User:Qie Niangao/Traffic Exercise

I admit the distinction is lost on me between a thing's popularity and whether a lot of people like it

But anyway, I'll try the test of Search to see if traffic score helps or hurts the results.

I tried "trumpet" as suggested in an earlier post, and didn't find any value at all to the traffic scores for that search term: after skipping the first three gamed slots, the rest were indistinguishable to me. But that's just one word. So to play along, I'll try the suggested "rooster." (I'm not quite sure what I should want to find with that search... for the sake of argument, a pet rooster, then.) And I'll try 18 more things that I've created and either sold or given away at some point in time, so I can at least judge whether what I find is any good. Okay, here goes:

0. rooster. Only 3 results. 1st: traffic of 366, has a picture of a rooster, but it's not for sale. 2nd: traffic of 23, has a rooster right on its parcel snapshot and what looks like a rooster for sale, with preternaturally small feet; can't tell what it actually does, but I might buy it if I wanted a rooster. 3rd: traffic of 15, seem to be 1-prim cut-outs of animals; nothing has "show in search" checked, though, and I can't find the rooster. So, what did traffic do to help this search? Well, perhaps it's not fair, because there are only three results. But it's worth noting that Search All returns a *lot* more results, including the rooster pets from NIRVANA and Anipets which can't be found in Places because they aren't in the parcel name or description.

1. fireplace. Hundreds of results. The first two have over 100K traffic, so must be gamed, then it falls off more or less continuously for about four pages until it bottoms out at 0 traffic. Tried 3rd rank, at 30385: gamed by a money-giver orb--bunch of avatars sitting around the beach. (Is it traffic fraud? They don't seem to be bots, and they're not even camping--they're just waiting for the game to pay out. Why did we think 'sploders and such were obsolete?) Maybe try some place further down the list; picking 8085, which at least has "FIREPLACES" in its name: no obvious gaming here, but the products are crap (somebody bought a particle fire and put it in every conceivable consumable). So should I go back up the list to find something better because it gets more traffic? Skipping texture places... here's one at 24415--nope, box of bots at 250m.

Okay, I don't think it's possible to shop for "fireplace" using Search Places; this isn't really a good test because at this point, ordinarily, I would use a more specific query string, so let's try:

1a. +low-prim +fireplace. Three results, Traffic 293, 222, and 95 respectively. 1st: 6, 7, or 8 prims, bad fire texture anim, some scripted to retexture the fireplace--but with mostly library and freebie textures. 2nd: 5 or 7 prims, much better textures, but unscripted. 3rd: Widest selection, cheapest, probably the best textures, 6-8 prims. (weird that the low-prim places all use prim flames, btw.) In this case, the lower the traffic, the better the product, so traffic was counterproductive here, but there were only 3 results, so it's not a big deal.

2. bathroom sink. Just one result. Traffic: 99. So traffic neither helped nor hurt here.

3. curtains. First result obviously gamed. 2nd: box of bots at 1000m. skipping down... 5th: bots at 450m.... 10th: seem to be actual avatars here, but turns out it's mostly freebies; checking "All" search page for this site, no item on the parcel contains "curtains" in its name. 15th: Okay, again by cheating with the All page, I could find curtains here--they're awful, textures with badly cropped edges displayed to maximize the alpha-sorting problem. So, try 14th to see if the higher traffic is better quality...actually not bad. Only thing is, this place happens to be the very first result in Search All. So why did I have to spend 20 minutes "bucking traffic" in Search Places? Gamed traffic definitely made these results harder to use, but it didn't help with the ungamed places either.

4. beach blanket. Just 3 results again. 1st: traffic 7881--can't figure out how: no obvious gaming, but no shoppers either; there are beach blankets: primitive (a separate poseball prim), stock Craig Altman resale poses. 2nd: traffic 333, pretty much the same products. 3rd: traffic 1, Well, a different product at least, kind of a picnic blanket with MLP and several Craig Altman and other poses, for more money. Anyway, traffic neither helped nor hurt on this one.

5. animation server.

6. teleporter.

7. airplane.

8. fishing boat.

9. hoverboard.

10. multi-person shower.

11. nature sounds.

12. patio umbrella.

13. pregnant tummy.

14. prim baby.

15. mirror.

16. terraforming tool.

17. particle light ring.

18. contest board.