Linden Lab Official:Search Guidelines

Second Life Search strives to make the incredible array of content, experiences and people in Second Life discoverable by all Residents through providing the most relevant results to each individual searcher. These guidelines will help you create listings for Second Life Search that will allow us to properly index your listings, match your listing to relevant searches and help you avoid hurting your search rank.

This information is specifically about those parts of Second Life Search served by the Google Search Appliances, which include:

The All Tab and Group Tab in the Viewer
Secondlife.com, including the web-based World Map
The Second Life Wiki and the Knowledge Base articles the wiki contains

For information on other aspects of Search, see the Search FAQ.

General Guidelines

Appeal to Humans, Not Search Engines

Help people understand what you offer by providing useful, clear and accurate descriptions that communicate what’s valuable and unique about your place, group or event. Know who your target customer or audience is and speak to their interests as specifically as possible. This will help you stand out from the crowd and help new Residents in particular become long-term members of our community and economy.

Be Specific and Descriptive

If you sell Jazz-age clothes and accessories, say so. If your location also looks like a speakeasy and hosts events, let people know. Avoid filling descriptions with nothing but a list of keywords. Also, note that the search engine will return results for words that are based on the linguistic root of words in your description. This means that if you sell tango dance animations, your description does not need to include every version of the word dance. Searches on the word dancing will include your listing in the results. Also, a large portion of searches include more than one keyword (in fact, many searches are for phrases), so including common phrases that apply to your product or interests in your description can help your listing be found

Create a Brand

Top merchants and events in Second Life are successful in part because they have created a unique feel around their product that helps people identify what’s valuable or appealing about their offering versus a long list of similar offerings. Communicate the vibe of your store or group through its name, imagery, and targeted descriptions.

For more info on advertising opportunities, see the Classifieds FAQ and XStreetSL. Read the Business, Business and Marketing wiki for more tips on starting a Second Life business or bringing your business into Second Life.

Maturity Ratings Matter

Be sure to mark your listing with the maturity rating appropriate to the content and location. Listings that are not marked appropriately will miss their target audience and may be blocked from search results. See Maturity ratings and inworld search for more info. Note that all searches on secondlife.com return only PG results.

Be a Good Sport

Be advised that any attempt to artificially inflate your rank in search results could result in penalties to your rank, de-listing from search, and disciplinary action against your Second Life account. For more information, read the "Search Policies" section below.

Stay Current

Second Life is a changing world, and Resident search behavior changes too. Based on our monitoring of user behavior and satisfaction, we will continually update our relevance and rank algorithms to serve the broadest user base possible. New releases to Search will be announced in advance, whenever possible, on the Second Life Blog Technology channel. You can also log-in to the wiki and click the "watch" option on this page to be notified of any changes to this document. As user behavior changes, so too should listing strategies change -- ask your customers what drew them to your listing, and learn from others you admire.

Technical Guidelines

Check Show in Search

You must click the Show in Search check box in order to be included in the search index. This option is available on places, profiles, groups, and objects, and if it is not checked, these items will not be returned in search results. Events are automatically included in the search index. Note that items in the Search index are also available to be viewed on the web and may be indexed by web search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo! (Note that none of your personal information is available on the web unless you write that information in your listing descriptions.)

Relevance and Rank -- What are they?

On top of the Google PageRank algorithm included in the GSA software, Linden Lab monitors and fine-tunes a wide variety of Second Life-specific data signals to weigh the relevance of listing for each search request. We first determine if a listing is relevant to a particular search query, then we determine the importance of that listing relative to other relevant results. Searchers can then refine their results with filters or sorting features.

In order to create the best Search tool for everyone, we are constantly improving the relevance and rank algorithms work. Following the guidelines, policies, and tips in this document will help you create effective listings that can be found by your target audience. We will continue to revise this document to include the most up to date information to help you be successful with Search.

Some Tips

Spelling and grammar matter. Avoid using non-traditional spellings. Also, be sure you've got the correct spelling. Avoid over-use of capital letters or symbol characters.
Internationalize. Second Life is an international community, where many languages are spoken. If you are targeting non-English speakers, be sure to use their language in your listing name and descriptions.
Indexing. The collection is crawled twice a day, and updates are usually available within 24 hours.
Parcels. Take care when changing parcel boundaries. A variety of parcel data is used in calculating search rank, and changing the boundaries of your land parcel can cause that data to be reset or lost. When joining two parcels, the largest parcel keeps much of the parcel data.

Search Policies

Any attempt to artificially inflate your rank in search results could result in penalties to your rank, de-listing from search and disciplinary action against your Second Life account. This includes but is not limited to inappropriate use of traffic bots or Picks.

Other things that may cause your listing to receive a lower search rank include: Keyword stuffing or false representation (e.g. saying that your store sells skins when it only sells furniture). Remember that failure to follow the Maturity ratings and inworld search guidelines may cause your listing to be excluded from some or all searches.

Learn More About ...

Search in the Search FAQ, or watch Torley's great search-focused Tip of the Week videos here and here.
Advertising opportunities at Classifieds FAQ and XStreetSL.
Starting a Second Life business. Read the Business and Marketing wiki and Getting Started web pages for more tips.