Wildefire Walcott

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?

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Psyke Phaeton

tl;dr ... ehhh ok ok i might try and read it

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Cocoanut Koala

I read it. I wish they'd quit doing stuff to us. I wish they would quit coming up with clever new things to do to us that they keep secret and we are supposed to try and figure out. I do not like that game.

coco

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Psyke Phaeton

Slows down pirate sellers?????

Wildefire Walcott

And the many European business owners who do not have access to a credit card that SL will accept.

Wildefire Walcott

One can think of reasons why they might be doing this, if it is, in fact, intentional. However I have never seen any mention of the complete disenfranchisement of the great majority of their user base, and you'd think that would at least merit a footnote.

If anyone has statistics on how many residents are payment-info-on-file/used, I'd love to see them. All I can find is number of Premium accounts (0.8% of the 12,000,000 registered accounts), and that doesn't tell us much.

Ten

I kind of like this, but ... Wildfire, do you know if I show up properly on search? O_o I doubt searching for myself will give me any sort of feedback.

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Wildefire Walcott

You're in:
Second Life Search Results: tenshi vielle

Valentino Tendaze

Age Verification doesn't make a difference - I'm not age verified and I show in the New All Search (and so do my Picks).

My Premium Alt shows, but a recent NPIOF Alt (with Picks) doesn't...

I had wondered why. Now I know

Beezle Warburton

Maybe all the picks-bots were dragging down the database?

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`I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'

Beebo Brink

Interesting point. Whether or not that is the reason for the exclusion, it would certainly be a factor if they were included.

Wilde, you've posted pics and discussion of legions of bots created to game traffic counts. If each of those bots has a store Pick as well, including them in Search results would increase the gaming potential for Search results.

Of the two options, I'd rather lose the Pick of my store made by my one unverified alt if it also keeps my competition from adding 50-100 Picks from their bot army. Hell of a choice, but how do you prevent that kind of gaming as long as LL allows unlimited free acounts?

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Penny Patton

Free, anonymous, unlimited accounts strike yet again. They're the gift that keeps on giving.

Wildefire Walcott

Well, but here's the thing. I've heard LL say more than once that the long-term plan is to replace old search with the new google-based one. How can you have a search engine that omits the huge majority of your users?

Also, if you ask LL, they claim that there are hardly any bots in SL.

Ari Blackthorne

To tell is very easy - there are three types of payment info:

"Payment info not on file" = Unverified basic (freebie) account

"Payment info on file" = "basic' account, but payment info on record (may or may not have been used.)

"Payment info used" = Premium account.

Now, I could be wrong. However, I've found this to be pretty consistent across the board. What I mean is a basic account with 'payment info on file' always seems to say this even if they have made purchases from Linden Lab.

As for why I love this paradigm, see my blog:
no-payment-info-no-search-woot/

Tyche Shepherd

There are c853876 (+/-15) accounts on the Official Forums, membership which is restricted to payment-info-on-file - though there is no indication if these are 1) Current or 2) accounts which have used payments.
I'd suggest looking at your alts and seeing if they have a Forum account set-up - that may give you a better handle on what it does cover ... My own two (non-verified alts) don't have accounts .

The figure does looks and feels about right ... 96k Premium accounts to 758k non-premium but payment validated, vs 11.1Million free non-verified accounts.

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Tranquility

For purposes of quantifying picks, I think only including the paid verified accounts is a good thing. For the most part, it's reasonable to assume that the verified accounts are the ones who do the most shopping, hence, would be the most reliable source for determining which shops are worth shopping at. As for unverified alts, unless you are using a whole different set of picks, the alts are just double (or more) counting your duplicate picks, which (slightly) defeats the purpose of the picks list.

But I agree that just not including unverified accounts in the new people search is a dumb way to address the picks issue. And that LL gives no indication of this is crappy too. You shouldn't need 2 search engines to do the job of one. At the very least, if LL is going to stick with this search filtering, the default response for a no profile found search should be "Please use <<link>> this search engine and try again"

Cindy Claveau

So you're one of THOSE merchants:

Just because i buy one of your gizmos doesn't mean I want to spend a valuable group slot to get your spam. I'm more likely just to not go back there any more.

Cristiano

Cindy,

I am concerned about you. You seem to have a problem expressing how you really feel - you hold back so much. You should work on that. Don't be afraid!

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No can has other Ceiling Cat!! U gotz other Ceiling Cat, I shoot yous wit mah lazer eyes. ~ LOLcat Bible

Cindy Claveau

There are a few things in SL that annoy me more than anything else. Near the top of the list is to log in and have to click "Decline" 4 or 5 times because some fucking BOT invited me to join an update group.

Next on the list is the completely useless number of "updates" from stores I actually thought might be interesting. Then it's two clicks: One to clear the notice and another to quit the group.

Wildefire Walcott

That is false. Anyone who has ever bought L$ with their credit card is "Payment info used." My new alt, the whole reason I investigated this in the first place, is definitely not a premium member, but she is "Payment info used" now, because I had her buy some Lindens so she could get into the Search.

Ryozu

Can you list account creation dates of all the accounts you checked, along with if they were listed, and opted in?

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Ingrid

This stinks, what if I have to contact a customer? Lots of shoppers are unverified.

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"You know how this thread is going to end? I'll tell you how it's gonna end. It's going to end well." - Aimee Weber

Walker

You're right of course. Any confusion here is probably down to another glitch. For some reason when some newly registered accounts buy Lindens, their status does not change to "payment info used". This happened to an alt I registered last year. A couple of months later, I bought Lindens using that account for a second time, and the status finally switched to "payment info used".

I think this has been mentioned on the official forums a few times.

Beezle Warburton

The whole system is buggy. That's also why there's confusion as to whether they pay bonuses for going premium. They still do, but it can take months for it to process, if it ever does.

Wildefire Walcott

link = Only a 'resident profile' link, not indexed.
n = No 'resident profile' link, not indexed
y = Indexed
n/a = Account deleted (not in old search either)
hidden = Listed but opted out of new search.

none = no payment info on file
file = info on file, not used
used = payment info used