I also want to point out that my ranking was achieved fairly and I have NEVER used Bots to game traffic. The way search ALL works now seems to be totally random and shops such as myself who actually sell what they say they do are now even harder to find.

I would like a Linden employee to come out and confirm that the engine was altered as a drop from page 1 in the search ranking to ...well oblivion, is just not right and this is also having a serious effect on my ability to keep my customer traffic where it used to be.

A.) Picks are the fairest system to voting for a good parcel. Also a circulation of money in the whole SL market. New SL (real) members get the chance to earn some money and find interesting places.
SL merchants advert their offerings. And that is the main point of the search. Not to be listed between millions of other entries, but more to make advertisment to a service or product. If it not so, you can also clear the same search engine, then would also the 30L$ per parcel and week too much to be listed.
If you create only a search system in which the parcel only be listed, because it is existing as a parcel, then you are killing a same SEO branch, which is helping shop owners to make marketing and a good business.

B.) The money, time and nerves from people who are invested in this search system and create good offerings would be wasted. That is not a game or a funny joke, this are real value investments. LindenLab wrote in their TOS that they wouldn't interfere into the content market. But things like this are huge interferes into the whole inworld market. Shortly to say, you kill existences with this.
That is directly leading to

C.) You are asking why the real world companies are leaving second life? Why the professional content creators stop to create content for secondlife and go to other markets? The answer is very simple. The secondlife platform is a fine web2.0 solution from technical site, but the provider change fom time to time the rules and wasting many of the real money investments. No one can say which will happend tomororrw with that software. And who one of the private investors have enough money and time to invest into an rule instable system like this? It would be better then, if you are burning your money at stove and lay yourself into the real sun. I've seen people who are loosing up to 30.000 US$ of their investments in this system. And you can be sure, they are not very amused about this.
I was often asked from real world companies if i could help them with that thing named "secondlife" or is that good to invest into an 3D company homepage. Currently i just said: "Wait before you invest something, this world is in upheaval" Why i think so? I want not to lose my real world face to this people if linden lab changing again something. Because if they are loosing their investments, they are not asking LindenLab at first, they are asking me whats happend. I had recommended this system for investments. And this would be a little bit more than 100 L$.
Some months ago i said to one of the first M Lindens blog entries: Keep an eye on the content creators. These peoples are the real capital of your system. This peoples are paying for the offerings of LindenLab. These peoples made the system to that, what it is today optically. Not the mass of people who are paying nothing, using your server traffic and are happy that all is free. But a change of the search algorithm is another kick to the people who are investing in this system. If you have the time to make changes on search system, then i'm asking me why you don't repair the bugs or create real interesting features to make business in secondlife?
So i say, stop the changes who are bad to your believers. Make this system robust enough for interested investors. And if it was changed, go back to the last working search engine some days before.

But i also think this comments will not leads to revise the determination.

I run a professional content creation business in Second Life for almost 4 years now. We hold a massive group approaching 4,000 people who
comment daily on the creations and fashions coming from my business. We have a 2 year running grid wide modeling summit which draws entries
from over 60 countries worldwide. We are in the top twenty ranked SL fashion businesses. Alas, our following is huge. Everyone knows us and
the quality I create. Hours and hours of working on a single item.

The staging for SEARCH this April has definatly fallen. We watch SEARCH almost daily. I started noticing people who had jewelry jewelry jewelry
jewelry jewelry jewelry jewelry listed as being in the top spots for Searching. I tped to a few of these places and theres no jewelry to be found. Just a
wedding chapel... Im not sure why the changes were made but... for the life and sakes of the dedicated businesses, get the SEARCH working properly.
Thousands more people have our store in their PICKS than that little wedding chapel. Its very obvious something bad is occuring.

First the slaughter of the classifieds system in 2007 with the new SEARCH... Now the Slaughter of the SEARCH Function in the viewer.
How in the world will anyone continue to do solid business in Second Life. As a long time trusted and solid business owner in Second Life, I do
hope Linden Labs will take these posts into consideration and resolve the SEARCH malfunctions happening.

Another concerned business owner.

No announcement has been made on something so significant for business owners and visitors.
LL immediately has to acknowldge the times we are living in right now. Our financial system is fragile, the world is facing mass unemployment and a hyperinflation is ahead of us. People don't have the patience anymore and take everything that is offered to us. We deserve these informations and whoever at LL doesn't understand that has not understood how many major SL businesses are on the verge to leave. This inconsitency here was almost unbearable when we werent in a global ciris, now since we are in the middle of a mess many of us are extremely tense and the least we can expect the a respectful treatement and informations that concern significant disruptions in your cashflow.
It is not nice being treated as a lab rat and I certainly feel this way right now.

The same goes for my store, from page 1 for my most important keyword "latex" my mainstore went to page 3 without any changes.
It's not normal and even frustrating when you spend a lot of time in finding the right keywords, having many members in group and having a huge amount of people who put your place in picks, that places, i even don't call them stores cause there is nothing inside gets the top rankings.

I think it's much better if all becomes normal again, like it was before. Not only for us but also for new residents who like to find what they are looking for!

PS - Jesse Trenton..(the total prick)!!! is in page one prefabs?? THIS HAS TO BE A MISTAKE!!!!!LMAO

we agree to what has been said before.

Me and my partner are among other things database service provider in Second Life and offered for more than a year now the PPRS System (Profile Pick Reward System) - the leading system in SL that avatars with payment can benefit from and listing places with profile picks. I am a clothing content provider aswell since 2006.

