Is there a location that shows the traffic of locations

02-16-2007 08:48

I am looking for a website or something that breaks the the traffic of all locations based on business or some other criteria ....like dance clubs, malls, gun shops, etc....I received one from a person and cant find it and it listed only the top 10.

Thanks

Detox Watanabe

Registered User

Join date: 20 Mar 2007

Posts: 23

09-30-2007 10:25

I ran a month of traffic survey using a scanner.

the result was usually (that is all but one day) - minutes spend on the land by visitors = traffic.

that one time I had 100% more visitor minutes than usual (party x)), but the increase was only 10%.

however the system works, it's weird.

Jessica Elytis

Goddess

Join date: 7 Oct 2005

Posts: 1,783

09-30-2007 10:37

Short answer: Traffic is a bunch off bullsh**.

You get better data from Resident made Visitor Counters for your own land, and the traffic numbers is search are meaningless due to all teh gaming of the system.

~Jessy

_____________________

When your friend does somethign stupid:

From: Aldo Stern

Dude, you are a true and good friend, and I love you like the brother that my mom claims she never had, but you are in fact acting like a flaming douche on white toast with a side order of dickknob salsa..maybe you should reconsider this course of action and we go find something else to do.

Detox Watanabe

Registered User

Join date: 20 Mar 2007

Posts: 23

09-30-2007 10:46

correction on my prior post... traffic came in late today.

the traffic increase was 100%. it's equal (+/- 5%) to the time visitors spend on your land in minutes.

1 resident staying for 24 hours should be 1440 in traffic.

