After noticing that one of my own alts was not listed in New Search, despite having the "Show In Search" option checked in her profile for the first two weeks of her life, I did some research to find out why. I took a random sample of residents who had sent me offline instant messages in November of last year (thank you, Gmail) and checked to see how many of them were listed in New Search. (By choosing IMs from November I guaranteed that all accounts in question are at least 3 months old, and had certainly exsisted long enough to be indexed by the search engine.)
FINDINGS
Out of the 20 residents I looked up, 12 were not listed in New Search, although they all appeared in the old Search > People tab, and were thus still valid accounts. 7 of the residents were listed in both Old and New search, and one resident had opted out of being in New Search. (When you look up his name in New Search, you actually see a message that says "This resident has chosen to hide their profile from search." His full profile is still visible in Search > People, however.)
So, most of the people I looked up did not come up in New Search, even though only ONE of them had explicitly opted out. My next step was to determine if there was any pattern in my results. There was: 11 of the 12 unlisted people were unverified accounts. Note that when I say "unverified account" I mean "account with no payment info on file" as listed in the resident's 2nd Life Profile. One of the unlisted residents had payment info on file, but had never used it to purchase anything from Linden Lab.
Five of the 7 residents who WERE listed had used payment info, and the remaining 2 had it on file, but never used it. I do not know the "age verification" status of any of the residents in this study, however it appears pretty clear that there is a strong relationship between your payment status on file and whether you appear in New Search. I also do not know how many of the info-on-file or info-used residents are Premium accounts instead of Basic accounts (I assume that all no-info-on-file accounts are Basic).
MISLEADING "RESIDENT PROFILE" LINKS
I have also observed a strange behavior in New Search: Sometimes when you search for an unlisted resident, instead of just getting the generic "Your search did not match anything" page, you'll get a page with a "Resident Profile: Name" link at the top, for the name you searched for. (This happened for 6 of the 12 unlisted residents in my study.) This appears to happen when other people who ARE listed in Search mention your name in their profiles, or if both components of the name show up in other searchable items. For example, if you search for the resident named "Kharma Destiny", she has the "Resident Profile" link at the top of the screen, but her profile does not appear among the people who have mentioned her in their profiles:
Second Life Search Results: Kharma Destiny
However, if you search for my business alt, Illana Ireton, a payment-info-on-file account who IS indexed by New Search, you see that she has both a "Resident Profile" link and a normal resident profile listing in the results:
Second Life Search Results: illana ireton
There's something very important here: The "resident profile" link that shows up for some unverified users is a special link that opens the person's old-style Search > People profile in Second Life. It is NOT a link to an HTML profile like the ones that appear later on the page for indexed users, for example, in Illana's results, the link that's just labeled "Illana Ireton" goes to her HTML profile:
Illana Ireton
What this means is that the contents of Illana's profile are getting indexed by New Search, (2nd life description and full Picks text), while Kharma's are not. I wish I had some working examples on hand, but several times I have seen New Search generate a "Resident Profile" link for completely invalid resident names; I was searching for an item or service, and instead of getting a "no results found" message, I got a Resident Profile link for the term that I searched for- but the link did not work, as there was no resident by that name.
WHY THIS IS A PROBLEM
New Search is becoming the de facto search method, especially for new users, due to the very conspicuous search box integrated into the client window. Many stories here on the forums suggest that more and more people are using New Search, and it is having a noticeable impact (both positive and negative) on in-world businesses. Right now, unverified users are disenfranchised: Unverified business owners do not get the benefit of having their Picks indexed, and people trying to contact them might think they've been banned from the game, since New Search makes it appear as if the users don't exist. This also potentially is a problem for payment-info-on-file business owners who rely on their customers to add their favorite stores to their Picks, as Picks play an important role in determining your shop's spot in New Search results. All those picks in all those profiles of unverified users are currently being ignored by the system. A shame when you consider that the vast, VAST majority of
SL residents are unverifieds.
After making my discovery I immediately verified my alt who wasn't indexed and had her buy some Lindens. And as expected, three days after I put my credit card info on file, she appeared in New Search. Coincidence?
