Why are people bothered about traffic?

It's links, not clicks.

Phil, as I just typed in another topic (dedicated to camping), false traffic by using alt-farms or camping has got absolutely nothing to do with pushing RELEVANT business up in the Search. There as well as here you use that word relevant, and that's just so bending the truth.

Using false traffic numbers by using alt-farms (costing nothing but electricity) or camping (costing actual lindens), EVERY business can push itself up in the ranking. Hell, I could put 20 alts on my parcel and put every sex keyword in the description. The fact just one of my items is a sex-bed would disappoint people looking for sex, but I would be in the top 10.

The fact that you do not use those false keywords, doesnt mean no one can. You succeeded in pushing a keyword scammer off their place in search by implementing more alts then they did. The fact you actually sell what you advertise in your keywords is nice and will benefit the people looking for your kind of business, but that doesn't make the system right in my eyes. It's playing the system, wether it is for the better or the worse.


Greetings, Marcel

(who will look at your store tonight as you got me curious anyway LOL)

Traffic adds between 0-12 incoming links, so it is a factor, if a negliable one compared to the ease of creating alts with a pick.

No, it's clicks - click-throughs. Google have been monitoring them for years in their Web engine.

Here is my experience, take it as you will

I'm in a bit of a nich market, but so far with the new search my traffic has doubled. For me this has ment sales have gone up, however, no proportionally to the increase in traffic. Previous to the new search, nearly every person landing on my plot bought multiple items. with the new search, they buy fewer. (serious shrug on that one). What I've noticed about traffic on other plots is this: It doesn't reflect your sales. If you have tons of freebies out, mondo keywords in your adverts, and tons of newbs hanging around, you'll have tons of traffic that won't buy anything, or tip. Conversely, you can have traffic numbers of 5-10, but every person buys something, or multiple somethings that add up to serious L$. The same thing happens in RL as well. What does seem to help sales is "well stocked shelves" and, as I have been recently assisted in, nice looking advertisements. If you're working with mainstream items your job will be a lot more difficult, but I imagine if you offer something unique, not camping, not free stuff, but activity, interaction type things, then you'll end up drawing a good crowd. So, enh, traffic numbers? it's a factor in the searches, but it's not the be all, end all in any business. Of course, a business does have to have SOME traffic .
ADDED: All of my places are in sims with telehubs, and it isn't unheard of for folks to shop from the hub. Their feet never hit the plot, but the sales still happen. Thank goodness for altign around

Hi Phil,

You have a point there.

What I do is use outside advertising/shopping websites like SLexchange and such. i also use the new products forums here.

I find what I like there and then look up the store or the owner using search that way.

The true talented creators should be savvy enough to know that they need to advertise their products in order for them to sell.

I don't waste my time doing a search and then looking for the most popular...its a waste of time. Any new person will realize that after a few "shopping trips"

Once I find the store (using SLX and such) and fall in love with their products (which is usually the case with the talented creators) I drop LM's on my friends letting them know about the place.

Bottom line:
A gifted, intelligent creator will rise fast through the ranks if they make good stuff and know how to advertise.

No it's not, Marcel. I target certain relevant searchterms, and those are the ones that I seek to improve the rankings for. Relevant.

That's true (except you wouldn't be in the top 10 for 'sex'), but that's not what I do. I haven't defended pushing up the wrong results.

Of course it's playing the system. All businesses play the systems that are applicable to them. It's normal.

Enjoy

Markubis:

I don't advertsie outside SL. A lot of people have mentioned SLExchange, but i've never really looked at it. Word of mouth is the best, of course, and I'm fortunate that it happens for my place. New people, word of mouth people, external ads people - they all count.

I see how you're reading the Jeska quote and it makes sense, but I still think that even the "All" search can be affected by pure ol' dumb *traffic* (not links, not clicks--the same useless number that's been scammed ever since way back when it was called "dwell".

Now, there in fact *may* be a click-thru metric that goes into the calculations (and there probably *should* be, assuming it's used strictly to weight search-term relevance). But (we think) we know there's a "link" metric, similar to the usual search-engine link counts, but where the links are from (of all things) Profile Picks.

Elsewhere in this thread, there's a post suggesting that other threads have fully described the Search match-weighting and credit-assignment algorithms. If this is actually public somewhere, I'd sure appreciate a link!

