How LL could make bots irrelevant

It certainly can be useful to the people who were highly ranked in that search.
But..
Given that places come and go, and that people can do something that makes their place more or less relevant to the search terms, I relly wouldn't bust a gut - or even lift a finger too much -- trying to keep searches "stable".

But no one is keeping information from anyone. The search parameters were published by Linden Lab. My research was among my competitors in search, and can be done by anyone. No Rocket Science involved. So exactly what is secret here? The results of my investigation?


Well I know exactly what I can have and cannot have in my possession regarding that topic, nothing strange there. And yes, it is something I want to stay away from. The laws are pretty clear, though there are samples of people being falsely accused because the law was interpreted not too well. And THAT is making people scared, not the law, but the way some people interpret them.


Of course they could, but it would be in no ones interest. The current search (Search All) demands from people to optimize, in order to function well. So if they do not define what is optimizing and what is gaming, no one would risk optimizing, ergo they undermine their own search.


This is utter nonsense. So the system puts the keyword being searched for in my parcels description?
No Yumi, in order to be found in search, people need to do some work. And keep doing the work. They can provide us with details on how to optimize, and the ones doing it the best way, end up highest.
Example: Animations. Bits and Bobs, one of the best known, is not on page one. Why not? They did not put an effort in getting there. Johan apparently did and is on #1.


From that long piece I only took this part. And why? Because as soon as the market gets bigger then my village high street, the rest of your piece becomes irrelevant. Big markets need marketing, as the number of merchants is simply too big. No way for a consumer to oversee everything. So, marketing is simply not avoidable if you want to do business in more then a little village.



There IS no unbeatable way! Results keep changing all the time. With my knowledge, and being much smaller in volume, There have been a (very) few days I was at #1 instead of Phil. After my move I got up to #4 and then decided I wanted to first put more effort in my products.
Yes it is a race, but has got nothing to do with arms. If you want to be sure you are noticed, you have to put an effort in it (or much cash). Just like in the real world.


You can have as many as you want, just not more then 10 on the first page. If you want more then 10 per page, complain with LL. And I would support you even, as I also think 10 results per page is not enough.
But that has nothing to do at all with the fact that to get a higher position in any search ranking, you will need to work. To sell what you created, you have to a lot more then create them. Rene put that very nice in his posting, no need to repeat that.

That does not change the fact that repeating a search and getting the same results, is preferable over random search results (that was the context after all).

That does not mean that searching for "Gothic Dress" has to have the same result today and tomorrow. it should not even, if people keep working on their search parameters.
But if I push the search button on 2 machines at the same time, the results should be the same. Meaning the most relevant at top, the least relevant a the end. And the only way for the system to determine what links are more relevant then others, are described in publications by LL (and even more, by Phil).

The other option that was ,mentioned, random results, is in IMHO ridiculous. Because that would mean that I get lousy results. To clarify: If I search for an item, I hope to find the most relevant places where I can get the item.

Example: there are 10 merchants specializing in Gothic Dresses. there are 90 merchants having 1 or 2 Gothic Dresses in their collection. To keep it simple, let me assume they all did the basic optimizing.
Random Search gives me on average 1 specialized merchant on page 1. Not what I would think I am looking for, not at all an answer to my search.
Search All as it is, would give me the specialized stores on page 1.

The only way to beat those 10 specialists, is to optimize better for the given keyword. And the chances are not too big, that someone with 1 or 2 Gothic dresses, optimizes for that keyword.

So can the current system be abused? Of course. For example I could optimize for "Gothic Dress" myself. And people would find nothing at all. False keyword spamming that is. And I think that should be AR-able (might even be). But I doubt it happens too much, as it doesn't keep the keyword spammer in business. In my opinion, at least, I do not expect the innocent Gothic Dress shopper to buy a couch if they TP to my falsely advertised store

Sure. No-one was stopping Archimedes working out how a pulley worked, and rocket science was centuries away. Yet somehow, it was a secret at that time. Nobody wants their competitors to know how they beat them in search - that makes at a secret.



Well, most people like you and I really have no interest in interpreting it in detail - but there are many grey areas. I remember the huge debate on here about whether sex involving a child av was really considered child pornography or not. Most people felt it should be, but nobody was actually able to indicate the letter of the law on the subject - that's part of why LL made their policy to override any doubt.



