The new search system

You're rambling. You need to wake up and start again

I wasn't addressing you,

Nor was I interested in your opinion.

LMAO. Go back to bed, Colette. You'll feel better in the morning

In case you're interested where your error is: I didn't say that you quoted me - I just responeded to your post - whereas you specifically said that I quoted you directly, when I didn't. I hope that helps

Enough of Phil's little games for now ..

Cristalle has put together another thread with a large collection of advice on how to game the traffic system yourself and compete.

/327/b1/252152/1.html

Oh sorry "optimize" it

If everyone optimizes their search results and (in a grossly oversimplified example) move up a hundred spots in the search listing as a result, what benefit does anyone derive from that?

The same benefit that would exist if everyone maximized their traffic scores to the same level in the Places search.

The whole system only works if businesses "optimize" with different levels of success.

First, ignore silly comments about "gaming" the new search. Some people just don't know what they are talking about, and prefer to be unhelpful and lead you astray. It's erroneous to think of optimising a parcel for the new search as gaming the new search. It was LL's suggestion to optimise parcels for it, so it's not gaming, and optimising websites for search engines has never been considered as gaming by any search engine. On the contrary - search engines positively want websites to be optimised, and suggest ways of doing it. It helps them to produce better results. LL mentioned doing it too, and they positively want it. So...

The new search ranks parcels on relevance to the searchterm. If parcel owners haven't made their parcels relevant to what is on them (optimised them), then they won't rank at all for the right searchterms. In order to produce good results, the new search NEEDS parcel owners to make their parcel's relevent for what is on them. It needs parcels to be optimised for what is on them, so that the right places appear higher up the rankings, rather than places that coincidentally contain one or more of the searchterm words. The results will be better for users if everyone optimises their parcels, simply because places that don't belong high in the rankings for a particular searchterm will be pushed down, and places that do belong higher will be pushed up.

ROFL

How else are we supposed to be found, if we do not take the time to word parcel descriptions correctly? To produce good results, people need to do SOMETHING in order to be relevant. There is always some level of gaming required, and the disdain for putting the system to work is misplaced. Traffic was a stupid way to rank places and was easily diddled to get to the top. Now parcels are being found based on their content - why is this worthy of disdain?

Point of order ...

"Gaming" is a word that is used to mean using spammy-type methods to gain ranking advantages. It is never used to mean doing non-spammy things to gain in the rankings. Using the parcel's name and description, and object names and descriptions, for ranking purposes is not spammy, and is not gaming. It's *essential* for the engine, if it to produce good results for users.

The problem is, if the intent is purely to produce good results for users, then:

- Why wasn't the engine designed to produce good results for users with what was already there, instead of requiring people to change?
- Why isn't it the Lindens issuing this advice (surely they want their search engine to work, too)?

From the thread you compiled...

We have people "Renting" Picks

We still have alts pics being used to bump up position.

It sounds like putting names on prims just to have names on prims affects the results. So we have people who have prims that are used Just to affect their rankings.

Traffic (to a limited extent) still counts

I am not required to be impressed we have got a Search System that requires silly crap like this to influence a parcels relevance in a search.

I feel you, Phil, but in a way it is gaming when you have to use hidden prims to put objects on your parcel with the right keywords to build up the links - a necessity, if you use vendors, unfortunately, but still distasteful. Or put a description into a decorative chair or prim trees, to save on prims. I generally am fine with the way it works, though, because it makes sense and should make sense for people with traditional stores to get found based on the content of the store.

LL *did* mention land owners optimising their parcels right at the beginning.

The Google search appliance that LL uses for the new search has very little to work with. Google made it as to be pretty much like a web search engine. LL didn't make it. They are merely using it.

It ranks parcels' html pages, but parcel owners can't write stuff on those pages, like website owners can. LL creates the pages for each parcel - not the land owners. But land owners can affect the pages' content, and it *does* need to be affected. On the whole, using the search does produce decent results for the searchterms, so it's working ok for users, even though many relevant parcels are missing from the results, or very low down where they won't be found. They could be better if landowners make them better.

