What is going on with the SL Search ???

Just taking those:

1. I'd go along with the separate area for indexing as long as it were viewable.
Not being viewable makes the gaming of it impossible for others to detect.

2. dogs, dogs, dogs was a simplification for a jokey little piece on "how would LL explain the use of the special text area". It is after all an explicit acceptance of gaming. An inquiring mind would look at the pages of high ranking parcels and see how those use word repetition. Sort of "dog,dog" as she is spoken.

3. I'd wish for an expanded text area regardless of the existence of a separate index area. It would give people a better opportunity to describe what they are offering and what they feel differentiates them from others. I would seem a shame to ignore the potential richness of this content for indexing.

Perhaps a hybrid approach would work best.
a. Don't index on the current main page content. That removes the urge to uglify it for the benefit of indexing as per your suggestion.
b. Allow an extensive additional text area that is used for indexing. Let people use this anyway they want. They can use it for natural language descriptions, content aimed solely at the indexing, or a combination. I think that to think of the area purely in keyword term would be a lost opportunity. The additional load of a few kb of text per parcel would be miniscule in overall SL storage terms. The current parcel title and description fields simply do not allow a proper description. Those short fields and a list of objects might be adequate for 'yet another store', but they are totally inadequate to describe an event-driven / artistic / wacky / creative location.


4. My suggestion of a completely separate crawler that did nothing but check for exploits would encourage people to use some or most of the extra area for descriptive text. A law of diminishing returns would help that. This would be a benefit to searchers.
If it were the case that there were a ranking reward for stuffing a few kb of ugly, then many would do that and others would feel pressured to follow.
If we are suck with the way that the GSA ranks pages, then a separate negative scoring process would help to offset the downside of that.

5. I simply have a huge distaste for unimaginative muppetry. Sledgehammer approaches such as traffic-manipulation and pick-buying fall under that category. Keyword stuffing is the same. None of that benefits the users. I regard the people who do that with the same distaste that I regard email spammers. I see them as lazy self-centred freeloaders.
Search is still going to return relevant results without the gaming. The gaming is of zero benefit to the end users. The gaming might even be to the detriment of users as they will be presented with high-ranking results for people who might prioritise the gaming over other methods of attracting people. We're talking 'dodgy' here.
Its inescapable that the highest ranked parcels will stand a far higher chance of pulling in visitors. That's a no-brainer. That's why people want high rankings.
It's just plain offensive that people would get rewarded for muppetry over people who play it straight. The effect is to try and make muppets out of everybody.

That's the reason why I think it's better to hide it from people - so that copying it can't be done. I wonder if you're majoring on the idea of users being able to detect gaming, and decide whether to visit/buy or not on that. If you are, I don't see any merit in that - it's more akin to witch hunting, just for the sake of it, than on producing something useful for users.

1. If it was meant as humour, you probably haven't seen many top ranked pages lately. It's exactly that reason that caused me to think about it. I hadn't seen it before I started to do something about my "furniture" ranking a few weeks ago. Very few are 100% "dogs dogs dogs" at the moment but more and more will head in that direction over time.

2. It could be said that accepting the pages that exist now is an acceptance of gaming, so it wouldn't be much different in that respect.

I agree with that, even though it would often be stuffed. At least with a larger space there would some room for some sort of brief description as well as the stuffling.

No argument from me.

Again, no argument from me, but I can't see LL getting involved in programmatically fighting it like search engines do - but they may - one day.

Invisible gaming of search is an entry barrier for people who are focussed on creating content.
Further down you mention "fighting it like search engines do" There is a reason for search engins (and LL) to fight it. It works against their intention to develop algorithms that make the best shot at returning the most authoritative listing to the user.
That applies even if there are no false keywords used in the gaming.




You are teetering at the edge of a SOPT vortex there.
You quote me as saying "An inquiring mind would look at the pages of high ranking parcels and see how those use word repetition. Sort of "dog,dog" as she is spoken."
It is quite clear to anyone not considering entering the vortex that I do indeed read ranked pages and to use my own words that you took the trouble to quote - "see how those use word repetition"
This would be a bad time to sopt and a good time to stop.





