Tip of the Week #10: How to use the new Search
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 5:44 PM by: Torley LindenWe recently announced exciting news about our new Search project, and as highlighted in Jeska’s post, you can try new Search NOW in our Release Candidate viewer.
One of the aspects I love most about working at Linden Lab is creating friendly guides to new features, especially those which you may’ve waited a long time for. Search is both special and expected in this regard, so this Tip of the Week is about how to use the new Search. It includes:
- How to get started with the Search bar
- How to find people, places, objects on parcels, etc.
- Using special Google operators (not all of these apply) to do advanced searches (at long last!)
- A couple neat interface improvements: resizable Search window and easier teleporting
… all in the warm, memorable style you’ve come to expect from my passion for helping you to live a better Second Life.
(And yes, waiting for this exciting announcement is why I didn’t post this TotW last week!)
Remember, this is not yet a part of the so-called main viewer, so if you want to try new Search, you’ll need to use our Release Candidate test viewer, which you can learn more about.
Get your search on!
Torley Linden is a Product Manager & more who regularly contributes to the Official Linden Blog. See more Tips of the Week. I know, I know, I’m a WindLight tease… it’s coming!
November 13th, 2007 at 5:56 PM
video not available?
November 13th, 2007 at 5:58 PM
[...] New Viewer: 1.18.5 Release Candidate Available Today! Tip of the Week #10: How to use the new Search [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 6:00 PM
TORLEY LINDEN ROCKS!!!!!!!
November 13th, 2007 at 6:01 PM
Great tutorial Torley! This new search will be a warm welcome to finding things in SL!
November 13th, 2007 at 6:01 PM
Finally a better search engine => Now work on the lag that happens every wheres. I play on other online games on the comp and on consoles. And I never see lag there. So what gives here. I personally pay $72 a year for membership. And have a respectable and popular store going for me. My customers and I would apperciate this fix =>. Lets fix this lag problem.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:20 PM
@ Cemetery - You might want to check out this blog entry for more information on Lag.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:20 PM
Questions questions…. how are the new results sorted? by relevance? by amount paid for an ad? by traffic? by alphabetization? I cannot, yet, glean the rhyme or reason with the new format
November 13th, 2007 at 6:23 PM
better search for who? its great if you want to spend $500USD a week on a classified ad. It’s great if you have a sim to fill with 80 sleekbots and 14000 prims in a skybox with the landing point in a store on ground level. people will never see the 14,000 bogus for sale prims. just the ones in the store on ground floor. and the 80 sleekbots ensures the bogus prims for sale will be at the top.
start over and outsource this aspect of sl totally because you have really screwed all but the deepest of pockets in sl. the little people don’t have any chance of being seen. good job.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:25 PM
when trying to play, “were sorry, video no longer available”
November 13th, 2007 at 6:26 PM
@ jeaniesing - In the new All Search, results are returned by “relevance“, based on how well the page matches the query, how close the multiple words are together and by how many inbound links there are to the page. Inbound links are created by references in top picks, classifieds, landmarks, parcels and groups. Traffic is also included in the relevance ranking.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:29 PM
Thanks for the help and fab Search blog post, Jeska!
And thanx for the comments!
@Kittrannia Cassini & Ben: Pardon, this may be a YouTube error because I recently made the video public. Please clear your web browser’s cache, restart it, and try again. I’ll be watching if the problem doesn’t clear up soon enough.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:31 PM
I can’t see the video.. it keeps saying it’s unavailable. So, I log into You Tube and it says the video is private. I’d love to watch it!
November 13th, 2007 at 6:31 PM
“were sorry, video no longer available” ??
November 13th, 2007 at 6:38 PM
Direct Link to the Tutorial Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRTSCG4gOg
November 13th, 2007 at 6:40 PM
@Raudf Fox, Becky Pippen, and Isandra Willunga: I appreciate the heads-up and direct link! I’ve updated the original post to include it!
November 13th, 2007 at 6:44 PM
Is it me, or does the audio on this video clip sound somewhat computerised? Hey Torley, lay off the weed dude!
November 13th, 2007 at 6:48 PM
No land sales options/filters?
November 13th, 2007 at 6:50 PM
I presume the status quo on landbot exclusivity prevails?
Nothing like blocking 99.99% of your residents from the land market favoring a handful of bot runners.
Oh well, nobody suggested SL was universal.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:54 PM
give us the sticky option to not include traffic as a factor in searches. then it might become viable. until then we will still have a very large percentage of sl just being bogus sleekbot zombies used by dishonest parcel owners to boost their positions in the search results. it is just dishonest so get rid of traffic. and the search engine needs to filter out duplicate items. make it a job to populate the sim with bogus for sale boxes.
really though, go look at slexchange. while slexchange search could use a few features it is clearly superior to any search that includes traffic or easily gamed factors like the sl search continues to promote. people looking for something do not want to find nude beaches unless they are specifically looking for nude beaches. make truth in advertising part of the TOS and delete accounts that violate the policy.
make search viable. stop the tradition of sl search being a common joke in the community.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:11 PM
some information on the “featured classifieds” is in order. so far all i have seen appear is the same ads over and over. we all know Adam & Eve pays you a lot of money for that ad. but hey maybe we only need to see it once ok? and it appears that your setting up for a bidding battle on classifieds. to be seen you have to bribe LL with a lot of cash. this is just unfair. if this is how it will be just publish this fact so all but the top 20 merchants in sl can cancel classifieds since they become useless.
