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.)
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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.
Wicked Nightfall
SL is empty so you aren't being directed to the wrong places - there are no "full" places as Linden Labs moved SL from community based to shopping based.
Linden Labs does not know how to run a digital universe as why all they do is release new houses for premium plus.
Best thing LL can do is sell SL to better people.
N
Nya Jules
About traffic.
1) Linden's answer to traffic gaming is web search
Whenever the traffic issue is brought up, the answer is to use web search (by relevance.) You are making suggestions for the algorithm but it's safe to assume that Linden has had put a lot of thought into their traffic algorithm over the many years. That's just reality.
2) Alleged enforcement gaps - they don't need to be "bots"
You are also talking about "enforcement gaps." Here is another reality: you will never be able to win the fight against "traffic bots". "Bot" is the wrong term in the first place since an account to increase traffic can just be your alt on a text viewer. And your second alt on a text viewer. And where do you draw the line? At parking one alt on Firestorm at your place? At parking the alt on a text viewer at your place? At parking 2 alts? 3 alts? This topic has been brought up a million times, the official answer is: use web search, because there is no solution to traffic gaming.
That said I'm not a fan of web search. I can't use it and have brought up multiple suggestions regarding web search in the past.
3) Ways to game traffic without parking bots or alts
There are games like money vaults that draw people to places just to increase traffic. If you're looking at 10k traffic at a club but the traffic was only achieved by Crystal Craze - is this "gamed" traffic? It's obviously traffic that is not connected to the actual purpose of the place, so the traffic number will be misleading to the search user. There are a lot of these places.
Traffic will never get "fixed".
Mizuki Shade
Nya Jules That's why I included suggestions to make it -harder- and if people want to pay for premium for all their alts to get better traffic ratings, then LL gets some more cash inflow. The TOS used to include a 5 account limit per person but it's not really enforced. Another key on my mention about spotty enforcement. If you have more than that you're supposed to start registering them as scripted agents, which don't generate traffic to the best of my knowledge.
You say LL has put a lot of thought into their algorithms, but the difficulties people experience such as problems with the web search, and complete lack of any kind of AFK/bot mitigation just highlight that there is room for improvement, so I submitted my ideas.
Will LL implement them? Probably not, but they gave us a feedback site and I am going to use it to draw attention to things that I believe hurts long term retention of new players, which is vital for LL's financials and the continued support and existence of Second Life. It doesn't need to be "fixed" it just needs to be better and a bit harder to game. If someone wants to pay for all their alts to boost traffic but not flag them as bots, LL can pocket the money and ban/suspend them for the infraction. At least if people are going to try to harm the game by gaming traffic, they can give LL a piece of the pie for the privilege and help support the game, at least until they get caught.
If LL wants to cherry pick my ideas and use some or none of them, that's fine, but they are free ideas that someone at the company doesn't have to think up if they decide that traffic is a part of a game sustainability issue.
Rowan Amore
Is this in regards to the Search in the SL viewer or the legacy search utilized by Firestorm viewer? You get entirely different results when using the same search term depending on whether you use SL viewer web search or FS legacy search. Traffic is calculated differently between SL viewer web search and FS viewer legacy search. FS uses the old metric that puts more value on those unregistered bots.
Mizuki Shade
Rowan Amore Hey! So I’ve been looking into web search vs FS legacy search as it's something I failed to consider when making this post (thanks for bringing it up!), and I have to say, I’m not seeing much of a difference. The web search is slower, prone to needing refreshes for me, and you have to click every single result just to check the traffic rating. It also frequently fails to account for my preferences and account status, blocking me when searching for adult rated regions until I've refreshed it a few times.
Meanwhile, FS legacy search lays it all out clean and quick at a glance. But when it comes to the actual traffic numbers? Zero difference from what I can tell. I’ve been cross checking sales events like Equal10 and even those adult AFK hangouts that should be hit by any anti idle filters from the 2020 traffic update. Same exact traffic ratings, same exact order of results in both searches (not a massive sample size admittedly). Side by side on Equal10, web or legacy, it’s identical. Even manually running the traffic numbers (which to my knowledge are 1 point per minute per avatar) shows highly rated regions that are absolutely chock full of bots in skyboxes (the one I checked had 88 crammed into two skyboxes!!!) and the math checks out, suggesting any kind of bot detection isn't working.
If there’s supposed to be some improvements in web search devaluing AFK bots camping 24/7, I'm not seeing it. Either someone’s found a workaround to game the 2020 update, or some later update broke it or rolled it back. I’ve scoured for evidence that FS legacy search uses its own traffic calc or doesn't benefit from newer metrics, and turned up nothing in documentation. All signs point to LL handling traffic server side, so the viewer you’re using shouldn’t change a thing. Anyone else seeing this, or am I missing something?
Rowan Amore
Mizuki Shade. I was talking more about using search terms when searching both viewers. Searching "Clubs" will give completely different results between SL viewer and FS legacy search (places). FS counts all those bots in traffic calculations differently than SL viewer so LL doesn't see the issue.
Mizuki Shade
Rowan Amore Installed the official viewer to check and there were no differences in my search results, nor the traffic in the regions I've looked at so far. FS does not do anything differently in regards to traffic calculations as far as my testing has showed. I tested your clubs method and everything was identical until about 20 entries down when some empty clubs were shown on the LL viewer, but not at all on the FS viewer legacy search, however the FS web search picked up the missing entries fine. All traffic ratings matched however between all 3 searches, showing that efforts to combat bot traffic are likely not working, and this is likely something LL could address on their end.
Interesting to note the FS legacy search completely omits some entries visible on web search, even when I search for a missing entry by name.
Rowan Amore
Mizuki Shade I'm not sure why you're seeing the same results with SL viewer search and FS legacy but these are my results using 'Club" as a search term. The first is from the LL viewer. The second is FS legacy. Totally different results.
Mizuki Shade
Rowan Amore Your screenshot provides the clue. On the LL web search it's sorted by "Relevance" by default and it will revert to this between sessions in the search. Whatever "relevance" metrics are. You have to manually sort it by traffic. When I use relevance for my own personal searches it always returns places with very low traffic (ghost towns) and many other users probably suffer from this too, not knowing why, and the setting reverts even if changed, contributing further to "dead grid" sentiment.