Why are people bothered about traffic?

I don't see the big deal with traffic. Why is it considered such an important factor? High traffic doesn't mean high business.

People moan about campers but they are used because the myth that high traffic means good business is constantly perpetuated. If you're a business it's sales that matter, traffic doesn't mean squat.

If you want, you can find enough discussion on traffic in these forums to provide a lifetime supply of reading material.

Because a high percentage of buisness owners in SL have absolutly no buisness sense what-so-ever.

The only way to get it here is to jump in the fire and learn. Sadly, the best way to learn is to follow the most prevelant pattern. Wether that pattern works or not.

~Jessy

I would say for the benefits it provided in search. Not sure how that benefit carries over now a days.

You are mistaken Ciaran. Higher traffic *does* mean more sales. That's why businesses do things to improve their traffic figures. The Places search is used by people to look for things, and the top few spots get the bulk of the click-throughs. Yes, people often go from place to place in the search results, but if you have things that some people like, and if you get them in front of people's eyes, they will buy. So getting people to the place does matter, and it increases sales. It's not a rumour or a myth.

I find traffic annoying because you always have to remember to look both ways before crossing the street. What a drag.

Phil I know where my sales are best and I can assure you that right now I'm selling better in areas with a lot less traffic and I'm talking many thousands here. Even when my sales are better in area with traffic of 25,000 + they are not much better than my sales in areas with traffic of below 20.

There are several factors you're ignoring, the size of the area being one. Yes getting people to a place is important, but that's the point, traffic is no indication you're getting people to a place. If you're talking half a sim, the people could be anywhere on that half a sim.

I only know about people TPing from the search results straight into the shop, and ranking high in the Places search does improve click-throughs, which improves sales - in my experience.

I see what you mean about open places, of course - malls where there is a central landing point, and many shops around, for instance, as well as what you described. If what you are selling in them isn't the reason why people go to the places, then your sales won't be good, but it doesn't mean that high traffic figures don't increase sales.

It's all about using the high traffic figures to get high Places rankings for specific searchterms, and if your goods aren't targeted, then no-one will come from the Places search for what you are selling, and the high traffic figure won't do anything for you.

I don't get it either, nothing more than a counter to me, for me.
I just look at how many TP's

Campers are the last thing I would want at my business.

How do you do that? I thought that figure is only available for Classified ads.

I'd personally have no problem with traffic if the results were a little more true. Sadly, whenever a new avatar (agent) TPs into the same region (and in multiples around any given sim, it is going tohave to update that information evertime ti seems thus incurring lag.

I'd sooner have my store(s) traffic low and lag free so that shoppers can get done, what they came to get done.

My current headache atm is my main store is located in a sim where one parcel over is a store that has like 12 'Bot's logged in most of the time bringing sim number with other parcels up to 35 or 40 some days , and those are the laggiest, not to mention the errors that occur when people are actually trying to make a purchase (weather it be a scripted vendor, or simple box with sell able contents).

I've spoke to the sim owner on the matter to ask what thier policy was on bots and they stated it was perfectly fine with them as long as it wasn't impacting the sim and others. Quite frankly I think the overboard (False) traffic is having an impact.

People that game the system with alts cheat everybody here. The burn internet resources like mad and funnel new people to places which generally sell junk. A lot of the stuff they sell at thos places is stolen (textures) on top of it.

The get way up in the search list and do not deserve to be there. Somebody that is
just starting out in business hardly has a chance now--no matter how good they products are.

I am not saying this because I have the problem--fortunately I do not. I am up in search and do it without gaming it. I just know of several reallly good creators that gave up simply because they could not be found. No matter how you cut it, it is wrong to allow this to happen.

But LL makes money--becuase of the alts. The real number of unique people in SL is about half of what is reported. And if you had not noticed--LL is not going to report the
number anymore----they say it is too hard to calculate.

Yeah right...

I rty to avoid Traffic, most people in SL can`t drive very well...me included.

Oh..wrong traffic, nevermind

For your store Phil, I can buy that point. However isn't relevancy the new factor now? Has that started to kick in yet?

Yes it has - in the All search. Traffic figures have no impact on that, so all the campers in the world won't change anything there.

Traffic is only any good for the Places search tab, which is still searched in. Can I rewrite what I posted ealier, to make the answer to your question more clear?

