I remember the first time I used a search engine, it was Yahoo! just after they went .Com instead of being at their .Edu original address (which at the time redirected users to the .Com one). It was amazing to have the information that thousands of other people compiled into the search index itself. At the same time, there were other sorts of search engines coming out that took advantage of meta-tag data that one could insert to define the content of the webpage itself. Like the old human indexed version of Yahoo, this had problems (where the human indexed one was more about the fact of maintenance of links): one could stack their meta-tag data to 'float' their site up to the top. So, say you wanted to find a site devoted to cooking, Renaisance literature, or simply your favorite baseball team, then there was a good chance another site would become first hit if you didn't craft your search well enough. Today, this is reduced because of page ranking and other well hidden algorithms by the likes of Google that evens out such 'floating', but it's still present as "Google bombing."

Now, what this has to do with Secondlife is very simple, whenever I try to find what I want on the classifieds, events, or places tabs on the search function often I get dead ends. It's not uncommon for me to literally go through six or more pages of hit results (depending on how common the term I use) before I find exactly what I'm after (like I want to find a TARDIS blue box with scripted effects or whatever). And sometimes I simply can't even find it at all due to all the other 'floating' dead ends that have nothing to do with the used terms in question. After all this time, you'd think LL would just hire Google to help produce the first "metaverse search engine" so users can reduce the dead ends and find what they want.

I doubt there will be any resolutions on this front for a couple good reasons. First, there's no strict 'linking' between places on sims, whether in-sim, or cross-sim. Granted this is not entirely true as touch scripted objects can hand out landmarks all the time, but they're not in the same sense a link as a link in a webpage, where there's an actual code-tag which one can use to embed in their site. To my knowledge there is no such mechanism for sims or plots on sims. Second, the nature of how sims are spread all over the place would make the mapping of given locations also harder too (some sims are simply floating alone in the wider 'sea' with no topological connection to other sims, or simply these other sims are meant to be wholly private away from the public at large (basically no robots.txt exists for sims either...)). Ultimately, I think this is something that LL will have to address along with the other core issues with their system(s) that I've seen in my three years off/on the grid. Or they may lose out big to a better service/product.