lots of work to do still. but you must begin to look at the fairness aspect of this business. bots and gaming things needs to be handled proactively. if there is no way to specifically buy a featured ad then turn that back off or tell us exactly how to game it so our ads can be seen. note the reference to gaming again. the truth in advertising problem needs to be addressed in a very basic way. get caught padding with bogus data then your gone. remove traffic and hey sl might become a great place again as far as search goes. i.e.; the garbage on the popular places tab needs to be what you study. and go look to see how many truely unique residents are in those places. i.e.; make bots a TOS violation and sell subscriptions to the data to onrez so they won’t have to use a bot to catalog sl.
use your heads in an honest and objective manner please. throw out the old concepts and traditions. make it a fair marketplace.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:14 PM
Thanks Torley, for another useful video. That feature looks interesting, and nice also to point out its limitations straight away to help stem the people who will bitch about it.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:31 PM
is there a way to search object descriptions or add tags to objects to facilitate searching (and to make things with generic names less obscure)?
November 13th, 2007 at 7:33 PM
I have to agree with a few others above. While search is in terrible need of a update and we are all happy to finally see it, Linden Labs NEEDS to find a way to keep the system a LOT more honest and a bit more fair in regards to all. While I realize it is of no small task for Linden Lab, implementing a few new TOS additions such as the banning of camping chairs, dance pads, land bots and any other device that would be used in a deceptive demeanor would be welcome by 90% (the other 10% would of course be the ones who use those things) of the SecondLife population, not to mention a huge help with the lag situation!
Come on LL, do yourselves and your citizens a favor and work on implementing some new TOS before you release the new search. No one is asking you to police, only to regulate before you allow the wealthiest and the dishonest all of the advantages to your new souped up search system.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:34 PM
@10 ”
Inbound links are created by references in top picks, classifieds, landmarks, parcels and groups. Traffic is also included in the relevance ranking.”
Which part of the landmarks count? The amount of landmark givers on the ground or the actual landmarks used by people? In what way do parcels count? And which part of the groups count? Its not possible to link to places there directly right? Or do the notices count? Does the amount of members count for group links relevance?
November 13th, 2007 at 7:39 PM
@ inacentaur - Object names and descriptions are included in search. So feel free to use those spaces to list tags to help with search!
November 13th, 2007 at 8:02 PM
Oooooo! Kinda like Mac’s Spotlight in SL. Yay!
November 13th, 2007 at 8:10 PM
i know this is off topic and JIRA is against my religion. past two or three nights in a row, group IMs and map searche have been busted.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:19 PM
i seem to be suffering the dancing colors issue with the new client. and possibly rezzing issues.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:23 PM
I think I like the new search, thanks a lot!
Works much better and more accurate than the old version but the only think I notice I don’t really like it won’t minimise! And I’d like to see a “shopping” category in the pop down menu, and even better something like “educational” and erm…. why is the “help” gone again? Wouldn’t that be a nice thingy for newbies to stick to? Why not make it easier for them to find assistance? I don’t really get that…
And a note on Torley’s video, which I had no probs viewing here on the website, it’s good to see that you have rezzing issues as well, a pain in the *** or rather a shoe in the bum, to put it the sl way… so PLEASE fix that rezzing issue soonest!
It’s a pain for shop owners if things decide to rezz 5 times in a minute!
November 13th, 2007 at 8:23 PM
another thing - is there a way to have the exact coordinate of an object be included?
November 13th, 2007 at 8:40 PM
Main question isn’t answered yet:
How do you prevent people from making hundreds of 1-prim plywood boxes with only keywords to get higher in search???
November 13th, 2007 at 8:42 PM
[...] How to get started with the Search bar How to find people, places, objects on parcels, etc. Using special Google operators (not all of these apply) to do advanced searches (at long last!) A couple neat interface improvements: resizable Search window and easier teleporting Source: Tip of the Week #10: How to use the new Search [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 8:55 PM
Why would my parcel, which I pay to appear in land search, not show up in the new search? Waikiti Mall & Beach, it’s flagged to appear in search, the L$30 is charged every Tuesday morning, but it doesn’t appear in the new search all. The classified ad does appear but from the classified ad, if I click on the parcel link in the classified, I get an XML error and a code dump:
This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
I have looked at some other parcels and they seem to work ok, i.e. listing all the objects for sale, so I know that the new search does work in some cases, just not all cases.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:14 PM
well…
I play the game of Second Life. Some days I win, some days I lose.
This morning, on the current version of Second Life, I could search the word “Basic” and find the groups and lands I and my crew have formed in the top ten listing, from second place down.
Tonight, using the new search engine in the Release Candidate Viewer, I appear virtually nowhere in any of my carefully planned approach.
I lose. For now…
November 13th, 2007 at 11:16 PM
@31 Paulo the only answer is for Linden Research to make fraud and deceptive practices an immediate permanent ban offense with no appeal. Then when enough citizens file abuse reports in a 24 hour period to get the attention of Linden Research they can go look and confirm. then delete the business owner’s account and ban their machine from SL. If Linden research did this you would see far less blatant ethics violations as the legitimate businesses discontinued gaming the system and just paid 100% plus some of all income in sl to Linden Research for classified ads.
