Bye Bye Traffic Bots/Camping

Again, it can be _made_ different in SL.



So stop claiming that it's simply a matter of working and learning. As you've said, it's competitive advantage - in other words, if _everyone_ works and learns, it breaks down.

Mister Trebuchet, you say in a better way, what I intended to bring over all the time. What people think of as "gaming search" or "cheating" is nothing more then optimizing for the current search engine. Those who do not want to do it, don't. It is nothing different then optimizing for a search engine.

Kitty, are you just argumenting for the sake of argumenting? Because I can hardly find anything sensible in your posting. I mean:



Seriously, what the heck are you talking about? What are the rules you are talking about? Your rules? Or maybe Linden Labs rules? The Linden Lab that helped me answering some doubts about those picks I pay for?

If in your opinion people who optimize for search, should be delisted, I really doubt why I am even trying to talk to you. Yes, that is what you are saying. "In any way tries to manipulate search" you say. Please take some time to read back your words.

Really, I do not understand the people who are against search optimalisation. How on earth would you find anything relevant on the World Wide Web if websites did not optimize? Should we all just type in some pages and hope that someone finds us? Wake up people, Google has entire pages that instruct on search optimalisation. And Google is what is used in SL.

Probably I refrain from furter reactions because I feel I am getting pissed off. You can come to me anytime for a sensible discussion with some good arguments back and forth, and in the end no one needs to be right. But please, keep it real and dont go and make up arguments for the arguments sake.

Marcel

The answer to all of the above is no.

There's no reason to. SL is different things to different people. For some, it's plain business, for some, it's social, for some, it's a place to play, and so on. There's no reason to tailor it to suit one particular desire of it.

That's true, but most people don't try to learn, so it holds up.

I may take too much easy (and before i say: i'm guessing here....), but what is the hard part to understand? The current search engine is based: 50% on the keywords (in order of importance: title, parcel description, parcel contents marked as "show in search" and 50% on the inbound links. The other parameters (like transactions, traffic, are almost unrelevant), so what u need to do apart adjust your land name and description? One thing: put the damn "pick" into your hundred alts (and there are ppl out there with that number) to generate hundreds of inbound links.
Does it works? Yes it works.... is it cheating? Indeed it is... i don't think that someone really thought that the new engine was "democratic", it's not... it just kicked out those "poor people" that aren't so smart to figure out (even if it's easy!) how it works, and the "big fishes" are pumping it more than they did with the bots, and (the sad part) it costs less than before!

PS: i see ppl believing that the avatars without "payment info" aren't crawled by the search engine... lol. Of course this is NOT correct.

The place that fakes traffic and fakes links can get extra sales with inferior goods just by getting people in the door. People see a store at the top of the rankings for tables, they go there, see some tables, and buy one. For the people that don't want to shop around a lot, they are going to buy from the first place that has something close enough to what they wanted. If they buy at the first place, it doesn't matter how good the products at the second place are.

I know what I said, I also know quite a lot store owners are entirely self-centered and refuse to see beyond their own bottom line which is why they shouldn't be allowed to influence their own ranking. Not with the old search, not with the new search.

You wanted to improve your ranking, so you did. That put you ahead of Phil who "optimized" to get back ahead of you and now you're looking for another edge to get back ahead of him.

That's just playing games with search, and right now it's two players, a year from now it'll be dozens, each constantly trying to get an edge.

If you honestly think that you're not just selfishly manipulating search to serve your own interests and noone else's, but are actually somehow providing a valuable service by skewing the results, then no, there is no point in discussion.

It's 2 furniture designers putting their efforts into playing with the search engine instead of designing furniture. Shouldn't there be a better way to let the furniture designers that put their efforts into designing furniture get to the top?

And at the moment you're supporting it being tailored just to support business.



So you're simoultaneously telling people that it'll work if they learn, while being aware that the system depends on their not doing so?

Yes, if you don't have a couple of eyes (i believe even one is enough). So there are ppl around tping and buying the first s*it they see? Good! They deserved it.. they will learn eventually in the future to spend their money in a better way. So they deserved to waste their money, and you are not entitled to save their soul showing your face for first.
I prefeer to have many customers because of my top quality products, they share the word, they tell their friends about me, good customers makes my business better not a search engine.. am i positioned well (indeed, i am) but if i weren't able to understand the search engine it wouldn't have been a drama, i can survive without it.

You sell when u make good things! You sell when u make good things! You sell when u make good things! You sell when u make good things! You sell when u make good things! STOP finding excuses about the search engine, if you aren't good enough to build good things (and im not talking only about the look; it means: look + ideas + fantasy + give what they want) your destiny is to "die"... and it's not because of a search engine.

PS: im NOT talking about you.. im talking in generale about those ppl that constantly moans because their sales are poor and instead make their business better, they moans about the search engine positioning.

PPSS: excuse me about my english, is already bad enough normally... when im "hot" it's even worst.