No, because if nobody is optimizing there is no need to optimize.



No, it only puts it in the input to the search engine. The search engine's database can be calculated from the world using any formula.



"Apparently". You have no idea how much effort either of them did. One thing that a lot of people forget is that "effort" is purely raw energy. It does not include doing the _right_ thing.



So don't let the market get so big, or split it into lots of different markets where many businesses can survive in their own local one - like the village system actually did. Or, invent a way to simplify the information so that the consumer can still have perfect information even in a complex market. Paying for marketing just starts a downward spiral which ends with Disney ruling the world.



An "arms race" is a metaphor term for a situation where people are outcompeting each other over and over again for a reward that does not increase. Ultimately the person or group who has the most resources wins. And if there were no unbeatable way it would mean the Search algorithm was nondeterministic.



And I am saying that SL has the power to change that, and that it should do so, because not doing so only leads to Disney.

Ah! I had missed that bit about an immediate repeat.
Purely random results would be a tad silly.

At the same time, selecting ranking factors purely for the sake of having ranking is also silly, and counter-productive when they are know to be gamed - as are Traffic and Picks.
In SL there really is nothing other than the Land description and parcel content that can be sensibly used for ranking. Anything avatar-based is nonsense because of the ease of mass-producing accounts.

People should put a great deal of thought into how they describe their land and name their objects. A lot can be learned by studying the high-ranked parcels for given search terms.
There's nothing underhand in that. Describing content well is helpful to searchers. Good helpful descriptions should be rewarded.
By contrast, inflating traffic or buying picks is not helpful to searchers - nor is it intended to be.

Yumi saying marketing in sl is a secret is the same as saying scripting is a secret. if i want to see a script that someone has locked i cant see the code. so its a secret. but the scripting language and the ways it can be used are all out there for anyone to use and experiment with. everyone has access to the exact same scripting tools just as they have access to the all the same marketing tools. it is all in how they are used that makes the difference.

also, saying marketing is an arms race is not correct. marketing is information...it goes out in order to notify and educate consumers. there is no way i can drive down every street in my town to find out who has purple thread in their store. so i either call them, visit them, or see some sort of ad somewhere that indicates they have the item im looking for. the same is true in sl. im not going to run around all over the grid to find a tipjar by looking in store windows. without some sort of marketing, commerce would be at an end. apparently it is needed because it has been around fo hundreds of years and continues to be.

rene - i totally agree about RL marketing experience not applying directly to SL. i see people all the time teaching classes in how to start a biz or market a biz in SL and they never get to the SL specific items that are necessary to know. i even had one guy argue with me during a class i was teaching on the subject that if you didnt have a web site for your sl biz it would fail....hmmm...i dont have one and im doing just fine. lol \

If it wasn't helpful to the searcher, how would they have found the parcel in the first place?

Right - so that contents of that individual script is a secret. LSL as a whole isn't a secret, but how to do that particular thing with it is. But for marketing, you don't just have to use the tools, you have to use them the right way or they don't work, and the right way to use them is a secret.



No, it's a fudge solution to a problem that existed in RL when markets got too big for humans to handle, but with those hundreds of years' hindsight we now know it was a bad idea - it stagnated business - and we need to find another one for the next world we build. And marketing doesn't educate consumers, if it did, then the makers of bad products would put "this is a bad product" in their ads!

A secret is something that at least one person knows and isn't telling other people. Something that exists, but isn't yet known by anybody, isn't a secret.

It's not my post you're quoting, but I do feel inclined to react

So everything you do not know, is a secret for you? Now I do understand why we do not agree on that subject.
Funny thing is that Jojogirl does teach classes in marketing, so it is quite easy to find the solution to the secret. That is why in my book it has nothing to do with secrets, but all the more with the will to learn.


Not entirely true Yumi, it does educate people. Only not educate them to all the knowledge there is in the world. But at least it does educate them in where they can find what they re looking for.