Or Linden Research could make bot use a TOS violation, make deceptive advertising a TOS violation, Remover the bogus and totally useless traffic metric from relevancy in anything, engineer the search to use lexical analysis to look at the structure of descriptions for actual sentences, etc, not just keywords over and over, and delist replicated prims placed purely for advertising gaming and suspend accounts that repeatedly attempt to game the system.
There are few places that should show up in a search for what i focus on. only one or two should show higher in the list because they really do have more content for sale with the specific keywords involved.
I.e.; to use the example given elsewhere, if you are looking for frogs then only places or people with frogs should show up. when a welfare facility that has no frog business, frogs, nothing to do with frogs at all appears in the results that account should be removed from sl permanently and the sim sold to someone honest. its as simple as that. if you are looking for welfare thats all you should see in the results are places that hand out free money called welfare. etc etc.
just because there are 100 sleekbots running in a sim does not mean that sim should be listed any higher than any other business.
since there is no way to prove if a bot is a bot then traffic needs to be removed or the source closed and the system secured and bot use be disallowed totally.
and an exact schedule of advertising fees be published with a guarantee of placement. have the legal staff study that one. just saying higher fees might place your ad higher is not going to cut it. your going to have to start playing by the associated laws and ethics where advertising is concerned.
this isn’t ebay. Or is it?
November 13th, 2007 at 11:17 PM
The new search seems to find less than the old one and be less intuitive and less useful. It is very slow on my computer but it does look better. I can’t even find my items or locations when I search for anything but their exact name. Are there bugs that are preventing me from finding things I am looking for… or is this what we can expect from the new search?
November 14th, 2007 at 12:22 AM
well theres 2 identical blogs for this one so ones is going to be removed. probably the one with more nonsupporting truthful comments so save your comments out to post into whichever one they keep. right now theres like 4 blogs all with the same topic.
November 14th, 2007 at 12:33 AM
There was mention about “featured listings”. I am interested to know how those will be picked? Will it be based on how much you pay for your classified ad? Traffic? Or will they be chosen randomly? Will they rotate: every hour, week, day?
Obviously those featured on the front of the search will get more business. I am hoping the way those featured listings are chosen will be equitable.
I hope the choice IS random, and I hope they rotate often - maybe different listings come up each time you open the search?
November 14th, 2007 at 12:45 AM
@ Ambergris… Probably just the businesses listed in one way or another on the sl website. like the “A List” so-called fashionistas on the fashion page. they won’t allow anyone else such visibility so don’t expect Linden Research to do an about face and grow ethics anytime soon. its all about taking money. period. and they don’t want to hear anything except compliments anyway so we are just wasting our time. small businesses and the very people that make sl a great place are not wanted. empty corporate ghost town sims visited by the favored aryian nation griefer groups is all that is wanted in sl now. the evidence is stacking up real high to that point.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:20 AM
have to agree with you Ann. This NEw SEARCH seriously needs revision and the parameters chosen carefully. It’s up for manipulation as it stands
November 14th, 2007 at 1:21 AM
Alredy video not avail?? Pls advise us on the MAIN SL LOGIN PAGE when it does become avail again so that we know to come back.
PLEASE???
November 14th, 2007 at 1:37 AM
Will you remove the unfair differences in parcel descriptions before you introduce the new search? I can only use 125 characters but have seen parcel descriptions using 200…That is totally unfair!
Furthermore the new search needs to include vendors somehow, also ones with profitsplit…How could mall owners every compete otherwise? If you you don´t do that…You will in fact KILL a lot of well established malls.
You are attacking the way business is done at the moment…There will be winners and losers due to the changes…But by the sounds of it, the losers have a (again) a lots of room to game this search engine. That´s as far as I can see, the best thing about it.
By the way, to some of the traffic count opponents, yes camping makes the traffic numbers somewhat irrelevant. However if you take it away, then one would split up land into a bunch of 16 qm parcels to make up for all the disadvantages the new mechanisms have created. It´s not one big messy entry then, it´s a swamp of small ones.
Rather stick to the old, folks…This is getting steering you into a search data dumpster.
What about simply removing the “all” search entirely? You will never get it fair enough, cose it´s comparing apples with peers
November 14th, 2007 at 1:48 AM
Jeska says: “….Inbound links are created by references in top picks…”
Does this particular bit refer to the picks in peoples profiles?
If so it would explain, why certain groups have a run on new members at the moment (which are probably all the same rl person)
Some groups are up from 50 members to more than 500 in less than a month. I wonder why that is…
Just checked one, whose name i will not disclose here but, it was at less than 100 a month ago, 500 yesterday and is now at 550…This is pathetic
November 14th, 2007 at 2:28 AM
Woohoo Awesome right time just before christmas
November 14th, 2007 at 3:09 AM
As someone who pays a 4 digit amount for classified ads each month, I have a few problems with the new search. Main problem: Uhm… where are my ads?
I sell avatars, for example. Classified ad for L$ 115,000. It should show up somewhere when I search for “avatars”, I’d think. But it doesn’t. All I get is a page full of places that got to the top of the list by putting out camping chairs and ruining the SL experience for their mainland neighbours.
