New Search is a mess

There are new developments on the search front as blogged on the official site and I'm rather perturbed to say the least. I've whinged about search before and I'm going to do it again because what's happening here is pure and unadulterated balderdash.

First let's deal with where there is hope, Liana Linden says:

"

Our goals are to:
* Provide an informative and delightful search experience for all Residents, and
* Increase fairness and reliability of the search service for people who place listings.

Linden Lab knows that search is a critical tool for new Residents to discover and engage with Second Life and for inworld businesses and experience providers to reach their target audiences. We also know there is a lot more we can do to make that tool work better. Here’s what we’re currently working on:

* For searchers, we have several usability improvements in the works.
* For people who place search listings, we are analyzing failure points in the search logic that allow users to game the system, as well as addressing the issue of poor-quality descriptions in listings."

Super smashing great. If they can improve search then that's all good, however what they're doing right now is not improving search, certainly not in terms of business owners reaching their target audiences they're not.

Let's deal with adult content for a minute, this is the easy area. Let's put aside the rights and wrongs of adult content and look at how new search deals with adult content, if the parcel is on an adult sim then it's adult content, no matter what the content. Only people who are searching with adult content ticked will find parcels on adult sims, even if that content is PG. Now this is new, this is an easy to define category. Everyone knows the rules....well they would if Linden Lab would broadcast the changes better but that's a different issue.

However PG and Mature is not so straight forward. If you search for PG content, you'll find results for all parcels on PG or Mature land that are not flagged as "Mature Content". This goes for classifieds too, you will only see classifieds that are PG content (the vast majority are).

Now if someone unticks PG and selects Mature the results are different. They will not see results for any PG parcels, they will not even see results for PG regions at all.

So those on PG sims and those on adult sims are wiped from visibility whereas those in mature sims can have a mature content parcel next to a PG content parcel and capture all. So my tip for those on mature sims is to cut yourself a little 128M parcel within your current parcel, put something risque on it, use the exact same description as your main store with PG content that's really on the same parcel, flag the 128M parcel as "Mature content" and voila, you'll be found in PG and Mature search. Now of course the vast majority of people will probably tick Pg and Mature, so this doesn't mean the sky is falling or anything but it means potential lost reach compared to what we currently have.

However this flies right in the face of the blog post that says:

"We think that giving you the ability to control the type of content and spaces you want to encounter is a great addition to Second Life."

We're five or six months away from Panto season but all I'll say is "Oh no it isn't". There is nothing that needs to be changed regarding the current "Include Mature content" option in search, nothing whatsoever, especially when you consider the more mature adult content is being moved off mature land.

Linden Lab's reasons for doing this remain a mystery, but it certainly doesn't help the reach of a business owner. There is another encouraging point in the blog post however:

"with your input, we will continue to improve on the feature. It may feel a little new and different for a while. To help the transition, we will keep providing tips and updates here and in the Knowledge Base. Thanks for your support."

They should stop wasting time fixing what isn't broken and get on with making search improvements.