Bye Bye Traffic Bots/Camping

You are making a mistake Kitty. Argos said, "A furniture creator that focusses all their energy into creating furniture is at a huge disadvantage regardless of how good their furniture is.", and 3ring said, "That isn't Phil's fault", to which you replied:-

See your mistake? If you don't, then I'll spell it out. If people want to focus all their efforts in creating things, and no effort on learning to do well in search, it is NOT my fault.

Yes they are, but you write about it as though it's wrong. It is NOT wrong by any stretch of the imagination, and *nobody* in the search engine world even suggests that it is. But then I suppose it depends an what you mean by "artificially". There are some artificial ranking manipulations that are plainly wrong - wrong targetting, for instance - but we're not talking about those.

Inventing reasons for doing it isn't your normal style, Kitty. I'm surprised that you resorted to it.

You're making another mistake. As 3ring said, if people buy things because they are in stores that rank highly, it is their own fault. People only buy things that they like, and being highly ranked won't change that. What high rankings do, is get people to the stores. If there is nothing there that they like, they won't buy. It's perfectly simple.

I agree with that, and I hope you weren't including me in it. I never pay for Picks in any way - L$ or free goodies - and yet the last time I looked, of the top 4 ranked places, my store had more Picks to it than the other 3 combined.

Search is, for businesses, a limited marketing tool. It's all well and good that some people spend all their time making whatever they make, but business is not just creation! If you treat this like a business then you do what a business should do and take advantage of every opportunity to market yourself that is within your means. If you don't feel like making it so you can be found more easily for your relevant keywords, more power to you.

The important thing is that people are finding relevant results for their searches. Some sex club that happens to throw in "furniture" in the description won't rank high in the results because they have high traffic. If people don't think about how they want to be found, that is not Phil's or anyone else's problem. Page 1 is important, but it is in no way an indicator of quality. What it is is an indicator of who takes their business seriously, and who has been lucky or skilled enough in the past to develop an appropriate following.

You and Marcel both made the point that there were people ahead of you for "low prim" that you didn't think deserved to be that high up for "low prim" because you're better than they are. You both claimed bumping those listings down made the results more "relevant".

You're obviously entitled to that opinion, but don't pretend you bumped a competitor for the "greater good". You did it for yourself, whether the change in ranking benefits everyone else or not is not something you're concerned with.

What makes you think they can't?

You can rank high for whatever you want, it doesn't even need to be present on the parcel page. Just name incoming links after the keyword of your choice and you'll automatically become relevant for that keyword given enough indexed links. All that keeps that "sex club" from ranking for "random unrelated keyword)" is the fact that they choose not to or they don't realize they can.

The old search didn't become entirely useless overnight, it's something that happened gradually over many months as more and more people realized that they could control it and decided they needed to hop on the bandwagon to stay competitive.

Nothing changed other than the fact that we're at the start again. Compare the results from now with those that will exist in 6 months and we'll see how "relevant" it all still is then.

You are mistaken, Kitty. In fact, you're mixing things up. I said that about the #1 ranked place for 'low prim furniture' in the traffic rankings Places tab - a long time ago - because it didn't sell low prim furniture (that place really did deserve to be moved down). I haven't said anything like that about the new search. I can't speak for Marcel, but I don't recall him saying it.

Exactly what does that mean in concrete terms?

And we've come full circle You can't just go and do that, Kitty. It's not as straight forward as that. You can do it to some extent, though not quite as you described, but not when people are actually competing with knowledge. The more time that goes by, the more people will learn, and the less effective it will be.

As a general point, anyone who subverts the intention of a system to be generally useful to a community is a lowlife.
That applies in SL as much as it does in RL.

If Picks are intended to be a measure of true popularity/relevance, then anyone who pays people for their Picks is subverting that intention - and is a lowlife.
Anyone who runs or hires an avatar farm for Picks is a lowlife.

BUT - Let me be absolutely clear --
I see nothing wrong with people paying to get their offerings way up in noticeable places in Search screens - as long as the fact that they are paying for exposure is clear.

Look at a Google screen.
The Paid-for listings are on page 1, but it's clear that they are there simply because they are paid for, and not because the search algorithm put them there as being more relevant to the users query.
The "lowlifes" come into the picture when they create an artificial set of references in order to subvert the design of the search ranking algorithm.

See Post #207 above

Its a shame that SL is run by greed now. So much has been lost. I gave up trying to talk sense to so many. Its all about greed now.

I did, and I stand by what I said.

It's a shame that some people think in those terms. Business isn't greed - not in the accusative way you talked of it - it's profits. SL is no different to any other system - the web, the world, whatever. It's not a social system. It's a place to be. And it isn't "run by" profits. If it doesn't work for you, that's what you should be talking about - not objecting to normal things. Did the new search fail you?

ok. so now oyu know how it works. if you have a store, and you want to be on that page, you know wut you need to do. deal with it.

i couldn't care less that they care less. they got what they wanted, i got what i wanted. PLUS - not every pick is for money. most people don't do add picks for money gain. deal with it.

When indexed, a pick's name will become associated with the parcel the link points to. If there are keywords in the pick's name that aren't on your parcel page, you create new "relevancy" and start showing up for those new keywords.

Phil does have a point that it's more effective to use that technique for keywords you're already "relevant" for, but in the end it's just a matter of deciding your end goal and then throwing enough picks at the problem (using interlinked parcels will work fine too).

I didn't say that, and I certainly didn't mean that.

Ok then, it's still the way it works regardless .

What's your fault is that they do badly in search as a result. As you've mentioned, it's "competitive advantage". Thus, if NOBODY (including you) was optimising their search, nobody would need to. Now, yes, even then not everybody would be #1, but that wouldn't create fault because nobody would be actually making knowing effort to create that situation.



Often there are multiple options for things that they might like, and they buy the first one, and then the money is gone.

ah Phil, the one who must always be right and have the last word. Its a shame you must slant what others say as being negative. When profits become the most important reason SL has failed. Search? not at all the way I search has never failed me. Is it greed errr profit driven? Yup, no doubt. I been around way to long for search to fail me But then I know where to go 99% of the times.
Now go ahead and twist my words as you wish and be sure to have that all important last word

C'est la vie. It's not my concern whether or not other store owners optimise for the search. If they don't optimise, it's their own fault - it's nothing to do with me. And remember that, even before the new search was launched, it was posted on the blog to optimise parcels for it, so you're tilting at windmills.

Then they should learn to shop around before making decisions. What they buy is not the responsibility of store owners, who got high rankings through optimisation, or by chance. You should be teaching people to shop around, and not writing complaints about the system that actually facilitates them shopping around.

I started the thread, so I'm allowed to get the last word in

I haven't twisted your words at all. You made a negative judgement (greed), and I pointed out that it isn't greed - it's profits-based business, and it doesn't run SL.

You could level the same negative judgement against the web and against the world itself, and you'd also be wrong.

Pls write my next post for me so you may argue with yourself

hehe.

A couple of days before the RC7 came along, I told someone that the forum has been very boring (for me) for weeks. I also said that I'm thinking of starting my own bots thread, just so I have something to get my teeth into. Then lo and behold, RC7 came along, and I had a good reason to start my own bots thread

There is no "c'est la vie" in Second Life.



It's your fault that they lose out more than they would do by not optimising.



People don't shop around because it takes them 20 minutes for each store to rezz. That isn't your fault, it's true.

Alright. C'est la Svie

It may be partly my doing, but it's simply not a fault. Heck, I've told people how to do it, for goodness sakes. You want blood?