There’s a box for classifieds at the right (which looks much less inviting than all the colorful links to the camper zoos), but my ads don’t show in there. Looks like a bug, mature content is not shown in that box even if you choose to see it.
Anyway…. don’t you think that those who throw insane amounts of money at you should be listed above the camping institutions? If not, there’s no reason for me to pay anything beyond my tier anymore.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:13 AM
Above post is from me. Ranted anonymously last time, blog page remembered the name. Anyway… could someone look into that “no mature classifieds shown in classifieds box” bug please? And please reconsider the sort order (high traffic places first, people who pay you listed somewhere on page 3… might be wise to change that).
November 14th, 2007 at 3:55 AM
Great video as usual, Torley, but your voice sounds different. And you weren’t as hyper. :((( Do you need more sugar? <333 hyper Torley
One question: can we now search for two or three letter words and acronyms? In the current search it will only accept four-letter search terms and up which is a pain if you want to look up things like lag or AFK or HUD.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:00 AM
P.S. I agree with #19. Give us the option whether we want to include traffic ratings in our search or not.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:05 AM
My 2 cents worth not that anyone cares.
It is fast.
Glad that there are no graphics to clutter the page.
pain to have to go back and forth looking at information on the location.
10 Links per page are not enough.
50 links in total are no where near enough.
Couldn’t find my self.
First it was “open registration” then camping now bots. Genuine decent creators get squished by those who find ways around the system. We all know it. Look at top 20 or top of any search. The places up there are full of bots.
One Bot store is selling a system where each avitar costs 20,000.
Making of your own bot is just as easy as 123. There are a few sites that give step by step directions for free. Creators are into creating. However if they do that they see no traffic cause of the 300 listed above them.
This has gone on for a year and a half. It gets worse and worse. Now HippyPay is the leading sim in SL. Gone are the days when genuine people made up the numbers. My humble personal investigation finds that the current top 20 places have about 1500 bots running on them.
1 person for one minute = 1 traffic.
1 person for 24 hours = 1440 traffic
100,000-150,000 Traffic = current top 20 range
70 - 105 people for 24 hours
Yes it is good for the LindenLab statistics. Easier on the systems than having real clients running, but it makes for unfair conditions and creators who give up.
Easy fix.
Free accounts are limited. No scripts. Only count as .1 in traffic. Pay one time fee. 5-10$ get all the workings of normal user and a normal 1 per min traffic. Solves griefers, makes people see value in their account.
Now if they are true free alt accounts their traffic is only worth .1 any how. After this policy runs for say 3 weeks we will see the traffic numbers come back to Real numbers.
There might be an increase in database work for a few weeks but at the end of the day it will make life easier on all, fairer on all. Down side will be that the numbers will drop as alts are abandoned.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:07 AM
Well with the old search I typed in a major key word to items I’ve sold for a long time and were actually the items I was able to sell and expand with. I pay the fee to display my parcels in search, and get nothing in the search. So where does that leave me. Well it leaves me I guess getting rid of a half of a sim worth of product lines and start making other things I guess. Well that is until the search gets borked again. I find it wierd that it brought up my searches for the past 7 or so months and now nothing? LOL. Gotta shake my head sometimes. I’m sure it will be an awesome search as has been stated in the video. I guess I’ll use on rez or slx for the bulk of the sales on the other items that won’t get a match in search. I’m not the only one seeing this so I’d appreciate lindens not putting the blinders on and trying to explain it in a moronic way. If thats at all possible. I think the traffic system is a complete scam. Especially when you can pay for your parcel to be found in search and then its not. But my key words for my store can be found amongst sims that have 30 people camping and maybe ONE item that fits the description. LOL. Thats lame any way you look at it. But its not me whos being represented here is it? Its what people are seeing once again in a lack of concern on the part of the honest merchant in SL. Good luck with the new search LL. Just thought I’d put a little more food for thought in while I still can.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:21 AM
What are these ’sleekbot zombies’? Something a new shop owner should be concerned about?
November 14th, 2007 at 4:24 AM
thats ok. we can all just go spend our days making new accouints and joining groups and putting our “favorite merchants” in our 10,000,000 new accounts each picks. then never log them on again. that should boost the membership rolls up. yea we all know where the internet cafes are so dealing with it is impossible isn’t it. ok so here is the right solution:
1. remove traffic. make bot use a TOS violation. you have heard us yelling at you for a very long time. so either get rid of it or come clean and tell us you sponsor, condone, and encourage bot use because if thats the way it is we can most certainly boost concurrency to a million pretty quick and kill the entire back end system. come on. don’t be shy. tell it like it is. you want the numbers up for PR purposes. it would only take a few thousand of us running 50 sleekbots per pc to do it. you do know about text based bot clients right? L$2000 is all the program costs from what i heard. (and saw for sale in world)
2. remove relevancy based on “inbound links”. no groups, no picks involved. easily gamed and the gaming has begun.
3. remove whoever thought this current new search relevancy up because they are so out of touch with the reality of secondlife that they have exactly zero place being involved.
4. establish policy about deceptive advertising. yes make it a bannable offense and be done with it. so easy to prove.
5. make search logic remove redundant prims from search.