Vitt,

Very good points. I will look your shop up next time I get in world.

Argos: I sell close to 1000 low prim furniture items in my store. It's none of your business, or concern, whether or not I spend all my time making more.

No I'm not. I'm supporting accepting it as we find it, and taking things from their.

The system doesn't depend on people not learning. I never said anything like that. The system works fine, and it's up to each person to make of it what they will.

The bottom line is that there are people here who will never be content with any search system that LL adopts. A better way is to accept what is, and take it from there.

When I said, "the system breaks down if everyone works and learns", you replied "that's true". Right on page 11. If the system breaks down if everyone works and learns, then by extension the system must only work if some people do not learn.

Actually. People just typing in some pages and then the search engines indeing on content alone would be a wonderful thing.

It is important to differentiate between
- SEO as structuring the page content intelligently to optimise for search and
- Search Engine Spamming by creation of artificial inbound links, repeated key words (so tired) etc.

People who use sledgehammer exploits to try and gain higher rankings should definitely be delisted.
LL should be on the lookout for link bots and the like.

You didn't say that - go up and read what you wrote. My reply was about the competitive advantage - not about the search system itself.

But you've also previously said that manipulating the search system was a part of competitive advantage.

And your point is?

I repeat:-

You didn't say that - go up and read what you wrote. My reply was about the competitive advantage - not about the search system itself.

You're just being argumentative for the sake of it. It's not worth having a discussion with you.

Ideally.. but it's not, recently one of the biggest IT company (in the world) named: NO_NAME, has been put on the shame list because their SEO hired for a couple of 100k USD named: NO_NAME and supposed to be one of the smart SEO on the face of this (real) world pumped that company to the google glory spamming the links everywhere (even on the blogs he were maintaining) in a subdole way.
So don't believe that a SEO have a sort of "morality", the smartest and the much paied ones aren't so... and they are paied so much because of a reason: they do what the company ask them to do: "score higher"... with *any* way.
Welcome to the "future", if it is a film i would say: "Mate, it is a damn war!".

I wasn't saying anything to contradict that. My point was that you are getting significant furniture sales that are based more on the search listing than the furniture itself. I'm not claiming that your stuff isn't worth buying either. You are clearly getting extra sales as a result of having a better understanding of how the search engine works. A furniture creator that focusses all their energy into creating furniture is at a huge disadvantage regardless of how good their furniture is.

Yes they are at a disadvantage. There's nothing wrong with that. For many people, my stuff is worth buying, and many send their friends in too. Strangers stop to tell me that, and other nice things too.

That's not my problem. It is up to each of us to deal with search in our own ways.

Since bots are cheap, might folks not still use them in order to draw traffic based on green dots on the map?

Sure, the bots wouldn't have as much influence as they do if traffic affects search rankings less than it does now, but if bots are cheap enough then might it not still pay to use them make your parcel look occupied on the map?

Some places might, but I see no merit in stores doing that. Personally, I'm content that people find my store in search, tp there, and look around.

Of course you are right, but then it depends on the content they typed, so there is always an influence from the author. To make it easier to find and be found, search engines published the ways to improve your results.

What exactly a link bot is, is not clear to me. Do you mean alts with picks? And what do you consider sledgehammer exploits? Is using a pick reward system an exploit? Not in my opinion. It is just one of the tools that we have to get noticed. No good in having great stuff for sale, if no one can find it.

Bottomline is that to sell, you have to make good stuff. No matter how high you rank. So after you created some good stuff, you have to make sure people can find you. Being on the 3th page does not help in that. So you put some effort in your search ranking, and go back to business. Which is building

Abusing a search system in my eyes, is making people find you where they did not want to find you at all. Like having 20 prim chairs for sale and present yourself as low prim shop. So what Phil did, and I did through Phils tips on this forum, is make sure people can find us. Both he and I sell low prim furniture. And when people search for "low prim" they find him and me both in the top 3. Isn't that exactly the point?

Marcel

I know Phil says no, but I have some anecdotal evidence that suggests having those accounts login for just an instant might matter. I don't know the timescale, but it seemed like an account that's been idle for maybe a week stops counting as an IBL. From what little I could observe, it looked like "all or nothing," not at all duration-sensitive, so to your larger point these momentary logins wouldn't be much of a load on anything, especially if scheduled for non-peak times. Again, it was just a couple of data points, so Phil probably knows better.

To SuezanneC's point about the value of "green dots" independent of Traffic, I think this is correct, but I think rather than bots, the "smart money" will be on a new style of "camping" in which a few campers will really act like "shoppers" to make the store look popular. This will be more work, but is likely to pay off better than any SEO ever could, at least for sales of items appealing to non-newbies.

To Kitty and Phil, about the IBLs from remote mall installations, maybe I missed it, but what exactly are you talking about? The text of what, matching the text of what, makes an IBL here? Is it somehow a plus that it's on a separate parcel? In a separate sim?