Second Life Search is Full of Fail UPDATE: Lindens Respond

This won't surprise a single active Second Life user, but when I searched for "September 11 memorial" on hearing the news of Osama bin Laden's death, this is what I got when I put those search terms in (click to enlarge):

I did finally find a memorial site (one of at least three), but only after some non-intuitive searching. Second Life's internal search engine has rapidly lost relevance in the past couple years or so. And now more's the pity, because if past history is a guide, I imagine many Residents were, like me, looking for a memorial place to gather at last Sunday. Major real world events often inspire impromptu in-world gatherings, at least back in the days when they were still fairly easy to find. "I wanted to be with other people on this momentus occasion, to discuss what it means and share how I'm feeling," as Rik Riel noted in Comments. "In theory Second Life could have offered a space for that, but gathering people, finding a space, and connecting was just too daunting." Instead, Rik went where many other Residents went, to discuss the news: On Twitter, or other social media channels like Plurk, or even Facebook.

Update, 5/4: In Comments, Linden Lab spokesman Pete Linden says my poor search results were not due to the search engine: "[T]he only parcels mentioning that phrase ["September 11 memorial ] are set to not show in search. If you had searched for "World Trade Center Memorial," I think you would have found what you were looking for."

Comments

[Casper Jideon]

You are a few years late on this topic Hamlet... in fact if you had used an old, pre v2.0 viewer, you may have gotten some meaningful results. After all you do get the how and why SL is doomed, it just takes a few years. Just like any other Linden :)

[Angie Mornington]

I would really love a technical breakdown from someone on what it would take to fix search.

[Marx Dudek]

Minus the snark, I would agree with the previous comment that 1.x search seems - marginally - better. But with the coming of mesh, which sometimes sounds sooner than later, adoption of 2.x will be necessary for everyone.

[Deoridhe]

Yup, search is full of fail.

What always gets me is that I can search for the name of a store, the store can have a paid ad, and even though I'm searching for the EXACT NAME I have to hunt for the store on a list of paid ads (and weirdly it doesn't even show up in general search for, like, a page) because of the way the amount stores pay for a paid ads takes precedence over what I'm looking for.

It doesn't actually hurt the store owner, since I know I want their store and I'm not being diverted into completely unrelated things, but it pisses me the fsk off.

[Todd Borst]

I especially like how it makes the search results disappear after clicking on any of the links. The way it's implemented now pretty much makes it a royal pain in the ass to go down the list of results.

You can tell that no one at Linden Labs use the search at all.

[Cole Marie]

FIX SEARCH KTHNX BAI

[Hamlet Au]

Usually with search I get at least one hit on the first page that is relevant to my interests. This time I was totally gobsmacked by the unambiguous fail.

[Adeon Writer]

V1 search is also broken but does give slightly better results. Why? Shouldn't the server just be giving the viewer it's results? Whatever the reason, old style viewers find things a tad better in search.

[someone]

Thanks, E-Sheep, for first selling Linden Lab on the idea of indexing search of parcels by objects on the parcel instead of by meta-tags.

[Galatea Gynoid]

@Adeon: Yes, but V2 search is getting those results from a completely different server than V1 search. V1 search uses a search designed by the Lindens for searching their virtual world. V2 search uses a Google search appliance.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Could you please use your contacts Hamlet to see what, if anything, LL plan to do about Search?

[Lari Lorefield]

V2 search is pathetic and LL should be ashamed

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

If the steering wheel did not work in a company's cars, it would be top priority.

Or they'd go out of business, pronto.

Hello, Linden Lab!

[Nalates Urriah]

This is the one part of SL that really irks me.

V2 Search is a failure. The team working on it is supposedly the largest single team at the Lab. It seems their goal is to make it FAIR...

As long as it is is fair it doesn't matter if we can find anything. Everyone comes you equally in the new fair search. NOT.

Pathetic.

Get Darrius over at http://www.dgp4sl.com started on search.

[Qie Niangao]

Echoing Hitomi's request that you (Hamlet) prod the Lab for some kind of Search roadmap. That team has nearly no public presence, so it would be a great service if you could get them to open up to you.

Also, input from an outsider with current search engine expertise would be invaluable. I find it extremely puzzling that, despite repeated repair attempts, GSA-based search has been consistently and objectively a dismal failure compared to the clunky old home-grown approach. Surely it doesn't have to be this way, does it?

I can dream up "just-so" explanations for why Page Rank is doomed for the SL search corpus, but even I can't make myself believe them. Still... would they be better off unifying with Marketplace (which I think is using Lucene)?

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Just now finding out about search Hamlet? Search falls under the LL Commerce Team who appears to be a separate company. Everything they have done can be directly correlated to declines in the SL metrics.

Maybe you should investigate further and find out who installed this "Commerce Team" and for what purpose.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Oh and I have observed rodvik's appearances on the net to have dried up. I guess the honeymoon is over.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

No, no, don't touch our search! We hate and fear change!

/cheapshot

Seriously, it's bad, it's important, it needs to be a priority. I think we're all basically on the same page here.

[Pete Linden]

In this instance, the problem you encountered actually wasn't because search failed to return the results, but because there weren't results to return for that query. The only parcels mentioning that phrase are set to not show in search. If you had searched for "World Trade Center Memorial," I think you would have found what you were looking for.

That said, we realize that search needs improvement and we're actively working to make it better - we'll share more on that shortly.