In order to give an idea about the size of the system, please see our current statistics from april 16th:

Places with PPRS: 451
Number of individually paid avatars: 26748
Number of individual avatars paid at all places: 101402

More than 450 places use our PICK-SYSTEM, and almost 27.000 avatars have subscribed to it and love it. Our PPRS is also one of the top rated products on XStreet SL. For a couple of days now various PPRS carrier voice the suspicion that Profile Picks are not relevant anymore for the SL-Search. There is an increasing number of small parcels full with show-in-search prims stuffed with keywords who float to the top of the Search results. The ALL-Search loses credibility since more and more unknown and keyword-manipulated places reach the top. As the administrators of the system we have a responsibility for the people who use PPRS. We have well over 10.000 payments per day, and we pay a whole lot of money to PPRS users. If the Profile Picks are not relevant for the Search results anymore, there is no sense in offering the system anymore. Or to put it differently: there is no reason for place owners to spend a lot of money daily for profile pick rewards. We would need to get an official statement on the observations we described, as well as a statement regarding the future plans for the Profile Picks. From the beginning on the system gets continually developed and enhanced (there is for example an extensive web backend). There are extensive and costly expansions planned for the future. If our system does not have a future anymore due to changes upon your behalf, it makes no sense to develop it further.

Linden Lab is welcome to get a detailed view into the internals of the system and the databases and statistics, as well as into the scripts. Since we do not want to be a drag on the SL economy we will accept and implement any requests and restrictions on behalf of Linden Lab that might be necessary to resolve the situation. We would also welcome any form of cooperation.

Looking foward to your statement,
Lux Haller, Luxus & Dackedidi Miles, Derbfactory

http://status.secondlifegrid.net/2009/04/16/post595/

We are investigating the issues reported above. There appear to be several factors contributing to the search service behavior changes described above. These changes are limited to All search in the viewer and Web search, and have not affected Classifieds or Places search. These changes were unexpected, so we couldn't give you any advanced warning. We'll post updates here as they become available.

On a broader note about search, let me also say, "I hear you."

Search is a critical component of the new resident's discovery of SL and a key tool for inworld businesses – and there is a lot Linden Lab can do to improve the experience for both searchers and advertisers. For searchers, we have several usability improvements in the works. For advertisers, we are currently analyzing the failure points in the search logic that allow for several kinds of gaming, as well as poor-quality parcel descriptions, and we are testing possible solutions. In vetting solutions, our goals will be to

• provide an informative and delightful search experience for all residents, and
• increase fairness and reliability of the search service for advertisers.

While we're still in a research phase with regard to details, I can tell you that we're headed in the direction of adapting many tried-and-true best practices of web search logic to provide high-quality, organically validated results to searchers. We will also be working to improve the documentation for advertisers so that you are fully enabled to be successful with the search service. When we're ready with a more detailed proposal, I'll be posting to the blog and opening a request for comment phase. I look forward to the conversation.

A couple of days ago I was first for "dining room".

Today I am on page 2. The top spots are spammers. They have maybe 10 objects for sale, all called "dining room furniture dining room furniture". No picks.

And let me just say that my dining rooms are the best in SL. Nothing touches them. And I have a lot of them. And I sell a lot of them. But I have never gamed anything.

I guess I better figure out what the game is and start gaming.

So for Pamela the fact she has the best selection of Dining Room equipment in Second Life means this "intelligently engineered search ranking system" is marking her store as the worst possible while promoting the worst locations to the top.

The google appliance or whatever it is is programmed backwards. Even the Public Photo Garden suffers from this ridiculous "search system" where someone with one photosphere on a tiny parcel gets top billing while the place I run with a couple dozen photo spheres plus a lot of flat backdrops is nowhere to be seen.

Having a wide selection of items with the same words in the name/description appears to be a very bad thing in the opinion of the search ranking system.

Please eliminate the gamed aspects and fix the relevance rules so they are not inverted.

The Search engine was fine until April, it did what it promised, the rules you once have given us have applied. Nowaday I see myself wasting time and money to get irrelevant results, loss of income and people stealing my keywords by not offering what they claim.

It is totally unprofessional on your part, please try to understand the importance of search and hire someone who actually knows how it works, the person(s) in charge right now obviously don't know how deal with it.

OK, I can understand that an intended improvement finally proves not to work as expected - this happens. But there are several thing I can't understand at all:

• Hadn't the Lindens tested the new search system thoroughly, before they implemented it?
• Why haven't they been unable to sort out this issue within 2 months time?
• And if it might be so difficult to fix that messed up search system, why haven't they just fallen back to the previous system?

/me turning to Liana Linden:
Liana, it's nice that you seem to hear us (as you say), but it would be much nicer, if we you could hear you and were told when this most annoying issue will finally be fixed.

Objects that repeat the same keyword multiple times should cause a place to rank lower as there is no reason in any language to do this other than for SEO.

Objects that have something for sale and contain phrases should cause a place to rank higher.

Places that have a large number of identical objects should cause a place to rank lower.

The most relevant location for any search (specifically with regard to shopping) would consist many unique objects (different names/descriptions) that are marked for sale, are a member of the group that owns the Parcel with a high Revenue Per Visitor (indicating the equivalent of Bounce Rate or Conversion rate on websites).

This would cause stores with a large stock with plenty of varied products that are for sale and are popular to rise to the top while locations that are camped, botted, and spammed drop like a stone to the very bottom. Everybody else will be somewhere in the middle.

the spamming of parcels with keywords has been fixed maybe this should be closed