Where are the rules regarding the bots?

Dear friends,
I recently opened a store. I wake up every morning and watch the traffic: well, it is more than I ever hoped for my main store, which is placed in a quite...lag free and not-very-populated area, as I planned to be. But, after a few calculations and estimations, I understood that I could never compete with another stores and creators when it comes about traffic, my store will never appear in Search on the first page, does not matter by what search-word you would look for it, does not matter how many friends like to come there and stay to clean their inventories and, the worst, no matter how much work I invest to make beautiful and never-seen-before shoes
Then a friend told me about the traffic figures with four zeros and about the bots. Hmmmm...(here I spare you of the whole internal morality issue).
I wanted to read something coherent as the point of view of the Linden Labs about the traffic-bots, but I could not find their official position. Here I read how somebody was banned because of them, there I go to see why thousands are gathered and find no soul...
Does somebody knows where to read something from the Lindens on the issue? Are the bots a "must-have", a "shame on you!" thing, or a motive for being banned?
If I find nothing, the existence of my store will be my intimate well-kept secret

There is no publically available information about them from LL but, on more than one occasion, LL people have stated privately that they are not currently against the ToS; i.e. they are allowed. Those statements were made when they were asked specifically about them.

They don't attract penalties unless they are misused. The misuse could be that they fill the sim so that other people can't get in, which is not a very clever thing for a store to do, but clubs can do it during the times of day when they don't have events.

If you search here you will find sooo many bot threads, it's a running joke. Bottom line as far as Residents- some people hate them because it is believed - whether correctly or incorrectly, not the issue here- that bots cause lag, that bots inflate traffic thus misleading Real People, that it is lying, etc... Others see it as just another form of advertising right there with paying for an advert in a publication or paying people to put your store in their picks- really- there is so much about both these issues in the forum that u r better off just reading back a page or so..it is never too far away. Usually u will only need to read the first page of what u find btw, because by post say ten or 15 it's the same thing stated in the same way as has been countless of times and people yelling inanities at each other and being insulting and no new information is garnered just lots of drama, etc. First couple or so of responses will give u all u need to know.

As a famous wise guy once said, "there is nothing new under the sun." Good luck with your endeavors.

There are no rules about bots.
They are simply another login, and as such are covered by the normal ToS, whether that be access to alts, degradation of the service for other users or whatever.

Simple as that, really.

The actual discussion about when it "degrades the experience" or is ethically wrong is an entirely different matter which, as has been mentioned, is source for endless flames.

(Apart from that, you may be better served by looking into optimizing your search terms. Supposedly, they now carry more weight than traffic, and you dodge the whole discussion about - and possible backlash from - using bots).

Some tips:

- don't waste too much energy against the Terrible Evil Bots
- learn all you can about how the Search works. your rating in the Search results doesn't depend on Traffic only. some months ago, Traffic was much more important than now
- leverage as much as you can on word of mouth
- use other ways to advertise your store: dedicated web forums, magazines, blogs

Be aware that not everyone goes by traffic numbers. . I alphabatize my search listings, so the store name determines what page I see it on. And also kepp the best way to further your business in my opiion:the quality of your product. It doesn't matter how I find your store. If you are selling crap, I'm not buying it.

Since the new Search All, a starting business should focus on that one, not on places search. And traffic is not important for that. So why have 20 or more bots running to compete, instead of working on search parameters that are much more important

Finally I know why you never bought my stuff!!!

But she did buy mine

To the OP, this is probably the worst place to ask about bots and the TOS as you have a ton of bot-fobics and you will get a hundred different answers; none of which are official.

You can be sure of one thing - if you use bots to drive your traffic...a lot of people won't visit your store once it's discovered. Pretty much count on it being discovered - there are people whose whole SL existence is now hunting bots and reporting it everywhere they can think of

It's really obvious when you're using bots to drive traffic, and a lot of people will just teleport out again as soon as they see you're doing it. So it's not just immoral, it's flattening.

My thoughts exactly. To add, the little sheep you enjoy watching (traffic in the morning) may very well jump the fence if you add bots.

Market Market Market and Market some more then blog blog blog and join the feeds!

Dear friends, I suppose I know now everything I need about them and it is all usefull information. When my shop will be ready and I will have time, I will try the both ways then I will honestly post the results here: attention, bots hunters!...you have all my respect and here I challenge you to find mine, when I will have them, maybe in a month or two, because if you do, I promise to become a bots hunter on your side. Deal?
I will try to be creative in marketing, because the key-words do not help in my case much, besides, English is not my mother-tongue and I barely find words to communicate what I need. But I already placed there all kind of attractive and usefull objects and spaces, if anybody will ever use them, lol!.
There are very good advices here for me, thanks a lot! I rarely use the All tab in search, I never imagine that people got used to it.

Yes yes more bots. thats what Sl needs. thousands of original ideas infested with bots

I think you're getting a little confused, traffic is important to places search but if you use the main search all then traffic is not a significant factor and those using bots really don't benefit much from their usage.

They show up on the map as green dots. That's the point: to make them green dots on the map so people go "OMG, that must be a cool place, look at all the people!". If you hide them, that defeats the purpose.

You're kidding right? If you put bots on your sim, it will be known. It doesn't matter if you put them in an invisible box, they'll be found. Bots are dots on the map and if they're on your sim, even if you scatter them out, it will show. A good bot hunter knows almost every bot runner's trick, and every new trick is easily figured out.

Don't worry about "bot hunters". They are no threat to you, because bots aren't a reportable offense.

DO worry about your reputation. There are lots of people who won't patronize an establishment that uses bots to drive their traffic.

If I were you, I'd spend my time a) making more and better products and b) marketing them everywhere I could think of...the fashion blogs, word of mouth, sales, hunts, group specials, lucky chair giveaways, classified ads, profile picks, the New Products forum here, etc. etc. etc.

If you for some reason decide to use bots, please limit yourself to just a couple and put them to work modeling your wares Nothing sadder then a floating newbie in the sky.

/me actually doesn't mind bot models so much, cute idea and puts those lazy bots to work.

"Lot's" meaning on this forum perhaps, but since we all know how few of SL's total users read this forum, I bet if you could get an accurate poll inworld, that a good porton of users have no idea about the practice of using bots to influence traffic rankings, or are like me and are ambivalent towards it.

You do understand!

Oh no it isn't!


(or is)

I wish LL would just drop the traffic count completely

we would see a lot of bots leave and fast
as would camping...

He he. The greatest book ever written as far as I am concerned. I still read it every few years.