There is a thread over on the Official Forums regarding traffic. Since this was something I was researching for the SLCC I collected some images to try and figure out how calculations were made, how the figure was influenced and more. Since I didn't end up attending the conference I abandoned this analysis, but there are a few things worth discussing when I get a chance and I wanted to create this placeholder topic.

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"'PC Load Letter'? What the fuck does that mean?" - Michael Bolton, Office Space

Here's the continuation:

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"'PC Load Letter'? What the fuck does that mean?" - Michael Bolton, Office Space

Someone in the back forums, use the SEARCH, there is a full Linden explanation, I believe from Jesse Linden in relationship to the issue of the Developer Incentive Awards, about dwell.

Dwell would often be broken -- and still is on traffic. It simply doesn't record some days, or surely records incompletely -- I don't get it when I have an event with 30 avatars and the next day the traffic is lower.

Traffic is not a one-to-one calculation -- for every avatar over five minutes, 1 point. That cannot be true, as I've watched avatars come and go within an hour and clocked it on different sims at different venues and haven't seen any correlation.

Some people will do stuff like log on 5 alts and have them sit on parcels to amp traffic and get friends and pay them even beyond camp chairs. I used to notice clubs build their black boxes, and then have no event, but then I'd see their traffic be on some phenomenal number -- they use devices like alts and camp chairs to up it.

The formula the Lindens used for dwell I recall involved total number of logins and I believe log-on hours. So that if it were a slow night in general for SL, if I follow this correctly, then your "take" even from a huge traffic event would be less. This was that old social engineering socialist corrective they love. But read up on it, and ask. I think that like a lot of things, they actually don't know the answer. That it's probably messed up code or stuff that makes no sense anymore but no one has time to watch it.

Still, there's a rough and ready thing going on here that more traffic equals more sales.

Now, does LOTS more traffic, i.e. 20,000 versus 1,000 make more sales? No. That's the really funny thing. For one, sales can happen when an avatar finds a thing they like on another parcel, possibly by clicking on someone's object, then their profile, then their store, studying the thing, then tp'ing to buy that thing right at the spot, not even lingering for 5 minutes.

That's why classifieds clickthrough info is more worth studying possibly, and I do.

You're absolutely right about that scenario! That's how I did most of my non-SLExchange shopping. Since the post I was attempting to respond to was from a mall owner I'll be sure to point this out and try to drag him over here.

I will be curious to see the formula. I tried to use the Classifieds click-through once that feature was added, but it flew in the face of the other Popular Places, some of which relied solely on their position there for traffic rather than advertising.

Ultimately I wanted to do what you and others have suggested, build an interface for Popular Places based on their quality as opposed to the same 40 dudes sitting around playing SL-ingo 24 hours a day. Blecch...

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"'PC Load Letter'? What the fuck does that mean?" - Michael Bolton, Office Space