Searching

Any powerful search needs to be able to access inworld information. If you put a piece of land up for sale, it should show up without you having to tour the web updating listings. If you put up an inworld classified, everything from that ad should be accessable to the search. If people have to hit five different websites to list everything, most of them won't bother.

Most people will never bother to find out there's other ways to search SL content if it isn't staring them in the face when they hit that Search button.

If something isn't integral and obvious, most people will never discover or use it.

Here's my "dream" search scenario.

Hit the search button. It'll pop up an embedded web page, like your Profile currently can.

If you've never used Search before you'll get the default LL search along with a configuration page of links for other search engines. You choose the ones you want on your page - all of the available ones are in a list right there with their own little checkboxes waiting for you to pick them.

If you've already configured your search page, it'll show you a page of Google Gadget-like versions of them in the order/arrangement you chose. The top or bottom of the page will have a link to the configuration page, with a little icon for "new searches!" when ones have been added to the list since the last time you looked at the configuration page.

Nice, huh?

All it would take is a way to get data from those parts of the DBs. Serve up that XML, Linden Labs, and set yourselves free of the Search burden! There's some suggestions of something like this - LL is already feeding the events listings at Eventful.