This paper first proposes three improved gossip mechanisms by mapping links into metric space and dynamically adapting the number of selected neighbors to disseminate messages. Experiments and comparisons show that these mechanisms can improve the performance of gossip in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This is the effect of mapping a network into a metric space that differentiates nodes and links according to linking characteristics and controlling local information flow with knowing such differences. A further study about query routing on P2P semantic link network shows that mapping a network into a semantic space can also improve the performance. An intrinsic rule is found by experimental comparisons and analysis: The performance of a P2P network can be improved by designing an appropriate mapping from the network into metric space or semantic space. A general framework for networking with metric space and semantic space is suggested.