Yes I actually travel to parcels too that are unlisted and add them to measurements as I have noticed quite a few ‘brands’ now removing themselves from search because they obviously dont want the world to see how ‘low’ there actual passing/dwell traffic is.

I disagree with your comments as both you and Lowell seem to concentrate on spikes vs long term dwell usefulness (now that is a skewed perspective too). Like talking about an election and saying well my three friends voted for candidate X who didnt win there it is rigged?!. We have been taking readings over the past few months and the ‘order’ or popularity is pretty consistent. Here is the latest order based on all the parcels for each of these brands. I have removed 2 brands who refuse to have their parcels listed in search or even inform us of their full range of parcels. This strikes me as ‘cover-up’ poor performance (given that both are big builds – designed to keep avies on their land). So pulling out one or two examples, like your 20 min one stop person, or a group of friends staying most of one evening are just more examples of spikes.

To me this is about comparison over longer periods of time. I will say again, comparison over long periods NOT one off, anecdotal events. Until there is an alternative, fair, agnostic system (vs companies and sims just telling us how popular they are) then this remains. Gary

Positions based on dwell for we 28 may:
(range from 19 000 at top to 48 at bottom.)

BigPond
Pontiac
ABC TV Australia
NetG Training
Nissan
Mercedes-Benz
IBM
Dell
Mazda
American Apparel
Showtime (L Word)
Microsoft
MTVN
Toyota
Reuters
AOL
Sears
Samsung
Sony Ericsson
Adidas Reebok
Starwood Hotels
Sony BMG
STA Travel
BMW
Circuit City
ABN AMRO
Cisco
PA Consulting Group
Intel
Sun Microsystems
Sundance Channel
Sprint
The Infinite Mind
Text 100
Wired Magazine
CNET

Yes I actually travel to parcels too that are unlisted and add them to measurements as I have noticed quite a few ‘brands’ now removing themselves from search because they obviously dont want the world to see how ‘low’ there actual passing/dwell traffic is.

I disagree with your comments as both you and Lowell seem to concentrate on spikes vs long term dwell usefulness (now that is a skewed perspective too). Like talking about an election and saying well my three friends voted for candidate X who didnt win there it is rigged?!. We have been taking readings over the past few months and the ‘order’ or popularity is pretty consistent. Here is the latest order based on all the parcels for each of these brands. I have removed 2 brands who refuse to have their parcels listed in search or even inform us of their full range of parcels. This strikes me as ‘cover-up’ poor performance (given that both are big builds – designed to keep avies on their land). So pulling out one or two examples, like your 20 min one stop person, or a group of friends staying most of one evening are just more examples of spikes.

To me this is about comparison over longer periods of time. I will say again, comparison over long periods NOT one off, anecdotal events. Until there is an alternative, fair, agnostic system (vs companies and sims just telling us how popular they are) then this remains. Gary

Positions based on dwell for we 28 may:
(range from 19 000 at top to 48 at bottom.)

BigPond
Pontiac
ABC TV Australia
NetG Training
Nissan
Mercedes-Benz
IBM
Dell
Mazda
American Apparel
Showtime (L Word)
Microsoft
MTVN
Toyota
Reuters
AOL
Sears
Samsung
Sony Ericsson
Adidas Reebok
Starwood Hotels
Sony BMG
STA Travel
BMW
Circuit City
ABN AMRO
Cisco
PA Consulting Group
Intel
Sun Microsystems
Sundance Channel
Sprint
The Infinite Mind
Text 100
Wired Magazine
CNET

I had this one guy who used to visit my store parcel. He’d turn up regularly when the neighbours two parcels north were having avatar-sex, and stand on my roof, snooping.

He was worth 200 points of traffic for his 20 minute stay. Conversely, I’m worth less than 1 point of traffic virtually everywhere I go. I’m either not there for long enough, I cross a property line, or it’s such a small percentage of my total time, that it just doesn’t factor in at all.

Oh, and traffic isn’t being removed from SL – it might not even be being removed from the search system. It’s just not going to be used as a *ranking* determinant for search results.

As for the methodology, most of the venues we’re measuring the majority of their land is unlisted parcels, with traffic not available by search. That means a heavily trafficked site with a listed parcel may appear to be busier/more popular than an even more heavily trafficked site where much of the build is on unlisted parcels.

Already tried the search-and-add methodology, and it gave us a highly skewed (and easily gameable) result.

I had this one guy who used to visit my store parcel. He’d turn up regularly when the neighbours two parcels north were having avatar-sex, and stand on my roof, snooping.

He was worth 200 points of traffic for his 20 minute stay. Conversely, I’m worth less than 1 point of traffic virtually everywhere I go. I’m either not there for long enough, I cross a property line, or it’s such a small percentage of my total time, that it just doesn’t factor in at all.

Oh, and traffic isn’t being removed from SL – it might not even be being removed from the search system. It’s just not going to be used as a *ranking* determinant for search results.

As for the methodology, most of the venues we’re measuring the majority of their land is unlisted parcels, with traffic not available by search. That means a heavily trafficked site with a listed parcel may appear to be busier/more popular than an even more heavily trafficked site where much of the build is on unlisted parcels.

Already tried the search-and-add methodology, and it gave us a highly skewed (and easily gameable) result.

My points are:

1. That the algorithm as it currently stands places too much emphasis on some factors (percentage time versus total time in-world) and not enough on others (idle time, activity-specific metrics). Whatever LL replace it with may not be better, but I remain hopeful.

2. That the current traffic stats are transparent, but really only to experienced SL users. A new business or NGO can easily be snowed by traffic figures. In an ideal world the figures would be as finessed as those available on the web – and it probably will end up that way.

I agree totally that whatever is in place should be as publicly viewable as they currently are.

But I would suggest if you are concerned about self-promotion just go and look yourself. The figures are obvious and visible to all.

Gary

Step 1 – Go inworld.
Step 2 – Type SEARCH/PLACES. Put in some of the big brand names like, Microsoft, IBM, L Word, Pontiac, BigPond, ABC etc:
Step 3 – Look at the numbers. Add them up to get a total for the brand.

Clear for you? In otherwords these figures are published all the time for all to see. This is why I keep saying if they are removed we will have no open figures to compare and don’t understand why Lowell thinks there is a better traffic/dwell system.

Gary

My points are:

1. That the algorithm as it currently stands places too much emphasis on some factors (percentage time versus total time in-world) and not enough on others (idle time, activity-specific metrics). Whatever LL replace it with may not be better, but I remain hopeful.

2. That the current traffic stats are transparent, but really only to experienced SL users. A new business or NGO can easily be snowed by traffic figures. In an ideal world the figures would be as finessed as those available on the web – and it probably will end up that way.

Tateru – you raise one of the more interesting issues about all of this – the methodology. Any methodology is open to criticism and I’ve always been up front that mine is a snapshot only. I’d be fascinated to see more discussion on the issue as I know SL Insider has an excellent regular feature on traffic stats as well.

Again – a very worthwhile discussion to have all round.