Building a better Search tool in Second Life

Finding the right thing right away is of huge importance in Second Life, as it is for the online experience in general. Residents have been stuck with a sometimes-useful Search tool for what feels like forever. According to this article, that might change soon.

One of the problems with past Search results is that they've been shown by alphabetical ranking, or by amount of traffic received. This new tool will generate results based on relevance, the way Google works. In fact, this new Search will be based on a Google product.

The caveat, however, is that for these results to be at all relevant, objects must be tagged with appropriate information. While this will initially be a pain, given the tens of thousands of objects available in SL, it will allow residents to decide for themselves the level of privacy they'd like to inhabit. Once this goes live, you can bet enterprising coders grid-wide will work on providing tools to manage this new step in SL's growth.

(Via technologyreview)