6. make search perform lexical analysis on descriptions so strings of keywords are lowered in relevancy and properly written descriptions are higher as is the way google and other search engines operate. (don’t know what you bought but i think you got ripped off)
7. make ads appear first with a “sponsored ad” banner so users can just hit next and move on to legitimate results (just like we all do on search engine sites.
8. sell banner advertising. we can all ignore it just like we do on search engine sites but hey you get t keep the cash anyway so everyone wins.
9. develop a sense of business ethics and hire some marketing staff that can have absolute control over these areas of secondlife and leave the geeks.. errr i mean “technical people” to work on code where they belong.
10. do a better job with abuse reports and go after not only griefers but the website operators that clearly benefit from their operations. or admit you encourage them. hope it ain’t so.
its great your moving search out to services to have a better architecture but you need to age out the old ways and start conducting business with ethics and common sense.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:25 AM
I’m curious if the buy lists will also list pay scripts? I use a gift card system that needs pay scripts and I’d like to know if it’s in my best interest to switch back to plain old boxes set for sale!
Great job guys
November 14th, 2007 at 5:00 AM
Woohoo finally!
I love SLBrowser, but it’s a bit clunky to use… attaching, searching, detaching all that. This will be great!
November 14th, 2007 at 5:07 AM
Heads up Loki…
Yeah there’s something definitely wrong when the keywords you have relied upon and built your business upon suddenly don’t work because the vendor (LL) is playing with their toys.
We have a strategy that currently places our main group and the supporting sub-groups and land holdings consistently in a hold on the top ten. That’s seven placings in the top ten, on seven keywords.
Type those same keywords into the new search (cough) engine….
as I said to a friend of mine…there’s not even a toenail clipping of our groups’ total existence. (two group member’s profiles surfaced…. but none of the officers or owners.)
I’d say “go figure”
That’s a command prompt from me and my crew to LL on this one.
Libby
November 14th, 2007 at 5:22 AM
Is there btw, any method of detecting a bot? What´s it anyway. A replica of an av? Somebody got a plain explanation?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:29 AM
p.s.
Our traffic numbers are valid, not robotic; increased by live human contact, from 11 to over 5,000 in three months.
I like the weighting idea presented earlier in this forum. Giving a .1 rating to what I call “dead” avatars seems like fair game to me.
I’m against eliminating the weight of traffic count in the search filters. Taking away the reward of a top search placing based partially on our hard earned traffic count is an anti-marketing strategy.
We’re not big shots with rich accounts. Our land holdings are less than 10,000 sq. meters. That’s a $40 USD a month account that I pay myself. I invested a lot of time and lindens in recruiting quality support group members from around the world.
I’ve been trying to log in for hours now…we have been under construction because we are expanding quicker than we can act with the traffic we currently bring in with the current search engine.
That’s a good problem to have, but it seems that my “more than I can handle” traffic is going to dive soon unless someone tells me how to advertise as effectively within this new search engine. Don’t I pay for that?
The more I think about this, the more I think…
why invest any more in this?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:31 AM
@70 - Some, most actually, are easily identifiable by their names name123, name123, name125, etc. generally speaking they are usually default avatars sitting on camp pads in the parcels their operators own and they don’t respond to anything. after all, when your paying yourself for 100 bots your not really out the money. just the time to go through the bot accounts from time to time and send the collected money back to your main account. this is why traffic needs to go. most of the bots are not even legit money earning bots. they are just what is required for advertising to be seen in sl. the current estimate is 30 to 50% of all users online are these bogus bots. it is out of control. Linden Research stated in the past they were going to get rid of traffic because of this problem. However we can now see they had no intention of doing anything about it. After all, what will the press think if SL concurrency dropped from 50,000 to 25,000 in one day and it never went back up? thinking in these terms it is easy to see why the ethics are absent. so the registered user accounts will now explode with bogus accounts set up to drive “inbound links” and bot use will now increase placing even more load on the already shaky system.
there is only one right solution. we have come to not expect the right solutions from LL unless external influences come into play.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:37 AM
oh yea, the most blatant abuse of these bots is on the increase. you see 80 green dots on the map and go there and see no avatars on ground level. you find 80 ruths in a sardine can skybox at 750 meters. they are not even collecting money. they are just useless avatars connected to the grid using resources to falsely elevate the parcel owner’s traffic.
and now we can expect to see green blobs on the map and these sardine can operations on a massive increase thanks to an incredibly poorly thought out search relevancy system.
it is beyond belief. the sl press is lighting up with a universal condemnation of this new search system. heads should roll at LL over this atrocity.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:42 AM
Heads should lol for how seriously everyone’s taking this. Are bots problem? Yes! Is it an atrocity? What a ridiculous word to use!
November 14th, 2007 at 5:50 AM
lol! omg i seen that lol, even though it’s funny the abuse is not, you said ruth right, like ruth1 ruth2 ruth3? or like wise nameing of clones to boost traffic, ya that’s not good, it can easly be done, and they can “hack around” real gameplay, i agree that trafic can be good for real places that matter and bring life to SL, but for those useing these sardine cans as a for of “hack around” for real popularity of good buisness or clubsite, i also say both to keep AND remove traffic :S
November 14th, 2007 at 6:05 AM
Ban camping!!! Yes we know that is where a huge part of the Linden’s concurrently online number comes from but it is cheating. There are people that have a very small portion of a sim and use up most of it’s resources with camping.