The other argument, about us knowing it was a bad idea, sounds nice. But, did anyone come up yet with a better one? I mean, it is really easy to say it is bad, but as long as no one come sup with something better, it is all we have.

the traffic calculation used by the lindens is a secret...it is not posted or explained anywhere...there is alot of speculation about it but we really dont know the formula.

marketing in SL is a learned skill. it is not a secret. and any of the methods used in marketing can be figured out, are taught, many are documented and shared...NOT a secret at all.

scripting is a learned skill. it is not a secret. and any of the methods used in scripting can be figured out, are taught, many are documented and shared...NOT a secret at all.

marketing educates people every single day....that a store or service exists, how to access it, where a store is located, that there is a sale going, what items might be for sale etc. if marketing was such a dismal failure then why is it a multi million dollar biz?? in my experience things in the biz world that are a dismal failure go away or are replaced by something better...they dont earn millions of dollars for the biz owners and for the marketing folks.

Making Archimedes Engines was a skill that Archimedes learned, but that didn't stop it from also being a secret.

Even if some methods are public, there will still always be secret ones. After all, if your competitor takes you off the front page, they aren't going to tell you how they did it.



And many are also secret, such as various techniques used by weapons scripters, some optimization methods, and similar. Or do you think Luc Aubret told everyone how the MSGR works? This is part of the reason I'm rather disenfranchised by scripting at the moment, because ultimately, the people with these optimization secrets will win every market.



Marketing is a failure if you consider it as a mechanism for educating customers and increasing market efficiency. Most of those millions of dollars are spent by the existing big companies, who hardly need to market, except that they need to keep buying ads as otherwise the #2 big company will buy them. They might be making money but they are totally failing to meet their specification.

("The car industry is only a success if you forget that what it was supposed to do was to create an easy, reliable, safe, and fast mode of transport." - John Gall)

I have Jojogirl's class materials, in fact, and yes, they're good. But I don't believe for a moment that Jojogirl doesn't know a few extra things she doesn't mention, to stop her own students bumping her off the front page.



Well, if nobody is actually trying to come up with a better one, then it's no surprise that we haven't, is it? That's where regulation comes in, to push people off the path that self-interest generates if it isn't a desirable path.

Right. So the Pict scientist work up one day to work on something that wasn't a secret, and then the next day it was a secret, because a hundred miles away Archimedes had discovered it. Confusing, hm?

By the way, did you miss my earlier point about motivation?

How would they have found a parcel if its ranking had not been inflated by traffic and/or bought picks?
Simply by paging down.

Without the dishonest influence of artificially inflated 'popularity/relevance' weightings by other parcels, parcels that earned ranking from intelligent presentation of content would rank higher.

Search gaming is not helpful to the searcher. It is only helpful to the gamers. Without their gaming, their parcels would still be found - but lower down the rankings.
It is utter tripe for a parcel owner to claim that is is helpful for the searchers that their particular parcel be found in the top rankings. Such tripe has been served up for our delectation over the course of the many search-gaming threads.

Yet the searcher found a search result for their search term. You consistently refuse to acknowledge this point. That's the whole purpose of a search engine. If the result at the top isn't returning the search term the searcher looked for, or more importantly if it doesn't actually contain that content, then that's not helpful to the searcher.

However you sort it, the important point is that the searcher gets a result for their search term. If you're searching for furniture, the top result should ideally contain plenty of furniture. If that's not happening, again there's a problem. If you search for furniture and instead find a parcel with weapons, then it's not helpful to the searcher at all, but I don't see that happening, do you?

The inescapable logic of your argument is that the order of the list does not matter at all - as long as the parcels listed match the search term.
I don't see any search engines taking that approach, do you?

Can you think of a reason why they do not take that approach?

No it's not confusing at all. It's as I said - A secret is something that at least one person knows and isn't telling other people. Something that exists, but isn't yet known by anybody, isn't a secret.

Yes. I haven't been reading all the posts.

sling i dont use bots or pic buying or any secrets as yumi seems to think...but my listings are at the top for all of my key items. traffic is so nearly irrelevent to "search all" that i dont even bother to think about it. and i teach folks to disregard it also.

the problem is most of the folks in SL still think traffic is the be all and end all of getting a good spot in search. if they had a clue that it wasnt then camping, bots, luchy chairs etc as a means of getting a higher traffic count would disappear.

yumi...there are NO secrets...i am more than happy to teach every single thing i know and i do...and i share it often. i am never afraid of competition. i believe there are enough people in sl to support all of us as creators. i believe that all of us supporting one another is a win win...no threat etc. with that way of thinking, i get much farther in biz that always being suspicious and not trusting. my fellow creators know how much help i offer. my customers know how much help i offer and that kind of good will goes a LONGGGGG way in the biz world. ive been in sales for a very long time in RL also....and i operate this way in RL as well. it is contrary to conventional wisdom and contrary to the way most folks operate. but it works for me and has for a very long time. as anyone in SL who has taken my classes...there are NO secrets...not sure how else to make that clear.

