Traffic Question

I searched and couldn't find an answer(google too!)

How is traffic counted and when is it applied to a sim? My store was full of people all day yesterday, and once the traffic for my store changed, it was lower than at the beginning of the day. The day before, I'm sure I had less people in my store.

It's a formula of how many people visit your sim, how long they stay and how many other places they go to.

And traffic changes every single day. Don't get hung up on the numbers.

There was a post on the Grid Status page recently about the traffic scores not updating properly I think. Not something I'm bothered about so I didn't give it much attention, but I'm pretty sure it was there.

you will get a lot of different answers on how traffic is calculated, none of which are confirmed by the Lindens.

They alluded to how it works, awhile back, which is basically what was said in Honey's post.

But they never put the actual formula out there so we know how it works (and I do not blame them).

As honey said, don't get hung up on the numbers.

There is no mystery or confusion about how traffic is calculated at all. It is a very clear and simple formula described here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Traffic.

The "number of other places they go" is not at all taken into consideration and hasn't been for several years.

I hadn't heard anything "official" to the contrary, thanks for the correction.

Thanks. And I'm not too worried about it, business is good either way. Just thought it funny that it went down after a super busy day.

is that an official statement from Linden Lab as to how traffic works? Or a statement from a resident?

Come on dude, it's a wiki so anyone can edit it. Looks like one of the major contributors was Phil Deakins! You can see the editors here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/w/index.php?title=About_Traffic&action=history

But lots of people have done their own tests and proven it to be true.

I am not a dude....

I just did a search for traffic and for some reason the old info about how traffic was generated no longer exists. (and that was the only official word from LL on traffic)

Hardly a "major contributor" My first edit changed the word "a" to "an", and my second one was to add the note that the Popular Places tab had been removed.

Awww, I just meant "Most Important Contributor"

Of course. Now I understand

As far as I know, Traffic has always been the same: one point per avatar per minute on the parcel.

When people talk about the system that includes "which other places people visited", they're talking about Dwell, the old system that gave magically generated L$ bonuses for having a busy parcel. That system was based on "the proportion of the last 24 hours' worth of SL time the avatar spent on your parcel". But traffic isn't based on that (and never was - even pre-2006, the "traffic" figure displayed in search was calculated in the current way)

Also, the article is rather generous about dwell. Dwell wasn't removed because "with the larger audience it became viable to have a more conventional economy in SL". It was removed because, with Dwell, you could run a build of nothing but camping chairs.. and make a profit.

I agree with that. I'm not going looking for it but I did read that reason written by Cory.

I asked a linden once again, how traffic is generated, and once again they directed me to the knowledge base entry about traffic which states it is ...



nothing new other than what residents have put out there
so I submitted a ticket, to have them review the wiki info and determine if it is the way it is done now

something just doesn't add up.

(I have tried the leaving an avatar on a piece of land to see what happens, and the traffic did not reflect 1 point per minute per avatar)

*shrug*

dwell was determined by the traffic numbers (dwell and traffic are synonymous)

They measured the same thing, but in different ways. Traffic was the number in search, dwell was how many L$ you got.

Your basic general help desk Linden is just as clueless as everyone else when it comes to some pretty fundamental things about SL.

I'd be interested to see if anything comes of your ticket but I expect it will be largely ignored.

The traffic numbers do not up-date continuously so the only way to test is to leave a bot on the parcel for some set amount of time and then come back the next day and see if the traffic is what it should be.

Of course I *KNOW* I'm right but anyway, you never know your luck, might get an answer here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/tnt/blog/2009/02/26/how-to-subscribe-to-these-blogs-and-change-notifications#comment-759589

Rhoarth, just wanted to point out your quote is from a random outside wiki and is a quote from Cory from 2004!

I will be very interested too, to see what they say

The live helper told me to submit a ticket asking for the wiki entry to be reviewed for validity.

I did that, the reply to the ticket was to check the knowledgebase for official linden lab info. (and the ticket was closed)

well I reopened the ticket telling them that this was not solved, as a linden told me to submit this ticket for a review on the wiki info, and directing me to the knowledgebase is not reviewing the wiki info, and I asked again, for a review of the wiki info.

so now, waiting to see what happens next

my quote is from the knowledge base
not from any wiki
yes it is from 2004 because they do not have anything else on the knowledgebase.

I too will be interested to see what comes of your blog entry.


PS do a search in the knowledgebase (which is supposed to be the official linden lab info area) and you will find the exact info I posted, I KNOW where I got my info)

curious why you think it is from an outside wiki...

Rha. Everyone and his son have done the tests, and you can test it too. Traffic is avatar minutes on the parcel. It's as simple as that. It doesn't matter what a Linden tells you (I've also seen Lindens make wrong statements about it), it is so very very easy to test for yourself, like we have done.

Really? Because I search for traffic and get this link https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417 which contains nothing much except a link to this wiki http://secondlife.wikia.com/index.php/Traffic

In the interests of full disclosuse I did get this: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/tnt/blog/2009/02/18/who-is-jeremy-linden#comment-759592

But I'm going to keep pounding on this until one of those buggers caves and admits they have no idea what they're talking about.

It's funny but last time I wanted to fix a mistake in the knowledge base it took weeks of very aggressive campaigning to get it changed. It's totally laughable for Jeremy to claim the KB should take precedence over the wiki when the KB is probably wrong or outdated on 50% of it's topics.