Release Notes/Search

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Release Notes for Search in the Second Life Viewer and on search.secondlife.com.

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2010.11.30

Release Highlights

• We are prepping major maturity changes for the Destination Guide so that it can be visible to new Teen residents and laying the groundwork for it to be included in Search.

Features and Issues

• When searching using quotation marks, classifieds do not appear (WEB-2275)
• Viewer 2 - Moderate and Adult parcels listed on General Searching on Classifieds
• Search for a banned key words returns some search results in the General filter.
• Server error appears after navigating to the 6th page of Classifieds.
• Eliminate "exact match" for residents in All Search
• Analyze how fast we can update the word pages for parcels (Release independent)
• Create feed from Destination Guide DB
• Prepare for Display ad test on the Find window

2010.11.17

Highlights - Learn more in this blog post.

• New Filters for Search with General or Moderate Ratings
• Classified Ads Now Get Extra Level of Rating Validation
• New Functionality Automatically Builds in Keyword Variations
• More Sophisticated Filters to Identify Spam and Optimize Search Results
• Destination Guide and maturity ratings

2010.10.11

The following release affects the Search index ranking only.

Single Feature Release

• We released the feed system today for Search. Main benefits:

1. Full index updates are now approx. 30 mins (versus 6-8 hours)
2. Less disruption during index updates -- rankings will no longer fluctuate for hours every day.
3. The full index is now updated 3-4 times per day (instead of 1-2 times). Events are updated every 2 hours.

• As a side benefit, maturity ranking changes are more predictable than previously reported.

2010.10.06

The following release affects Viewer 2 and search.secondlife.com.

Release Highlights

• We are prepping for a larger release to replace the current index crawl, so this release was for improvements and fixes

Features and Issues

• Display Name support in Search, web and viewer
• Update links to new Marketplace from xstreet
• Fix missing data on 'owned by' field
• Upgrade GSA machines
• Update adult whitelist (WEB-2691)
• Exclude parcels not set to show in Search on Regions pages
• Destination Guide categories hidden in drop-down
• Classified maturity levels showing on Web (WEB-1654)

Known Issues

• Search floater loads too slowly (Viewer and Search work in progress)
• GSA crawls severely disrupt Search rankings

2010.09.15

The following release affects Viewer 2 and search.secondlife.com.

Resolved Bugs

• Security issue - image injection through URL
• Events (fake events) unduly influence search
• Links in descriptions increase ranking
• Wrong icons appear next to the featured Events listing
• Maturity boxes get grayed out and disabled when click on "Go to Last Query"
• 'Destination Guide' can be opened for Teen account
• Searching for exact phrases is broken and gives adult warning

2010.03.17

The following release affects Viewer 2 and search.secondlife.com.

Release Highlights

• Our focus this release was Search appearing in the non-English versions of the viewer, specifically:

1. Hunting down and eliminating English strings
2. Unicode issues.

Resolved Bugs

• Events provides events out of order and in the past
• Customer support tools enabled
• People filter: Name sort doesn't return results for partial name matches
• Garbage collection issues for the GSA

Known Issues

• Search loads slowly (high priority)
• Remove "New to second life? Try it now!" from Search listings
• Reverse sorts: Sorts do not change when they are clicked
• Events and Land Sales are not easily browsable or searchable in current UI.

2010.03.03

The following release affects Viewer 2 and search.secondlife.com.

Release Highlights

• These sorting options are now enabled: Sort by name in People; sort by name or traffic in Places.
• These search collections are now enabled: Events, Land Sales.

Resolved Bugs

• Categories dropdown disappears if category contains no result
• "Internal Server Error" appears after searching for "." value
• Page count unreadable at 100 and above
• Search results differ with punctuation marks
• Destination Guide & Search Tabs Blank in Certain Situations
• Residents who no longer want to be found in Search still in index
• Additional maturity filtering implemented to match Viewer 1 behavior

Known Issues

• Remove "New to second life? Try it now!" from Search listings
• Events and Land Sales are not easily browsable or searchable in current UI.
• Name sorts should switch between A-Z and Z-A each time they are clicked
• Search UI does not have a visible and clear indication of what sort/filter text is enabled on the search tabs
• People filter: Name sort doesn't return results for partial name matches
• Events provides events out of order and in the past
• Unicode characters no longer working in any queries

2010.02.23

The following release affects Viewer 2 and search.secondlife.com.

• Release Notes/Second Life Beta Viewer/2.0
• Release Notes/Second Life Beta Viewer/2.0/Advanced Info

Features and Changes

Highlights of this release:

• User interface redesigned with improved organization of features and actions.
• New and improved Destination Guide (previously known as Showcase). The Destination Guide features new destinations added daily in arts, fashion, music and more.
• Expanded use of Google Search Appliance (See Search Guidelines for tips on how to tune listings for searchability)
• Infrastructure redesigned using HTML on top of Django web services to increase development speed and flexibility
• Relocated search appliances to multiple colos for increased redundancy
• Amount paid for a Classified is now shown in the Detail view and not in the Classifieds tab view.

Known Issues

Following are some of the usability and technical issues we are working to resolve:

• These search collections are not yet enabled: Events, Land Sales.
• These sorting options are not yet enabled: Sort by name for People, Places.
• Category filtering not yet working on Classifieds tab.
• Search results are sometimes slow to load.
• When opening the Find window for a new search, the previous page is visible while new search loads.
• Browsing search listings without a keyword doesn't work. E.g., Attempts to browse by initiating a search with no keyword will return you to the main search page.
• Total number of results found only shown in Relevance sort view.
• Maturity filtering not yet completely implemented for all searches.
• Instructions for becoming adult-verified are not shown to non-adult accounts that search for adult content in Classifieds, Events and Land Sales.
• Searching for only adult terms in Events and Land Sales without the Adult option enabled returns all non-adult results.
• Events on adult regions may show up in non-adult searches.
• Classifieds are not blocked from specific some Education and Teen estates which have opted out of showing ads.