It could have been - and indeed *was* said that ad-farming was accepted.
It could have been - and indeed *was* said that traffic-botting was accepted.
There is a change.
Given that LL have explicitly said that they are moving on *gaming* in general rather than limiting their comments to specific sub-types of gaming, it highly unlikely that they would enable a feature aimed specifically at gaming the search engine.



If gaming continues, they will have to.
-- In the same way and for the same reasons as search engines had to. They had to defend quality of their results for their users from the gamers who were determined to manipulate them.

They might be able to head off the development problem by removing any advantage a gaming mentality might have. Make everything visible. Make page manipulation as obvious as is a pile of green dots.

I thought you already abandoned those ideals with...




There is a huge difference between a web search engine and the SL search. With web engine companies, the search engine is their business and they work hard on it, whereas with the SL search, it's just an add-on that may get some attention once in a while. I really can't see LL putting much effort into it at all. It's easy to say things like "filter out the spam", but it isn't easy to do in practise. That's why Google has a whole team devoted to it. Admittedly, there are more ways to spam Google than there are to spam the GSA, but it would still need to be kept on top of, and I don't see LL doing anything like that.

Imo, LL merely (eventually) reacts to vocal minorities, just to quieten/appease them. The microparcel stuff was like that, as is the gaming of traffic stuff. They don't even want to be told about traffic bots - not even the BIAB type (Bots In A Box) - what does that say? The length of time it takes them to deal with anything to do with those things shows it. They've no desire to put any effort into any of it, imo, and they are highly unlikey to put any effort into developing systems around the GSA to keep on top of things, like search engine companies do. If a few people are vocal enough to keep shouting, "get rid of keyword stuffing", they may eventually make it a ToS violation, but that wouldn't stop it. It may stop the "dog dog dog" lines, but that's all. It wouldn't stop keyword stuffing at all.

I made you do it.





Your preference was to make the basis of the indexing invisible.
My preference is to make every thing visible.

Making the techniques visible at least gives others a chance to level up.
It is a shame that someone who main gift is creativity would have to lower themselves to the level of gamers. (That would actually be 'levelling down' I suppose).

Making the techniques visible gives a focus for people to pressure LL.
It gives something tangible to refer to in explaining the issue.

Google and other engines are forced to expend considerable resources to combat the low-lifers.
But as you say, the GSA presents less opportunities for spamming than does Google.
This means that the effort required to combat abuse is considerably less.
There will be relatively simple fingerprints for abusing the GSA in the environment presented to it within SL. A parallel crawler that seeks out and punishes that will entail some upfront development but can largely run on autopilot from then on. Even without automation, a human reading a page will be able to detect the simple fingerprints, and deal with the particular parcel owner manually.


*Any* gaming of traffic is now a TOS offence.
It's a small step to make *any* gaming of Search a TOS offence. Such an offence is already clearly implied in the language used to outlaw traffic abuse.

LL don't actually have to automate this. They can simply slowly work through random or selected high-rankers and manually smack them. The work on creating a culture in which gaming is discouraged.
People post about this being the "way Jack likes to work". This seems to be the way they are dealing with bot farms. Ditto with ad farmers.

If LL are making steady progress towards marginalising the gamers, I'm happy.
It seems unrealistic to expect a Night of the Long Knives in which all gamers are sliced and diced.
If it takes a year. That's OK. If it takes longer, that's OK too as long as progress is being seen to be made.
I would prefer the long knives solution, but hey!

Was that a question or a statement? Either way, I didn't suggest that you made me do anything. I merely pointed out that I thought you'd abandoned those ideals with that part of your post.


As for the rest...

We can agree on some aspects and disagree on others. It doesn't really matter - not to me. I recently saw a growing problem and I came up with what I think is a good, and reasonably practical, solution for it. I sent the idea to LL and that's the end of it for me. I have no confidence in LL's policy-making, whatever they do or don't do about the growing problem, and I don't expect to be running a business in SL for too much longer, so it won't make any difference to me.