Search Keyword Spamming Has Begun!

You have to remember the SL is "a thingy" so now go and rez your cubes quickly now.

You're right in one sense but in another, it has been LL who have pushed the new search which is making classifieds meaningless. Classifieds were a fine way for people to advertise their product, hence the name. Now we have a system whereby classifieds for small business owners are in danger of being worthless. That is not a good move.

What do you mean?

What actual HTML page?

Read up where on how to improve your Google page rank?


Oh good God, if so, we're doomed, then!

Imagine being punished for actually having a lot of hair in a hair store! And calling it hair!

And yet, I can imagine it. After all, it's LL doing it, and in so many ways, LL is the legitimate content creator's worst enemy, and seems to work hard at it, too.

coco

I recommend dear old DigitalPoint Forums, a very popular forum for webmasters with an emphasis on business <3

(SEO = Search Engine Optimization)

How? When you click on a place to make it your pick, it puts the name of the place in there automatically.

?

coco

Use http://taterunino.net/searchform.html to search for your profile/classified/parcel in your regular browser.

What you see is a web page that will indexed in much the same way any website online will be indexed by GoogleBot. Whatever helps improve your website ranking will most likely help your ranking in the new SL search since they're both based on the same principle.

The big difference is that you only have very limited control of what the generated webpage for your profile/classified/parcel will look like.
I wouldn't panick though . For one I don't know whether what I read there was authorative (there's lots of claims of what Google does and does not do) and even if it is that doesn't mean that LL has it work the same way.

I mentioned earlier that, in Google's algorithm, the weight placed on a word in a page, decreases with each instance of it, until the point is reached where any more instances of it don't add anything to the page's ranking score for the word. At that point, further instances count for nothing, but they don't harm either. So there's no need to be concerned about having too many instances of the same word on the page

Kitty. If you meant to read up on PageRank, forget it. If the Google system that SL is using incorporates PageRank, then there is only one thing that anyone in SL needs to know about it:- IBLs add PageRank to the page. And we already know that more IBLs means a better ranking score. But if anyone actually wants to read up about PageRank, have a look at http://www.weborkshop.net/pageranl.html. It's widely accepted as the definitive document on PageRank - but and be prepared to fall asleep

There is something that shouldn't be overlooked. The Google search engine deals with webpages that other people make, and through the years they've incorporated all sorts of filters, etc. into the algorithm, in a losing battle against spam. But the Google system that SL is using is designed for people's own websites and resources - internal use. Therefore spam isn't really expected, and there will be little or no defense against it. LL creates the webpages that are indexed (no spam there), and LL probably has some variables that they can adjust to alter the various ranking weights given to different things. The system is NOT Google, even though some of Google's basic ranking process must be incorporated into it.

I think you all are underestimating LL's control over the weighted portions of the algorithm. Inbound links and anything that adds keywords are a GOOD thing here, and there doesn't appear to be any fine-tuning **as yet** as to spam other than cutting redundant posts out of the results. Why? Because I'm still #1 in classifieds for the word "apartments." Go read that ad. Look at the last line. I have 3 other 50L ads similar to it but with emphasis on different keywords, but that is the only one that shows up in the body of search. Even my unrelated classifieds don't show up.

Look at the ads that are on the first page of any search result. Why are they there? They hammered the right keyword.

Thanks, Kitty. I will try to understand that.

coco

Could you use the word apartments too many times, such as just saying apartments over and over?

I'm sure this has already been answered previously in the thread but my head just can't wrap around reading it all again. Is there any idea what weight words in the description field of objects will carry? For example, do I want to be sure that tiki, bamboo and furniture are included in all my objects. In addition, once again, what about those damn commas?

yea we dont have those in here do we. Wish we did because I sure as hell cant wrap my blonde head around script. I found it pretty easy to get at number one in google but wow in here it is a whole other story.

You shouldn't be able to overuse a word. Don't forget that it's LL who create the pages, and the system is highly unlikely to be looking for spam, since it's designed for internal use.

Object descriptions are not the same as the description that's in a webpage's Description tag. It's the webpges that are indexed and ranked, and not the objects. All the objects do is provide content for the webpages.

Commas or no commas - it's an old debate - usually about a webpage's Description tag. Personally, I never use them, simply because a sentence like "new york hotels new york guest houses" will match "new york hotels", "hotels new york" etc., both of which are searched on. A comma between the 2 phrases may not match "hotels new york", depending on an engine's algo.

