SecondLife Traffic Figures

Writing by admin on Saturday, 31 of March , 2007 at 11:38 am

I was inspired to create a post about this topic following a recent discussion on the SLED list concerning quoted traffic numbers. This post is not meant in any way to shame anyone, but it is intended to indicate exactly what “traffic”, in the context of a SecondLife land parcel, actually means.

All land in SecondLife has what is known as a “traffic” figure which can be found be going to Land Properties as you can see in the diagram below. I shot this early in the SecondLife day and already is says 309. But that’s not 309 avatars having visited, oh no!

The land figure is actually a Linden Labs method of determining the popularity of a parcel, albeit a very crude method. The idea is that the calculation is equated to the amount of visitors on that land combined with the amount of time they spend on that land in relation to the time they spend actually online in that day.

“Traffic is a number for each parcel which is based on the amount of Residents who visited, and the time spent on that parcel out of their total time in world that day. It’s calculated using a complex algorithm.” See here.

So if you log-in, immediately teleport to my land, and stay there for the duration of your SecondLife time for that day, my traffic figure will be much higher than had you frequented many places during that same time period.

This then is a warning shot, when traffic figures are mentioned in the context of land parcels, as they have little relativity to unique people landing on a parcel. This is in fact exactly why some land owners have such things as camping chairs in order to have avatars do nothing but “camp” on the land in order to inflate the figures (this has benefits for the search system rankings).

In order to appropriately determine unique visitors (which are the only real concern when discussing obtaining SecondLife exposure) you would employ a script which actually head counts unique visitors.

Various scripts do exist for such counting, I personally use one made by the avatar SpankMe Pinkerton (have to love the names).

The script features are listed as:

* Two data lists (individual visits & unique visitors)
* Collects date, length of stay, and average stay data
* IM guests (separate message for first time visitors)
* Owner IM notification (online only & timing options)
* Ten detection sound options or set your own via uuid
* Adjustable range and scan intervals
* Owner land filtering (neighbor friendly)
* Automatic owner filtering

Fairly comprehensive method of tracking I would say!

So do be careful on your travels in SecondLife if you are seeking new customers and clients for your educational activities and are basing your advertising on traffic figures.

So next time someone says “how’s your traffic”, look at them in a puzzled manner first and then ensure they understand the question themselves, most do not!

Category: Chris Hambly

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