Do away with camping LL. Ban it now!
November 14th, 2007 at 6:05 AM
alrighty found a good method myself, i suppose:
http://blip.tv/file/436105/
LOL
November 14th, 2007 at 6:47 AM
NEW SEARCH - Status Indicators - On Topic
I hope that the placement of the new search tool is not written in stone. I would like to HIGHLY suggest that it be moved to the left of the clock, and the status indicators be put back. I know that many of us rely on the status indicators to show when we have crashed, or if we should just wait a bit for lag / freeze to clear, and I for one truly miss them.
The search as tried seems to work well. As much as I have tried it, it seems to be a vast improvement over the old multi-tab tool.
DRD
And Yes - get rid of camping. If nothing else, it makes no sense to pay $0.20 us per hour for the power to run a computer to make $0.30 us camping. Think a little more green maybe….
November 14th, 2007 at 6:54 AM
Kind of funny, it tells me I will get the most relevant results, yet when I search for “shoes” I get a Furniture Building Center in the Classifieds. Not because it’s really relevant of course, just because that person pays a lot and deliberately puts irrelevant keywords.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:36 AM
I totally agree with Ann Otoole…
Bots are bad, traffic is even worse. One would have thought that traffic is there to show the regions’ actual REAL traffic, like how many people go there to shop and even buy things… so therefore indicate that the place sells great stuff but hell no.
I am searching for new places for our stores all the time and I so don’t trust traffic at all, funny thing it is up high and nobody is in the street looking around but all locked on one place, somewhere up high. I am sick of these sim and land owners who con decent hard worrking true creative members of sl who spend at least 60+ hours working on their clothing, furniture, whatever and spending at least 5000 L$ a week on rentas, ads, uploads, etc… These sim owners use unfair and unjust methods to take money of us (hey, don’t everyone want to have a shop in one of those high traffic places, but then after paying a lot of money that there was no chance of us ever making a sale because there is NO REAL shopping traffic???)
Our concern should be taken seriously, ban camping, ban camping bots and make the system fair…
Shop owners, please keep complaining to LL, maybe we will all be better of, it is time to shop owners to unite and be against this since we are the backbone of second life! Without shopping there would be no reason for anyone to spend money. Therefore let’s complain together as a group and let LL know that we will not put up with this.
Change the system now, MAKE IT FAIR!
*Suu Miles sits back waiting to see this post being deleted again…*
November 14th, 2007 at 7:39 AM
Question re: Inbound Links:
“In the new All Search, results are returned by “relevance“, based on how well the page matches the query, how close the multiple words are together, and how many inbound links there are to the page. Inbound links are created by references in top picks, classifieds, landmarks, parcels and groups. While you can create links to these pages from web sites outside Second Life, those in-bound links are not used for relevance. For now we are not allowing HTML in profiles, land descriptions, etc., so attempting to create links in the description text will not work.”
The last line is confusing me. Can someone please define this a bit more clearly? What specifically counts as an “inbound link?” Is it simply a reference/keyword?
For instance, if an object is set to a particular group, does that count as an “inbound link?” Or does it simply require the name of the group to be a keyword in the title of the object? Does a reference in the description field count or not? If yes, do they both count as “inbound links” and double the relevance?
November 14th, 2007 at 8:16 AM
Another question: in the new Search tab, how is punctuation (such as apostrophes, specifically) treated? Are they searchable? Are they ignored? Are the words omitted?
This would be helpful to know, as my business name contains one.
Thanks.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:19 AM
Short and sweet …
1) Torley, you have managed, as usual, to create a wonderful tutorial, and we all appreciate your efforts.
… or not so sweet …
2) The problem is that the new search, while it might look nice and have cool features, is already being gamed, will be gamed worse and worse, and is, even now, utterly useless for presenting relevant results — and buries relevant results that used to be easy to find … the very same results we *want* to get, but now will never be able to dig out. Enough has already been said about this that no excuse can be made for Linden Lab not understanding how totally stupid this is.
3) There remains the issue that the new search engine is the single most blatant Linden Lab sponsored privacy breach in the history of Second Life. Even if you opt out of putting your profile on the search your avatar name will *still* go out to the web, without your consent, and will immediately be snatched up by advertisers. It’s spam time, folks. Your IMs will be capped, you’ll be presented with a deluge of note-card advertisements, you’ll be buried to you virtual ears in garbage you don’t want to see, every time you log on.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:40 AM
This new view rocks for me so far. The search functions are awesome. I use to get so frustrated trying to find what I wanted. I was always using SLX to find what I needed as the search was better. Thank you Torley for explaining how to use it. LL great job, I hope this view stabalizes so we can use it all the time.
November 14th, 2007 at 9:31 AM
The new search is good if it was implemented right but it isn’t! Setting all for sale items in search by default is a big mistake wich will make search incorrect for about 90% is my guess. I had a look on my parcels and 100% of the results are wrong. Lot of items for sale, but I use vendors so it was not possible that items i sell are listed. A look of what was for sale was a list of non-transerable items wich where set for sale by the creator and “for sale” can’t be deselected.
LL assumes that everybody will now run across their land to deselect them I guess. Well I won’t! I didn’t list them so I don’t really care that people will get to my land and be disappointed nothing of the items listed is for sale.
