Marketplace Search
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Ashanti Madrigal
Hello, when I type outfit or dress in marketplace searches, the results have been the same for days. I would be glad if you could take care of this problem.
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Melissa Kiko
I'm sure there's plenty of other posts/comments regarding this but just wanted to register my issue too. Ever since the MP UI overhaul a couple weeks ago, my sales have dropped 50-60% and are yet to recover. :/
The search results feel frustrating and inaccurate, which I know was kind-of always the case due to badly written descriptions & keywords. But it feels 10x worse since this overhaul.
J
Juniper Linden
Merged in a post:
Frustrating search results
Pia Gaia
Search Results: My biggest irritation and complaint with Marketplace is the Search feature. Often you can do a simple search for a specific item and a hundred results are displayed and maybe 10% mixed in there someplace is what you are actually looking for. I expect this is due to merchants just putting whatever kind of keyword they want for their specific product. For example if I do a simple search for Hawaiian Shirt, why do I have to look through search results of palm trees, surfboards, coconuts, grass shirts, maps of Hawaii, fire trucks, dildos, farm equipment, hot air balloons, and on and on and mixed in there are a few Hawaiian shirts. thanks ts
J
Juniper Linden
Merged in a post:
filter by age
Saint Diabolito
It would be great if we could arrange items by age. This would push less desirable pre-mesh items, things that have been around since the early days, toward the back of the results. I know I'd rather have a more up to date item when possible. This would not eliminate older items, just make it sortable.
J
Juniper Linden
Merged in a post:
Overhaul Search and Traffic to Improve Discovery and Stop Bot Abuse
Mizuki Shade
Second Life’s search and traffic systems are in need of a revamp. New users I’ve invited consistently say “popular” places, ranked high by traffic, are ghost towns with bots or AFK avatars in skyboxes, and my own observations tend to make me agree. This misleads everyone, makes SL feel empty, and hurts creators and the grid’s growth. Unwanted content clogs search results, and discovery of active places is slow and frustrating, especially for new residents.
## Key Problems
- Weak Search Filters: Limited to rating, name, category, or traffic. Traffic is easily gamed by bots, pushing empty venues to the top.
- Bot Abuse: Parcels with no real activity contaminate search via bot-inflated traffic, misleading users and contributing to "dead grid" sentiment.
- No User Control: No way to blacklist unwanted search terms (extreme NSFW content even when searching for adult listings) or spammy keyword listings.
- Poor Visibility: New or active places (packed events) don’t show up until traffic updates the next day, while high-traffic venues from past events appear busy but are empty.
- Keyword Dependency: Searches require a keyword, blocking broad category browsing (for example all shopping listings), making it difficult to find listings if your English keyword does not match, say a JP land description, or the owner did not keyword the land description well.
## Proposed Solutions
- Enhanced Search Filters:
- Sort by “current active users” (real-time avatar count, excluding scripted agents).
- Blacklist specific search terms to filter unwanted content.
- Blacklist individual parcels, listings, or owners, similar to Marketplace creator bans, to curate results.
- "Newest/Oldest" sorting filter, perhaps use land claimed dates to let users search for the oldest or newest listings, helping new places get visibility, and letting new users know what places have been around for a long time!
- User Rating System:
- Add parcel ratings for paid accounts (Premium, 3+ months) to ensure credibility. Remove ratings if accounts are banned.
- Allow sorting by user ratings to help highlight genuine venues.
- Traffic System Overhaul:
- Cap free account traffic at 10% (0.1 points/min vs. 1 point/min).
- Use diminishing returns for long stays (1 point/min for first 60 min, 0.5 for next 60, 0.25 beyond).
- Limit traffic generation to 16 hours/day per account to prevent 24/7 bot farming. (people have to sleep, this also reduces the weight adult "AFK" places get in search.)
- Average traffic over a week, updating daily to avoid significant one-day event spikes, paired with “current users” filter for real-time discovery.
## Additional Thoughts
- Why Paid/3-Month Ratings?Limiting ratings to aged, paid accounts reduces fake reviews from bot farmers. Banning accounts removes their ratings, minimizing harm from aged bot farms when enforcement is applied.
- Free Account Cap Risks: Capping free accounts traffic contributions may frustrate new users supporting venues. An in-world tutorial (e.g., a button next to traffic in “About Land”) could explain Premium upgrades for full contribution.
- Enforcement Gaps: Traffic manipulation and undeclared scripted agents violate TOS to the best of my knowledge, but enforcement seems rare. A dedicated abuse report category could prompt faster parcel audits.
- Community Tools: Tools like BonnieBots show demand for real activity tracking. Baking similar analytics into SL’s systems could build trust and engagement, especially for new users unaware of third-party services.
## Closing Notes
A fairer, more user friendly system will help keep users engaged, benefiting all of SL. Newcomers need clear, built-in tools, not third-party workarounds to find active places. These proposed changes let residents curate their experience and discover vibrant content easily. Thanks for reading and feel free to weigh in on this!
(Note: Posted in User Interface as search and traffic are user-facing systems requiring UI updates if any of this is implemented.)
(PS. If someone from Linden Lab sees this -please- advertise SL on varied social media and websites, any time I mention SL most people have never heard of it, and even as an active user I haven't seen any advertisements in ages.)