Traffic on its own does nothing for a place. Traffic, when used together with the land's name and description does a lot though. It sounded like you sell things from rented stores in various places, so if you can't alter the land's name and/or description, any 'arranged' high traffic numbers in those places won't do anything at all for you. It's only when you can change the land's name and description, that you can target certain searchterms so that they rank highly in the Places search, and people come who are looking for what you have.

Totally untrue. If you'd said that some of them sell junk or stolen stuff, then it may be true, but what you said is totally untrue.

We are only talking about the Places search, because that's the only search tab that traffic influences. So tell me this, Lion...

How would a new place get high in the search results if camping etc. were not allowed? How would a new store, with excellent products, reach the top? Word of mouth from the few who do find their way to it would take an awful long time, largely because there are other competing stores that have been around much longer, and have built up traffic already, that also sell excellent products. Camping does at least give the new store with excellent products a chance to be found in Places very quickly.

Not true- traffic is still a factor in the relevance search, just not the only factor. But where there is very little to distinguish one place between another, wildly imbalanced traffic will make a difference. Why else do you think have alt farms developed? It games both inbound links and traffic, to launch one place over another.

Camping is one thing--where the store owner gives money to another person.
Alts created for nothing more than gaming the system is another. There the store owner
pays no one. But he does use resources. I have been to places and counted more than
70 alts (there were more than that actually, but I stopped counting) A lot of people have.
Just hit any of the popular places.

How do you get busines up--like everyone else should have to. You advertize and produce something that people will come back to get. To say that the way to do it is to game the system is not right. If you can't make it without having to resort to that you should'nt anyway.


And yes--a lot of the stuff is stolen------including some of my things. I went to a gift shop to buy my girl friend a birthday gift. What did I find? MY FLOWERS!

Ha! I'll go with this answer too. Anything else is just sour grapes.

Wow I just counted about 30 alts on the land at the store, and 7 pictures in the profile
for the store of one of the people that commented here.

Sighs.

Traffic is not a factor in the new All search, Cristalle, unless it is taken into account when Places is selected from the drop-down list.

Lion:
Please explain why you think that it's ok to reach the top of the Places results by using campers, but not by using alts. In both cases, it produces unnatural traffic figures.

Btw, there are 16 there - not 30

Do you read the official blog posts, Phil?



http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/13/new-search-with-todays-release-candidate/

Yes I do Cristalle, and traffic hasn't been mentioned in any of them. Your quote is from a reply way down in the responses - I don't read many responses. My limited experience has been that traffic numbers don't appear to affect the All results and, since it hasn't been mentioned in any blog post, when other factors have been listed, I wonder if it is actually used.

Let me be clear about what camping etc. does. It causes the place's *relevant* rankings to be higher in Places than they would normally be. It can be used to push off-topic places to the top of the wrong rankings, but generally speaking it pushes relevant places to the top of the results - *where people who are looking for things want them to be.*

It is no different to Web search engines. The search engine optimisation (seo) industry pushes *relevant* websites and pages higher up the results than they would normally be, and the engines themselves suggest ways of doing it - especially Google. We all know that the same seo also pushes wrong pages high up the rankings, but that's a wrong use of the methods. In SL, relevant places are pushed up, so that people can find what they want much easier. The SL system is very basic, but nevertheless, it does push relevant places up the rankings where people want them to be.

[added]
Looking at Jeska's post, either she left a comma out or she meant something different to the way it's being understood here, and I'm inclined to think the latter:

That reads that they are using clicks in the All search results as a ranking factor. Google have been monitoring clicks on results for years. That's why I'm inclined to think that that's what she meant, rather than the traffic figures we are discussing.

So, your real argument is “don’t hate the player, hate the game?”

Apparently the term "business ethics" is an oxymoron in your world.

If you're talking about the NEW All Search, that is false. Traffic certainly DOES still factor into New Search. It's just not the ONLY factor. There are descriptions of this mechanism in other threads here.

And I'm sorry, but if you're a new business looking for business with new residents, you have a much better chance of getting business if your relevant products are up at high-traffic locations, simply because more traffic = more teleports = more eyeballs.

If you're a well-known, established creator in SL, traffic means less because people will have you landmarked or will look you up by name and follow you around; the traffic you DO get will mostly be sales and repeat customers. The newbies will learn about you through word of mouth.

But seriously, someone just starting out with a small product line and no reputation is gonna have to be damn crafty to get that business off the ground without placing their things in high-traffic spots, and newbies won't find you while they're still newbies unless you've got visibility in areas where newbies go.