Yes, but the word "gaming" is always used negatively, to describe things that shouldn't be done. Doing the things you described isn't gaming in that sense, because they are honestly making up for a deficiency in the unideal system - if you see what I mean. Gaming is always negative - shouldn't be done; what you described isn't like that.

I think I remember that. But why didn't they say how?



LL didn't have to choose to use it, though.

I've no idea. Maybe they thought that too much info would cause too much spamming.

True, but it's the best search system that SL has, and it does produce decent results. The system is excellent; it's the shortage of material for it to work with that SL suffers from.

I can give a testimonial that all the methods mentioned above do work. Last December, when the new search came out, I changed the name of my shop to include the keyword I wanted to focus on, mentioned the keyword a few times in the description and placed out all my merchandise in boxes in addition to the vendors I had been using. I added the new shop as a pick and asked all my friends to help me out by adding it to their picks as well. My sales immediately went up 1000%, probly more. Needless to say, I am very happy with the new search. I do not think of it as gaming the system, more as carving a niche in the economy.

LOL

If people are going to game the system for a financial advantage, they should just game it.

Call it what it is. Any negative connotations aren't going to be removed by playing word games.

Nor will using a particular word detract if someone sees it as positive.

If you are going to game the traffic system with trafficbots, then game the system with trafficbots.

If you are going to game the new search by renaming half you prims and paying people to put you in their picks, then just do that. Or whatever else is involved.

Save the overwrought rationalizations, complex justifications and outright spin.

I cant tell if its just comical that people are so worried about appearances when they are going to do it anyway ..

Or just sad.

In this sense, I do not game the system and I have had better results thanks to the new search. Half of my visits to my apartments, and an increase in my prefab sales, I attribute to new search. For the longest time, I didn't sell anything - it was more of a side thing, that I never bothered to market beyond a 50L ad and it showed. I didn't care. But sales started to trickle in. I don't pay anyone to put my places in their picks. I haven't asked them to. Maybe I should, but I haven't. And in this sense, it still works for people who don't game it, but do as the game intends and optimizes for search.

You have to do SOMETHING and it's a hell of a lot better than using traffic.

Wrong. Gaming a system is a descriptive term for any effort to turn the rules of the system against its intended purpose. It applies to any method to "maximize utility" of a ruleset (such as the SL place ranking system) to create misleading search results, "spammy" or not. Online search engines, Google in particular, constantly battle against the "spammy" efforts of advertisers to direct search results, so I can see where you might draw that association.

If Linden Lab intends for all in-world advertisers to observe a set of suggestions to maximize their results, then that's just making gaming the system part of a larger system, to effectively even out the playing field.

I'm with you on this one.

Amusingly, actual gamers just call it "min-maxing" in their shameless pursuit of maximum performance. Learning all of the little tricks possible in a game (MMORPGs especially) often nets some few celebrated fractions of a percent improvement, if that!

1) Because improvements to a system sometimes require that the users improve with it. It has long been noted about many problems that there is no purely technological fix, that changes to societal behavior are required. This is one of those situations. It is a simple fact of progress that sometimes innovations make the old way of doing things obsolete.

2) Because Phil is doing a good job of dispensing this advice for them. I mean, LL did make a blog post about optimizing for the new search, but for really detailed advice you need to turn to other sources. Not unlike the situation with pretty much any piece of technology; there's the official documentation, and then there's the hard-bitten knowledge of power users.


Yeah but have a little perspective here. There is only so much that they can do in-house, and search is such a huge job that it's pretty natural to outsource that task (via purchasing an off-the-shelf system) to the number 1 search company on the planet.

That's true. But what Phil seems to be saying is that the "optimization" changes are just those that are necessary for the search to work properly, so that people who make them are really doing the Grid a favor, rather than gaming anything.

The problem is that the moment you start to mention "power users" you are introducing gaming because it suggests that a less relevant parcel could be found ahead of a more relevant one because the owner of the less relevant one is a "power user". Did LL intend that "power users" would receive privileges in the Search? If not then, why didn't they post the same advice that Phil did, on the blog, or even right in the About Land dialog?