I really don’t understand the decision to enforce this feature by default as it is very clear this decision will corrupt the for sale searches entirely
November 14th, 2007 at 9:32 AM
I don’t actually see any information on how to use the new search or how relevance is determined for it in this post. If all the information I need is in the video that does not help those of us that are deaf very much as no one ever thinks to include subtitles.
Could I please ask that important in formation be actually typed and offered in written form for those of us not able to hear. Thank you.
- Zoe Llewelyn
Boneflower Designs
November 14th, 2007 at 9:36 AM
I just watched the video, and must say I am beyond surprised…subtitles! ZOMG! No one, and I mean no one, ever remembers subtitles for the deaf! THANK YOU, and ignore my above post. *cough* Teaches me to watch it first, eh.
-Zoe Llewelyn
Boneflower Designs
November 14th, 2007 at 9:51 AM
Maybe there should be two sets of comments: one for sim owners and one for regular users.
Anyway, the new Search has a lot of potential, but has a long way to go, from a user standpoint. When I did a search from the new toolbar window, using Any Category as a filter, it worked. Then, when I wanted to refine that search in the new search window, the Search button was grayed out. I had to clear the search term window and retype it to get the Search button back. This is a minor inconvenience, but it seems like it would be just as easy to eliminate it, and never have the Search button grayed out.
Keep up the good work, Torley.
November 14th, 2007 at 9:52 AM
I also agree with a TOS against bots and a revision of the traffic system. Being here only for about 6 months as entrepreneur I had to install campings to get my sim listed. After a few days I noticed these campers only got filled with bots, so next was looking for ways to get these bots out. I have anti-afk now. But I still think it’s not fair I have to pay people to get listed. In the meanwhile I understand that bots are not even illegal on slso why am I paying campers? I only have to make my own bot army and put them in a skybox. Higher traffic for free! I rather put my money in classifieds but traffic gives more money for my buck then classifieds so ….
November 14th, 2007 at 9:59 AM
How would we find objects for sale in a vebdor?
Would they have to be listed in the vendors description or will search find them inside the vendor?
This could be a big issue as many use vendors to help with prim allowances.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:07 AM
Woohoo!!
/me practices what will go into every search…
-camp -camping
-camp -camping
-camp -camping
-camp -camping
-camp -camping
-camp -camping
-camp -camping
November 14th, 2007 at 10:11 AM
Garth - my understanding is that those who use vendors are screwed
These results are already SOOOO skewed and manipulated it is depressing.
As merchants we are faced with the decision to actively participate in this manipulation to survive - or just watch things wither away.
Really sad. I guess it is a case of may the most spam prims and top picked ALTS win
November 14th, 2007 at 10:28 AM
@ Paulo
Keywords are not the only thing providing relevance in the new search. As mentioned in previous blog posts, several different pieces of information are involved in ranking results in the new search including raising relevancy for high traffice locations in various ways, popular places, the inclusion of favorites found in profiles and more.
@ Atashi
Unless you just recently added your parcel to search (in which case it would take up to 3 days for it to be included, it’s not automatic!), that sounds like a bug, I will be sure to forward it onto our search team for their further research. Please remember that Search is still in Release Candidate mode and has not yet been finalized!
@ libertine and Amethyst
Don’t forget that the “old” version of search is still available and will be until we are satisfied that the new search has been properly integrated and is performing well (or hopefully better) than the current one. Also remember, that much like on the web, searching for your items will work better if you provide better, clearer keywords. There are many sites on the Web that explore the artform of meta-tagging, keywording and descriptions. Thank you for your patience while we work thrugh this period of change!
@ Ambergris
Currently the featured listings feature is turned off while we work at refining the page. But, they are pulled directly from the classified ads and include the highest paid ads. We are hoping to grow the classified visibilty and value in the future by offering placement in the featured listings location to more classified buyers. Watch this blog for more information in the coming months.
@ Turner
We are exploring ways to include vendors in future versions of Search. I would encourage you to spend some time with keywords and tagging the objects you currently have before entirely writing off the new search.
@ Ishtara
I will pass along your information to our Search Team, classified ads are returned by relevance of the search query and should be respecting the mature/not mature check box. Please note that including mature content may not change the list of ads shown at the right if the most relevant ads are not marked mature! When searching for a very common word like “avatar” there appear to be many PG classifieds returned!
@Georgette
I’m happy to report that you can in fact seach for 2 and 3 digit words with the new search!
November 14th, 2007 at 10:39 AM
This rocks!!! Searching for things has always been a pain in my arse, but I’m loving the new search feature. Thanks for including our picks, as it’s now the only way I can get my store in the search database until I can get the parcel my store is on listed in Places. I’ll have to blog it once I investigate it a bit more, but this is one new feature that I’m glad you didn’t wait to get available to use until more of the annoying bugs got fixed. (And congrats on the pace of bug fixing. SL was an exercise in frustration last week but on the whole it’s been much easier to do things so far this week.)
Now if we caould only get to play with WindLight some more as well as use the awesome new search tools.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:44 AM
There is a very bad aspect of the new system being gamed. Ask the DBA staff about the ramifications of thousands of merchants replicating prims to raise position in search by a factor of 10 or more. add to that the probable explosion in bogus user account records to get picks placed on accounts that will log in once and never log in again after the account profile is set up. I’m pretty sure your going to have to address this with the TOS before the search slows to a crawl and the database runs out of space.
