Traffic ::: How it works please

Hi, Can anyone explain Traffic to me or point me in the right direction to a thread of how traffic works ?

I have a small store in world. Relatively new. I cannot afford the big bucks to do the advertising the big boys do in the classifieds. I have not yet listed on onrez or SLX, but looking into that right now. I do advertise in the classifieds albiet modestly.

My queries are.

How does the traffic score on the rankings ? Or doesn't it ?

Why when i see a traffic count of say 2000 one day and its down to 200 the next, is it daily,
or accumulated traffic ? Whats it based on ??

I know its all about getting shoppers to your store, i'm doing that again in a modest way, Im not lost for ideas on how to get peeps to the store........Just not certain on how the traffic effects the classifieds or listings

Thanks in advance

For Search All (as it seems the future of Search in SL) and classifieds, traffic is not important. My traffic averages around 500 and still I am on #2 for my branch of business. Since for Search Places traffic will probably soon be history as well, I would focus on Search All.

Classifieds: The more you pay, the better your listing gets. Good keywords is of course important as well, in order to get a listing in the first place.

Search Places: Traffic. Extremely high traffic parcels probably are using bots or camping, so that is pretty hard to beat.

Search All: Parcel description, Parcel Name, objects you sell where "Show in Search" is ticked, inbound links (Picks)

Traffic is a joke, and unless you are in the top 10 then it will have no effect on your existing traffic and sales. In fact they need to remove the traffic counters, that would eliminate a tonne of bots and scripted crap that people obsess over, and just causes more lag.

Honestly, just throw up a solid classified, even at 100 bucks, and that is enough to get attention. I have had much more luck hosting events over trying to get traffic up. Events are great, especially for a new shop. Anything can be an event. Maybe make 10 new items and have one for free. There you go, you have an event.

Badly

Traffic = avatar minutes on a parcel in a 24 hour period. If you stand on your parcel for 5 minutes during the 24 hour period, and nobody else goes on it, you will have a traffic figure of 5 the next day.

The Places tab results are sorted in traffic order by default.

Traffic is used as a marginal (unimportant) ranking factor in the All search.

Read this thread, it will do you much more good than worrying over the useless traffic count...

/327/b1/252152/1.html

Surely that it not true? I have asked a few Lindens outright to specifically explain the traffic system to me and they have said there are too many factors or they dont know. I once asked it at a townhall about 2 years back and the Linden just avoided the questions saying there were too many factors to go in to.

The question has been asked on this forum too numerous times and I've never seen an answer that has been backed by an official LL source.

Myself and friends have tried to work it out and in spending 5 mins on a parcel within a 24 hour period and then restricting the land for the rest of the experiment did not result in a traffic figure of 5.

As far as I know it also has to do with the percentage of time an avatar stays on your land in relation to the total amount of time they spend online within a 24 hour period.

So what's your source for this information?

From my observations, traffic may contribute around 20% of the ranking factor in Search/All, which may only move you a few places in the listings. This can be important if you are on the line around the 6th-8th listing, when you stop appearing on the first window of results. As the previous posters say, its more important to have the right search words for your stuff, so that you appear near the top for relevant words. Its not going to matter much if you appear on page 8 or page 9 of Search/All, cause few people will look down that far.

As near as I have been able to determine, one traffic point = one avatar for one minute, and its measured over a 24 hour period. Linden Labs seems to be irregular about what that 24 hour period is, and how often they update it, sometimes the traffic score will not update daily.

[I have determined that number by experiment on my own land, and by visiting all kinds of places from low to high attendance, and using a ratio of 24h x 60 min = 1440 points per average avatar on location per day. It seems to be reasonably close most of the time. The confusing thing is the traffic score is not updated on a regular basis, you can carry over the score for several days. Ironically, a place with a bunch of bots makes it easy to do the math, cause they are there around the clock, unlike real people who come and go on an irregular basis]

Once upon a time, land owners were actually paid for having popular places, and so the practice of "camping" (paying people to simply hang around your land) got started. Over time that was stopped, and now search rankings are based less on traffic score, so land owners have searched for ever cheaper ways of getting traffic points.

The current method used by many is "robots" or bots for short, which is using a non-graphical version of the SL software and minimal avatars, so you can log in multiple accounts at one time, and set them on your land without making too much lag.

Players in the know understand this is simply a way to fake traffic, and many are upset by the distortions of search, and the unnecessary load on the SL system it causes.

Many, myself included, would like to see it removed from search as a primary ranking (right now search/places are ranked by traffic score), and left on the land information itself for use by the landowner for his own information.

A different way of determining "popularity", such as "unique visitors" might be useful, but since owners have become used to gaming the system to get a good ranking, any new listing should be made as hard as possible to cheat on.

If they're stating anything different than what Phil mentioned (1 "point"/minute/avie) then they're either talking about dwell (traffic was measured differently then) which hasn't existed for over two years or they're just randomly guessing.

For the most part Lindens are unfortunately an unreliable source of information *unless* said Linden is part of or involved with the team that's responsible for a particular feature (developer Lindens tend to be a bit more reliable).

As far as your experiment goes: if 10 people spend 5 minutes on a parcel then you wouldn't get 5 in traffic, you'd get 50.

Ah, this may be the case. Dwell was definitely still active when I was persuing the holy grail that is a 'detailed description of the traffic system'

If they have since changed it then I am obviously out of touch.

But back when we did experiments 1 avatar spending 5 mins on a plot did not result in 5 traffic points and 10 avatars each spending 5 minutes on a plot did not result in 50 traffic points. If only the answer had been that simple.

There was a thread on here posting and discussing our results but I'm buggered if I can find it.

/327/ac/274749/1.html

Has a lot of advice on Sales and Marketing- you might want a broader picture than just traffic to consider.

This is interesting. 20% is pretty significant after all. If accurate, I dont think terms like "unimportant" would apply.

The way that dwell was calculated is:-

Each avatar is given a number of points each day. The points are shared between the places that they visit. The more time the av spends in a place, the bigger of it's point the place gets.

It went out with dwell, and the simple av minutes came in. We still hear Lindens, including Jeska, saying that it's a complicated formula, but it isn't.

Don't see the contradiction. Avatars x minutes = too complicated for the Lindens to explain, unless Torley does a video.

I think they just want to maintain the illusion there is some big mystery and they haven't completely given up with regards to traffic gamers.

Can't believe it has taken me this long to find that out. I wish someone would just send me a newsletter once a month telling me all SL related things that I don't know!

Although this service is probablly already available, i just didn't know about it.

Thanks for the very informative replies all.

So far we have staged 2 live events which got a decent turn out and was well received. It was more about getting the store known and having a fun evening rather than actually generating real business.

Our group now has 221 members, so that's coming along nicely. We have tried having campers, which is fair enough for some aspects, but mainly is just a drain on resources which probably could be better spent on marketing.......We all live and learn huh.

So im gonna put the holy grial of worrying about traffic to bed for now, and concentrate more on getting the items listed on Slx and onrez. I shall continue with the classifieds which Im currently running 4 classifieds under different catagories......Im not sure whether thats a wise thing to do or not, maybe just one in the correct category at a higher payment might work better..........I just dont know.........This SL marketing is not the same as RL as the goalposts are very different, and even more confusing.

Once again a big thanks, and group hug to those who answered lol

Traffic counts are a joke.

I would love to see it (majorly) revamped, if it`s going to be displayed at all.

How does 'traffic' work?

First, get yourself a few dozen traffic-bots...