Zalificent Corvinus
Oh, look, another one off those threads where clueless people claim that "free accounts" ( ie non subscription ) should be ignored.
Based on info let slip by various Lindens over the years, apparently 80-90% of SL's population are non subscribing "free accounts", a great many of whom are responsible for huge amounts of retail purchases, and for huge amounts of parcel rentals, on those private estate regions that make up 2/3rds of the grid.
Making non-subscribing "free accounts" only count as 1/10th of the traffic of "economically clueless over-entitled snob" actually HARMS the legitimate traffic scores of actual merchants and venue owners.
And that's before we get into the "Worthless Captain Oldbie Bot Hunters" spamming fraudulent Abuse Reports without any real evidence.
One of these braindead trash, walking along a road on Zindra, noticed 20 avatar "in the sky" on the region next door, so this fearless moron teleported up to the club in question to find... 20 Actual humans having a good time at their usual Saturday night SL hangout. He apparently AR'd them all regardless of them being real people trying to have fun, before he got punt kicked for being a total tw@t.
Mizuki Shade
Zalificent Corvinus You could offer an idea instead of broadly calling the people here clueless. Your point about the free accounts is plausible. Maybe something like free accounts in good standing provide more traffic as the account age grows, maybe premium provides a small initial boost. Not dissimilar from VRC trust ratings. You play nice, you get to influence traffic more. People being stupid about ARing seems fairly irrelevant to the thread. Enforcement needs to be handled smartly at LL, how they handle AR's is out of our hands, hopefully a human hand touches all cases.
Zalificent Corvinus
Mizuki Shade
That's the problem with nonsense like this, "...hopefully a human hand touches...".
Human hand cost MONEY. Money LL can't afford to waste on your fraudulent bot-hating Captain Oldbie AR's, which would only increase under your braindead scheme.
Captain Oldbie wrote: "Dear LL, I've been a paying customer since 1804, and I'm shocked nd outraged that noobguy598734930 resident is considered trustworthy enough to generate traffic point, they are obviously a filthy alt-bot, ban them Daddy Linden, BAN THEM!".
The Clueless Irrational Bot Hunters already whine and b*tch about how AR's "don't work" because it takes age for Governance to get round to them. The reason for that is the system is swamped with FRAUDULENT AR's from Clueless Irrational Bot Hunters.
LL cannot "handle enforcement smartly" because their staff are overloaded by CRETINS posting AR's with FAKE allegations of "being an illegal bot".
As for making suggestion for an alternative to your insane scheme, I don't NEED to, as there i a perfectly acceptable alternative already in place...
"Non issue from people with no clue, NO action needed at thi time"
24601Convict Resident
Mizuki Shade
Instead of "free accounts," perhaps accounts that have no payment info on record should have a lower inpact on traffic numbers.
Fluffanuffers Resident
We need boolean searching this would help dramatically too
remi Enersly
Something needs to be done about the bots or scripted agents. These are being used to bully, harass, intimidate, ostracize, exile, crash and banish not just avatars but also groups, sims, and parcels. Because avatars will script bots for malicious intent LL must do something. As far as I know SL Viewer has no tools to identify these malicious bots. We can't even report these bots without relying completely on gut feeling. I was searching recently to find a tool to identify a bot. I learned that 5,000 messages are allowed per day. that is 398.33.. an hour, 3.47 per minute, 1 message every 17.28 seconds. That's a lot of disruption to a person's Second Life.
duck Mip
We need to distinguish between different situations.
Regions with 90 bots and prostitution ads, everyone agrees that makes no sense.
Roleplay areas sometimes use bots to exist and to make little score because a stupid rating system.
Others may look like bots but are actually personal choices or forms of RP, which is nobody’s business (prison, animals, objects, etc.).
The real danger is trying to play vigilante. SL is emptying mainly because of impatient visitors who stay 10 seconds without waiting to meet anyone. In the past, there were communities, respect, and patience. Today, everything is ruined by people who want everything right away.
Beautiful regions like Elven Forest or Mont Saint Michel are empty even though people pay and work hard to maintain them. A few decorative bots (unicorns, elves, etc.) or AI could even bring SL back to life.
Even RP, once very popular, has almost disappeared. People are becoming more aggressive, less respectful, more harassing. Just spend 30 minutes in some clubs and you’ll notice it.
In real life, do you stay only 10 seconds in a café to meet people?
On top of that, no one ever talks about the serious violations, like breaching correspondence (copy/pasting IMs, sharing notes), which are far more serious than a few bots. This is usually punished with 2 years in prison in most countries and is forbidden by the TOS too.
Changing the search system, yes. But hunting down bots, no that would be the end of SL.
In conclusion, stop playing police. If you’re not happy, create your own place, pay it and attract people, you wouldn’t be so quick to judge, remember that, you wouldn’t be so quick to judge !
The real problem is the impatient and selfish ones, not the creators and investors.
Caelan Whimsy
Traffic-boosting alts have been a problem on SL for at least 15 years, probably even since the beginning. Linden Labs has tried several approaches to fixing it, including some of the ones you suggested. The problem is, it takes no time at all for the bot farms to figure out how to get around any system LL puts in place.
Cube Republic
This is needed. I was exploring via 'popular places' tab and the first 3 locations were bot farms in the sky with empty regions. This is a terrible optic for new users, plays into perhaps preconceptions of SL being empty and insincere.
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