FTI, Google ignores the Description tag completely because it was spammed the hell out of, but I would guess that it's likely to be incorporated into the SL system because it's designed for internal use. Certainly, LL include the Description tag in the webpages.

I have reason to think that Profile Picks *may* not be counted until the av reaches a certain age. Has anyone else noticed it?

What will be interesing is that normally an almost sure sign of an alt is lack of profile information and especially profile picks. It will be no secret as to WHO the alt belongs to once the only profile pick they have is to a store.....

What I would do is:

Name: Bradley's Bamboo Bungalows - Tiki & Furniture Too!

Descr: Live your tropical dreams in one of our Bamboo huts, a perfect addition for any beach or jungle. We also carry Tiki and tropical furniture items.

In your boxes:

Item name: Bamboo Bungalow - Calypso
Descr: From Bradley's Bamboo Bungalows - Tiki Furniture Too!

Wow, Isablan, that's very helpful. Nice plug too.

but it is still being displayed, hence it is viewable.

That's splitting hairs

The head section of an HTML page is non-viewable - that's where the page's Title tag is. The body section is what is seen in the browser - the viewable part. What a browser programme does with the Title tag, or any other parts of the non-viewable section, is entirely up to the browser creator. The head section is there for machines; the body section is there for people.

It's reasonable to suppose that the Google internal search system that SL has is likely to follow the same basic ranking ideas that the Google Web search engine does, which means that THE single most important element is the parcel name.

The parcel name is what is put into the HTML page's Title tag - that's THE most important on-page element for rankings. It is also put into an H1 tag (the biggest heading tag) in the viewable part of the HTML page - that's the second most important individual on-page element for rankings. So the parcel's name occupies the 2 most important on-page elements. Each of those two elements carries more ranking weight than any other elements of the page. So it is important to put your main searchterm(s) in the parcel's name - e.g. 'Bamboo bungalows' if that's the most important searchterm for you.

Prominence is also measured, so the nearer the top of the page or front of the Title it is, the better. So, as well as having your best searchterm in the parcel name, it should also be at the front of the parcel name. E.g. 'Bamboo Bunglaows by Bradleys' is a little better than 'Bradleys Bamboo Bunglaows', and a name such as 'Tiki and other stuff' will score better for "tiki" than a name like 'Bungalows, beach and tiki stuff', because the word "tiki" is more prominent in the first one.

Ideally, the parcel name should consist of the most important searchterm, and little or nothing else, but we only have one HTML page to play with, so we can't have the ideal - unless we only have one searchterm that matters. Because of that, put as many of your best searchterms as you can into the parcel name. On the Web, page Titles are crafted so that they target a searchterm AND appeal to users - to make users click on them in the search results. It would be very good to do the same in SL although, imo, the latter isn't quite as important as it is on the Web. Even so, if you can craft the parcel name in such a way that it appeals to users, while including your best searchterms, so much the better. In the search results, the parcel name is the first thing that a searcher sees of your place. You need to stop their eyes right there, so that they read the description as well (make it a good description too), or click on it.

I'm not sure if this has been spelled out here or not, but we do know that Groups provide links to the Place's page, and each link adds to the page's ranking score. But there is no way to associate a group with a Place unless the group owns the land that the Place is on. I've asked LL if they have some other way of making the association, and there isn't.

It means that if the Place's group isn't the owner of the land, then forget about increasing the group's membership for ranking purposes - it won't make any difference.

How do groups link back to a place?

The only links I've seen for parcels come from:
* profile picks
* classifieds
* region page
* "Top xxx" page(s)

I don't know. It could be just the fact that the group is associated with the Place (1 link), or it could be a link for each Group member, as though joining the group is a vote for the Place, like Picks are.

The basis of Google, right back to when they were university kids who wrote a search engine as their uni project, is that links represent votes for the destination pages, and that idea is in the internal version that SL is using. Treating Picks as votes is good sense and, imo, treating group memberships as votes is also on the right lines.

Incidentally, the Linden who announced the new search, in the blog, stated that groups will be used as links to the pages.

By Jeska Linden:-

"Inbound links are created by references in top picks, classifieds, landmarks, parcels and groups"


[added]
A person's profile page doesn't include the groups, or links to them, but it doesn't mean that such pages/files don't exist in one form or another. The Google appliance is capable of parsing a great many formats anyway, and not just HTML.

You need to watch the IBM virtual world commercial.