Finally. After years of lax policy, the Lindens have let the community know that they will actively seek camping bots and crack down on their existence. The move is long overdue but we have to recognize its side effects and the poor state of search in Second Life.
First of all, this is something we should embrace and rejoice over immediately. Camping has been used to trick the traffic numbers ever since people knew how they are attributed daily. Even with the “new” Google-based search, this made a place come out on top because traffic is part of the relevance criteria.
This had heavily perverse effects, as you can guess. Business owners who wanted to play a fair game had a major disadvantage. The ones who did not want, did not have the means to pay for occupied camping spots or to set up bots paid the price for their choices.
Even some of us had wrong visitor counts. I cannot remember how many times when I saw an avatar landing and leaving within 5 seconds, after not having found a camping spot. This kind of “visit” makes it hard to figure out your true level of success in attracting people.
If the ban is mainly a positive element, there will be some negative consequences. Many business owners will actually lose traffic and, eventually, sales. This includes top quality content creators. They will have to find out different ways to make sure their stores come out on top of search results. But there is an element of fairness which could push them towards more traditional forms of advertising around the grid.
This is no small deal when you think of it, however. Despite adoption of Google-based search technology, Second Life search results still lack in quality. If so many people tricked the system, it was partly because the system was not very efficient. The state of SL search can still be compared to Web search before Google made relevance king.
This is yet another major challenge for Linden Lab. Will they come up with a solution?
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