Is Second Life’s new search functionality being gamed?

January 2, 2008

The Grid Live has some fascinating screen grabs taken from another blog showing masses of avatars gathered in a small area - allegedly to boost that location significantly in the search rankings.

Traffic / popularity is contentious at the best of times and stunts like this, if proven to be true, make the search function as useful as age verification. Neither are much chop at objectively measuring much at all.

How would you make search in Second Life fairer?

Popularity: 1% [?]

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Written by Lowell Cremorne · Filed Under General News

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Stone Culdesac 9 months ago 1 point
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I did grab the first two screenshots from Grid Expectations, but just because all the avatars were gone by the time I got there. I did see a few other spots they could actually hide some, above and below ground but none as of last night. The other screenshots I was showing how easy it is to game the search traffic, all you need is traffic and a keyword in your description, and they were top five for sex, escorts, skins, shapes, you name it.

If you look at the one spot above them Platinum skins, I think it was, they have their campers outside where you can see them, although, there were a lot less there, so I am beginning to wonder if B&B just filled that room below ground during the slow periods and removed them during SL's busy times. I will try to pot in here and there and see if they do, as well as watch to see if their traffic scores plummet.

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http://thegridlive.com

Stone Culdesac 9 months ago 1 point
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Oh, and I just changed your old blog listing to this one, sorry about that, completely forget about it.

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http://thegridlive.com

Lowell Cremorne 9 months ago 1 point
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Hi Stone,

Thanks for the extra info - it's certainly an interesting story ;)

Lowell

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http://www.sloz.info

Emmaline Thorn 9 months ago 1 point
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Stone -- I don't know what time you visited, but I was there this morning, and as of 8:50 AM Eastern US time, they were all there -- there is a false floor under the pond - if you go one level lower, you'll see they are all still there, buried two layers deep, and with no visible way in or out. They're either planted and set to never idle, or someone's giving out a teleport in/out to the place. Same for the top floor of the building nearby.

I've asked for a statement from the Sim owner as to those idlers who keep winning money. We'll see if we get a response.

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http://www.massively.com