The reason that I don't think that the 'traffic' numbers are a ranking factor, except that they produce links from the Popular pages, is because for 2 days after Christmas my traffic was very low compared to normal, but my main All ranking didn't change. It's updated every 12 hours, so it should have changed if ranking numbers are a factor. Jeska could have meant click-throughs, or she could have meant the Popular pages, but I don't think she meant the traffic numbers themselves. Also, none of the SL blog posts have mentioned it.

Relevant would be relative to the end-user, not the person who is listed in search. If your store ends up at the bottom of the pile without cheating then that's too bad, but it's probably for a very good reason.

The fact that *anyone* can cheat their way to the top of the results actually shows that relevancy has *nothing* to do with it, not with the old search and not with the new search. If search was truly based on relevancy, gaming it would be impossible.

ohh so what your saying is that the real way to game would be:

make abunch of alts

have them fill all their Picks slots with your venue (maybe even get with a friend in another industry and juggle picks between camping alts)

have them all have classified ads for your venue

and then use them to alt camp your land for traffic


------------
this whole gaming stuff is getting to be absurd.

You are mistaken Kitty. Search relevance matches the searchterm with the page/place. E.g. a phrase like 'low prim furniture' matches stores that sell low prim furniture, tutorials for making low prim furniture, etc. Search relevancy isn't anything to do with searcher's preferences - it's about the searchterm and the page/place content.

Phil, this is so basic. So how does search distinguish between place A and place B, when the terms are equal? It looks at people's picks, parcel traffic (as Jeska confirmed is still a factor), objects. Traffic hasn't gone away, otherwise you wouldn't bother keeping your alts logged in.

Traffic, while not the only factor in search, is STILL a factor, and this has been said a number of times by Jeska and the search team. That you insist otherwise is a non-starter.

That's what my reply was to. I explained what relevancy means in search. I've been in search for many years, and I do know what it means. Kitty was mistaken.

I don't insist on anything. Traffic is used in the new All search in the way that Kitty stated above. It may also be used from moitoring click-throughs, but nobody at LL has said that the traffic numbers are a ranking factor in the new All search, and I have evidence to suggest that it isn't. What's to argue about? If you have evidence to the contrary, please show or state it. I'll accept it if it can be shown.

lol no it doesn`t, not at all.

Alot of times places have high traffic because of all of the people standing around, and why are they standing around? Because of all of the people standing around. lol Its causing lag, its causing their shopping time to be a terrible longstanding experience. Which in turn causes more green dots on the map, and a higher dwell count which = a higher traffic number. On the downside, it also causes alot of people to leave or not make purchase because they stood around for 15 minutes and nothing was rezzing!

High traffic does NOT reflect what a shop brings in $$$ wise. This is an extremely false belief that alot of people seem to hold onto. and THIS is part of the reason why traffic count is a big issue to some shop owners because so many people judge their business sucess on the traffic count. They want to look good.

You are mistaken, Jesseaitui. I wrote from personal experience.

I didn't actually say that higher traffic figures reflect what a shop brings in $$$ wise. I said that higher traffic *does* mean more sales. From my personal experience, I can assure you that it's not fiction.

Well then it`s not always true cause that has not been my experience at all.

I think you're saying that traffic *drives* sales, not that it is a meaningful measure of sales. And on the small scale of part of a Mainland sim, it's probably correct that having a larger traffic number boosts customer visits because of improved Search ranking.

But the traffic question is really complicated, as this thread has made very clear--independent of how (or even if) it affects the Search ranking. If one owned Aitui, the business is very different: for one thing, a single business owns the whole sim, so nobody else suffers if there were a hundred bots doing nasty physics to each other, crashing the sim every 30 seconds. But it's also a very different business. Aitui could survive for a long, long time with no advertising, no 3rd party site presence, and no Search hits at all, just from return traffic driven by stored landmarks and loyal shoppers typing "Aitui" into the Map. And for a place like that, traffic is a problem to be managed, not something to be sought.

In short, business benefit as a function of traffic is non-monotonic.

Perhaps not, but it does answer the OP's question.

In your case, sure.

Traffic really just does not guarantee sales or money.