that pearl script has a lot of comments in it I guess xD

Traffic (it's about time I understood it)
Bolton Vanmoer Registered User Join date: 6 Dec 2006 Posts: 7	01-22-2007 11:47 Ok, I am sure this has been covered, but i can't find an answer. How does traffic work? What gets a hit? Can 1 person give multiple hits during same visit and how long does someone have to be on your land before you get a hit off them?
Kitty Barnett Registered User Join date: 10 May 2006 Posts: 5,586	01-22-2007 12:41 /327/67/161401/1.html From: Kitty Barnett There have been a couple of threads recently asking the exact same thing. http://forums.secondlife.com/showth...ghlight=traffic explains both the official Linden answer, and my attempts which seems to suggest it works very different now. All you had to do was click search and type in traffic: /invalid_link.html
SuezanneC Baskerville Forums Rock! Join date: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 14,229	01-22-2007 13:59 I posted the remainder of this post in the Linden Answers forum, but received no answer. Since we weren't supposed to bump posts in Linden Answers, I finally sent a forum PM to a Linden forum moderator and received a reply that they would forward my post to a developer for possible response. Later that day they closed the Linden Answers forum. The question of just what traffic numbers mean has come up many times and many replies point to a rather out of date article in the Knowledgebase. In the hopes of preventing this question from being answered by a link to that article I'm going to quote the entire article here: From: someone What is Traffic (Dwell)?This document was originally written on 09-24-2004 by Haney Linden, and updated on 03-04-2005 by Jeska Linden. Please note some of this info is out-of-date and kept for historic purposes only—specifically, we no longer have monthly US$ Developers Incentives, but the general principles of traffic still apply. What is Traffic ? (Dwell) Linden introduced "traffic" or "dwell" as a way to reward residents who create popular locations. Each night a pool of $L is paid out to landowners in proportion to the number of avatars visiting and the amount of time spent on any of their parcels. The dwell that any one avatar triggers in a day is divided up proportionally to the time spent on any given parcel. The total dwell generated by an avatar is the same whether they spend 5 minutes or 24 hours in SL on a particular day. · An avatar must spend at least 5 minutes on a parcel for any dwell to register. Landowners who own several parcels next to each other may benefit from joining them in case some avatars spend less than 5 minutes on any parcel. · Each month, Linden offers a $US reward to the 2% of landowners who receive the most dwell - in proportion to the dwell their properties received. In August of 2004, US$2,308 was distributed to 36 landowners. · Dwell on group land also counts. The nightly $L that results from dwell on group-owned land is distributed equally to all members. However, the dwell "points" that count toward the monthly US$ awards are distributed to the members who contributed land allocations to group land, in proportion to their contribution. This offers a better chance for someone in the group to receive some of the US$ awards. We started tracking this September 1st so the September US$ awards will reflect group land. · Both visible and invisible Private Islands receive dwell. · The nightly L$ pool and the monthly US$ pool increase regularly, based on the growth of Second Life. · Dwell also determines which "Popular Places" are selected each night. You can see these by clicking on the Find button and selecting the "Popular Places" tab. They also appear on the Map as a "thumbs up" icon. · The dwell of all avatars count, including the 7-day trial accounts. Group Dwell Some more information about Dwell and Groups: Group members who contribute land allocations get credit towards these awards in proportion to the amount of land allocation they’ve contributed. The daily $L that results from traffic on group land is paid to all group members equally. Private Islands also receive traffic and in most situations it goes to the owner of the island. The exception is if the Private lsland is set to a group, then the group members will equally share the daily L$ dwell. However, when calculating the monthly reward, all traffic goes to the owner. Private Island owners should make sure that the same group does not own land on the mainland, otherwise the traffic won't be counted correctly. Also, if a Private Island is transferred then the traffic for that month won't count towards the monthly award. Another piece of text that gets mentioned when the question comes up is said to be found in the F1 help: From: someone How Traffic Works. Imagine that every Resident has one point of traffic they can bestow each day. For their presence somewhere to count, they must be at that location for at least five minutes. So if a Resident logs in for five minutes and stays on a parcel of land for that time before then logging out, that parcel earns one point - because they spent all of their in-world time there. Now lets say the next day the same Resident logs in and spends one hour in one place, and one hour in another place, then logs out. Each parcel they spend time on will get half of the traffic, so each will earn 0.5 points. So even though the Resident spent far more time in each location - they earn less dwell than the place she spent five minutes at the previous day. Finally, on the third day - they log in and spend eight hours in one place, and two hours somewhere different. The first venue will get 0.8 points, and the latter will get 0.2 point of traffic. So - the traffic generated by a Resident has nothing to do with the length of time they spend somewhere. It is based on the proportion of their in-world time they spend somewhere. Nite Zelmanov brings up these points: From: Nite Zelmanov These posts all point to a KB article that doesn't explain the traffic number at all. It says how you give out traffic, but not how the actual parcel traffic is calculated for display. Does each day show the previous day's total? Is it cumulative in some way? Averaged? Who knows?!? Kelly Linden says: From: someone In theory traffic works like this: each person has X traffic to give, independent of how long they are online. That X is divided among all parcels they spent time on according to how much of the time they were online was spent there. Very short times on parcels are discarded (traveling over a parcel doesn't count) ... It is a 437 line perl script. The explanation that an avatar gets so many points that get distributed to each parcel in which the avatar spends over some minimum amount in proportion to the percent of time they spend on each parcel is not real complicated, but it isn't complete, and