Just a technical thought from a data warehouse engineer.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:44 AM
Torley Linden,
I am using the Release Candidate (and exploring your tips) and it is just awesome.
Great work everyone involved.
Dr Boyoma
November 14th, 2007 at 10:51 AM
I must say after playing with the new search, I find it’s relevance factors confusing and odd. Maybe its because many of my most popular products are in vendors but my main product lines now show up on page 11 instead of page 1 of old search, and products that used to show up several pages back in search now are on page 1 for some strange reason beating out other stores who I know have more popular products by that name and category. very odd. i see little actual logic or predictability so far.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:54 AM
I can’t get the search to go beyond the first page, clicking on “next” or “2″ doesn’t seem to work. I would LIKE to see where I am on it.
The best I could get myself to come up (on the first page, which is all I can access) is to put in “cottages.” NOT EVEN “cottage.” “Cottages.”
I would also LIKE to give my preliminary comments in THIS BLOG before the comments are PEREMPTORILY CUT OFF. (Which means commenting before reading the other comments.) I’d write this much better if I only had TIME to.
And I’ve got this to say:
We are all doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed.
The only people who will survive are those who appear on the first couple of pages of “All.”
This “All” thing not only SUCKS, it is practically shoved down the throat of the users!
The entire first PAGE of search is ENTIRELY devoted to the “All” search, in which nobody but 10 people are even going to show up on the first page, followed by dozens of pages of crap no one is going to plow through.
The only significant way to the top of this “All” thing appears to be we give you L97,000 a WEEK to classifieds. Thus ENSURING that only the big and rich get bigger and richer, while everyone else sinks into total obscurity.
AND we can’t figure out how to manage to show up, because the algorithm for it - i.e., just exactly what determines your place on it - is NOT EXPLAINED, and can apparently change at the first backstage manipulation (passed off as “fine-tuning.). I believe it was explained vaguely somewhere; can anyone point me to where?
YES folks, drive all the users to this magnificent “ALL” page, thus throwing 90% of sales to the top people on the list.
It would be bad enough to have this All Google crap, but to pimp it like there’s no tomorrow only HURTS anyone who doesn’t understand how to get high up on it.
Do you really want to get rid of most of the content creators in SL? By which I mean, anybody who isn’t the top ten on the heavily-promoted All page?
Because you sure are making every (unnecessary) effort to do so. It’s like you want to drive everyone to this magnificent “All” thing that you are apparently so proud of, that you are willing to kill the rest of us off.
And I mean kill us off. Kill our sales. This is the closest to “over” this game has ever been for me. Are you going to enjoy the fact that I no longer pay you $1725 a year? That I now wouldn’t THINK of buying an island?
I won’t be able to AFFORD to pay you that money because you have gone literally OUT OF YOUR WAY to push this “All” thing on us, with no concern whatsoever about what it is going to do to us, the merchants of SL.
Multiply me by bunches of other people whose sales go down, and see how you like that.
All because you’ve got to have this All search, and you’ve GOT to make sure that new users go RIGHT TO IT. Heck, you practically shove them there!
Do you think you could at LEAST not pimp it like that? Just call it “All” like you used to, and leave it at that? Just along the screen like it always was.
coco
November 14th, 2007 at 11:09 AM
Torley, thanks for your video tutorials. I’ve been testing the search tool all morning and rly rly like em. =D
But some things are not showing up for example our group Watermelon Nation. Hehe! Also many avatar names are not showing up. http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3092
November 14th, 2007 at 11:13 AM
Heya everyone - please note I am deleting the offtopic replies to this post so we can continue to stay on target about search!
November 14th, 2007 at 11:16 AM
Great video Torley.
BUT… and I don’t aim this at Torley, isn’t it sad that textures rez so slowly? Any nickle-and-dime website on the net can rez a texture in a split second. Second Life? 10 seconds. a minute. 3 minutes. HALF AN HOUR…
The results aren’t minor. People go to a merchant and leave in disgust because textures rez so slowly. People visit a sim and comment on how “laggy” the sim is, because everything remains gray for anywhere from a few minutes to indefinite (it’s not the “sim”. The sim is just fine. It’s SL lousy data-handling routines).
It’s not sad that this problem exists. Anything can spring a bottleneck from time to time. What’s sad is that it has existed for SO LONG without Linden Lab doing a thing about it. That is what is sad. A system that can’t handle simple texture resolution, simple group chat, simple Group Notices, is tinkertoy, I don’t care how many claims of “bleeding edge” are sounded off over and over again. Text chat isn’t bleeding edge. Simple data transferral (Group Notices) isn’t bleeding edge. Plopping a texture on a screen isn’t bleeding edge (3d games have been doing such ever since Doom back in the 80s).
A system that can’t get the simple stuff right sure isn’t going to get the complex stuff right.
Sorry you had to be embarassed by thoses slow-loading textures Torley. You’re a good guy. But… that’s just a sample of how the rest of us feel every hour we’re logged in to SL. Slow loading textures are flipping frustrating.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:16 AM
Why would a group with around 500 members not show up in the “all” search tab now, even when the exact name is entered and the “groups” drop down is selected? The group only shows up under the groups search tab.