the funny thing is...i used to do alot of consulting in sl for biz owners and charging them to give them specific concrete input on what they are doing wrong and how to improve...it was a good biz and folks appreciated the input. now i find it easier to just teach a class, write a forum post etc and give out general info about successful marketing than spend all that time with people who tend to walk a magic pill to fix everything. i found that many many biz owners in sl dont WANT to change what they are doing...they dont WANT to market etc. which is fine...but they cant expect to get anything different than what they are currently getting without any changes. for me, the folks who come to classes and come to me for advice are much more open to suggestions and seem to actually make changes that impact their biz in a positive way.

Actually, all the search engines take that approach. None of them concern themselves with which particular pages are listed in which order. All they concern themselves with is that the ones that score more for relevancy to the searchterm are listed higher than those that score less.

The order does not matter, returning relevant results is what matters. Which is why I keep saying that if I search for furniture and don't get relevant results, then there's a problem. I'm not seeing that.

Great post Marcel....the Gothic Dress example is so apt!

Firstly reading these forums regarding Search topics, i just get the impression that the people who complain the most are probably the laziest in terms of putting any effort into marketing or simply can't be bothered to compete. Ultimately this will lead to their businesses going down the tube because of their minimal exposure.


Tonight i have tried a new "social" experiment which might be to the detriment to my current ALL Search listing positions. These few specific popular keywords that i'm competing for are highly competitive and the top 4 or 5 positions change almost daily between these various companies (my rivals obviously put a lot of effort into it..as do I)
Although i was no.1 for these specific keywords for most of 2008, i'm normally hovering no.3 or 4 spots for those same keywords during 2009. The only standout differentation is that i'm probably the only company on Page 1 for these particular Keywords that has never used traffic bots nor excessive camping....all my rivals are involved in a Bots/ camping arms race jostling for top spots in Places Search too.

I have decided to add short phrases to my competing lands with additional text at the end of their Land names....such as "No Traffic Bots used" or "No Bots here" and "Bots FREE zone". Bear in mind by adding extra non-related text especially in Land Name, might knock me back a few positions further down the listing, although i'm confident that i can still remain on Page 1.

By having such text in Land name, its going to be highly visible when someone searches that Keyword, especially in my existing no.3 spots...they don't even need to scroll down.! I want to see how it will impact my sales for the next 24-48 hours.....i want to see if your average consumer that uses ALL Search really cares where they go to. I want to get a feel of what their feelings on Traffic Bots are really like. If they are dead against gaming traffic, like several on this forum are...they then should really be visiting my stores. As regards to quality or value for money...i can hold my own against any of my rival competitors and in most cases better!

Right. But, of course, if somebody had made a new discovery about Search, they wouldn't just not say what it was - they wouldn't even say that they'd made a new discovery. For any given thing about Search that I do not know, I have no way of knowing if you (or someone else) has discovered it or not. But I since I know I don't know everything about search, and I believe that people who have discovered things about Search that I do not know, would not share all they know (since it is a business competition issue after all) and thus believe it is more likely to be a secret.



People's motivation to succeed in business is something that the SL world can control. It could, for example, add a "force me to market" button to Preferences, which bans you if you don't improve your marketing during a session or don't start a session for a given number of days. I'd like that feature, it would have enabled me to learn to build

But there are still only 10 spots on the first page of Search. This is exactly one of the key problems with the whole marketing ethos.



What happens if two of your students compete for the same keyword?

One will end up higher than the other.

Whichever information enabled them to do that is, then, a secret. The higher person has discovered and does not want to tell it to the lower person.

No matter how much information you make public, you can't stop Search being based on secrets because the public information, once public, just creates a tie. Unfortunately, Search can't display tied results.

Rene. Your logic doesn't work, imo. You may make it clear that your place doesn't do bots and camping, but there's nothing to say the other do. If I saw that in the results, and I refused to shop wher they use bots and/or camping, it wouldn't deter me from going to the other places, because I would no idea whether or not they used bots and/or camping.