some folks don't believe that this is actually the case, and offer alternative explanations of how traffic is calculated. Here is Kitty Barnett's post of that nature: From: Kitty Barnett I thought I had explained what the result was. I started thinking the knowledge base article was how traffic actually worked, the only thing I was personally curious about was how many traffic "points" an avie got assigned in a day so I logged my alt on and let it idle for about 15 minutes and logged it off. The next day the traffic read 17 which wouldn't account for places being able to get 60-80k+ worth of traffic. Next was letting my alt idle for much longer than the original 15 minutes which according to what the Lindens keep telling, shouldn't affect the generated traffic in any way as long as it's the only place it visited that day. The next day just showed the amount of minutes I left it idle. Next was letting it idle for 5 minutes there on the parcel and then idle for just under an hour somewhere else which if the article were true should give a negliable rating since it spent 10 times more time on the second parcel than it did the first. The result just reflected the number of minutes. Idling along with my alt added twice as much which definitely contradicted the article since I'd be logged in for the better part of a day and only spent 10 minutes idling/testing so whatever I added should have been close to nothing, not the equal amount my alt did. Take a look at what's on popular places at different times throughout the day, and make your own average of how many people are on the sim during the day and then multiply by 60 minutes and 24 hours and you'll get a number that's on the same order to what their traffic reads the next day. I honestly prefer the old way, it puts greater value on social gatherings since whoever attends those isn't likely to idle online 24 hours a day and their traffic would be more valueable; with the way it seems to be right now, it doesn't matter if you attract a zombie or a live person, they're worth the exact same in terms of traffic. Is it possible the traffic calculation method has been changed to something along the lines Kitty suggests and the support and documentation staff haven't been advised of this change? Nite's questions "how the actual parcel traffic is calculated for display. Does each day show the previous day's total? Is it cumulative in some way? Averaged?" bring up points that the explanation of how an avatars points get split up don't cover at all. Perhaps the confusion over the matter could be reduced by making public the 437 lines of perl code, or whatever piece of source code is actually currently responsible for generating traffic numbers. I'm sure the that with over two million residents to look it over someone would figure it out. I think a proper answer to this question requires responses directly from the programming staff responsible for writing and maintaining the traffic code; preferably from more than one person to see if their answers agree with each other. The explanation should be complete enough that one can perform tests and verify whether the actual displayed traffic figures reflect the intent of the traffic algorithm. ------------------------- Good luck on ever getting a complete explanation of the traffic system. _____________________ - So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them. I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne - http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03. Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard, Robin, and Ryan -
Johan Durant Registered User Join date: 7 Aug 2006 Posts: 1,657	01-22-2007 19:03 It could be that they're purposely obfuscating the details so as to prevent gaming of the system. _____________________ (Aelin 184,194,22) The Motion Merchant - an animation store specializing in two-person interactions
SuezanneC Baskerville Forums Rock! Join date: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 14,229	01-22-2007 19:26 From: Johan Durant It could be that they're purposely obfuscating the details so as to prevent gaming of the system. Yes, quite possible, but it would be real simple for LL to say: "We aren't going to tell you how traffic works, because it would allow gaming of the system, so don't waste time asking again." _____________________ - So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them. I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne - http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03. Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard, Robin, and Ryan -
Yumi Murakami DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat! Join date: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 6,860	01-23-2007 10:34 I think the above describes the old Dwell system, which is now no longer used. The traffic ratings shown in the Search window seem to just be 1 point per avatar per minute. (And I think they have always been..)
VBMeister Young Registered User Join date: 19 Jan 2007 Posts: 13	Is there a location that shows the traffic of locations 02-16-2007 08:48 I am looking for a website or something that breaks the the traffic of all locations based on business or some other criteria ....like dance clubs, malls, gun shops, etc....I received one from a person and cant find it and it listed only the top 10. Thanks
Detox Watanabe Registered User Join date: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 23	09-30-2007 10:25 I ran a month of traffic survey using a scanner. the result was usually (that is all but one day) - minutes spend on the land by visitors = traffic. that one time I had 100% more visitor minutes than usual (party x)), but the increase was only 10%. however the system works, it's weird.
Jessica Elytis Goddess Join date: 7 Oct 2005 Posts: 1,783	09-30-2007 10:37 Short answer: Traffic is a bunch off bullsh**. You get better data from Resident made Visitor Counters for your own land, and the traffic numbers is search are meaningless due to all teh gaming of the system. ~Jessy _____________________ When your friend does somethign stupid: From: Aldo Stern Dude, you are a true and good friend, and I love you like the brother that my mom claims she never had, but you are in fact acting like a flaming douche on white toast with a side order of dickknob salsa..maybe you should reconsider this course of action and we go find something else to do.
Detox Watanabe Registered User Join date: 20 Mar 2007 Posts: 23	09-30-2007 10:46 correction on my prior post... traffic came in late today. the traffic increase was 100%. it's equal (+/- 5%) to the time visitors spend on your land in minutes. 1 resident staying for 24 hours should be 1440 in traffic. that pearl script has a lot of comments in it I guess xD

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Traffic (it's about time I understood it)