Linden Lab has released a new Search Project Viewer for testing which provides a brand new Second Life search system. Check out the Search Project Viewer FAQ for more details. I’m glad to see Linden Lab are spending time on improving Search at last with help by the SL community.
View screenshots of Second Life Search in previous years.
The Search Project Viewer provides an early look for testing and feedback on the new Second Life search system. For more information, see the Search Project Viewer FAQ and read the Test Out New Search! blog post.
Linden Lab mentions in the blog post that this is a big improvement from the current version of search and that 75% of residents that did a quiet test preferred the new search results.
It has been a while since we last updated you on search and that’s because we’ve chosen to take a big leap forward versus smaller, incremental improvements. We believe that new search is a vast improvement over current search both in terms of usability and relevance. But we’re not the only ones who think that. We conducted a quiet test with a savvy group of Residents who preferred new search results over 75% of the time compared with current search results.
At the end of the blog post Linden Lab mentions that they don’t plan on implementing the new search engine for the 1.23 viewer. It’s another nail in the coffin for viewer 1.23 as it’s lifetime nears the end.
“Will new search work in Viewer 1.23 and Third-Party Viewers?” New search will soon be available to you in the official SL Viewer and we will not be implementing it for the 1.23 Viewer. To be clear, you can still use the 1.23 Viewer, but search functionality will be impaired once new search is released into general availability, after the test period.
Soon after the announcement I installed the new search viewer and used it for some time. It looks pretty good and looks promising I think. It’s faster trying to find SL stuff and I like that the search results are now scrollable. The 15 minute window of searching for stuff in the new search I like as well. Improvements I would suggest is the following..When the Find menu opens everything is too quashed in and it needs to be separated out a bit. Another improvement is to have a filter for the maturity ratings and for search to link to SL wiki pages. There is more to add. Search results time…
- Everything: Searching for “Doctor Who” returned a lot of helpful location links
- Destination Guide: Navigating through SL showcase places was cool
- Events: Likes the Happening Now tick box
- Groups: Worked rather well when searching
- People: Didn’t work when I searched for my name “Your search for “Daniel Voyager” did not return any matches”
- Real Estate: Worked okay when searching
- Places: Worked okay when searching
This is a good step forward for Search for Second Life and hopefully it will be better when it comes out of beta testing stages later in the year.
Feedback and discussion links
- Forum Feedback to Linden Lab
- Lindens Launch New Second Life Search Engine – NWN
- Try out the new Second Life search, without the new viewer – Tateru Nino
- New Second Life Search Beta – Nalates Urriah
Daniel Voyager 