Is Paying for Links in Profile Picks Cheating?

what I think will happen , eventually

LL will decide their inflated Concurrency and sign up numbers are less of a Priority

Traffic will be removed

Picks will be removed

Most of the entire search architecture will be gutted. A very simple search ALL and classifieds will remain.

Linden Labs will endorse 3rd Party Searches and get out of any sort of advanced Search Business.

It's called selective opinions I believe

People are allowed to whine too

Where's the quote by the way?

I would like to see those predictions come true. CS would become more helpful. It would be like turning back the clock. They would be able to concentrate more on SL than simply numbers.

Personally what makes me buy a item is when I stumble upon it during exploring and its quite remarkable and I have to know who the creator is.
Or if a friend I know well is using the product and likes it, and I want it because of what it does or how it looks.
Search bugs the heck out of me.
Not sure about anyone else though.
Does anyone just dislike or find problems with the search system?
Search all I find incredibly annoying, it might list a location but it won't give me the ability to teleport there.
Only thing I like about search all is it reminds of how it was in beta in 2003 which felt more like looking at web pages, easier to read then the dark pages.
If people want to pay for pick placement go for it they can do whatever they want with there money but it doesn't mean anyone or I will buy their products.

I think the writing is on the wall, its just very feint.

When you read some of the things Robin and Jeska have said its obvious they don't really WANT the system heavily gamed.

As for the rest the search stuff is all related to high load performance, right? Since they have tried shutting it down to alleviate problems. So I just see it as a natural target once they decide the numbers don't matter to them.

Since DI was done away with because of gaming that left only Search to be gamed so drastic measures must be taken.

LL has let things go so long it makes many newer people think that gaming the system is what SL is about.

But I take heart, there are many who feel otherwise

Well if they are paying for then, it's like paying for a bigger add, if they are creating dozens of disposable alts per day for free pickfarming then it's cheating IMO.
Either way at least we don't need to have zombies logged in standing around all over the countryside

Guys (and gals), you are really something.

Of course everything was better in the old days. You know, in the stone age the men dragged the woman behind him, pulling her hair. That were the days. After that, it only got worse.

We are not living in the stone ages anymore. We are not living pre 2005 anymore. You have to deal with that, just looking back on how things one were brings you nowhere.

What I asked in another thread as well: Is the new Search really that bad? And if so, why an I always fond what I need using it? Because it seems to sort on relevance. And the serious businesses take care of their search results, so I an find their products. And yes, some cheating happens, but do not forget that Picks are not by far the most important factor, so Picks buying is not that big an influence.

Now I also saw ranking in either alphabetical order, or just random, and a lot of people thinking of it as a good idea. Now I beg to differ: It is a very bad idea. Because it lacks any relevance to what I was searching for. As example, we take the old low prim furniture, a business I am in as well. What happens:

- I search for low prim furniture
- Adam Doe has 2 low prim items in his shop (shown in search)
- John Doe has 200 low prim items in his show (shown in search)
- Alphabetically: John turns up on page 20
- Random: No one an tell where John turns up

Now I want to find John, and not Adam. Because chances are big, that he has what I want. In any normal search engine he would turn up first because his shop is more relevant. Finding random people with one or two low prim items would kill the usability of search. Finding then alphabetically is even worse as all business would try a name like aaaaaaaaa low prim stuff.

Search All works just fine as it is. I would love to have more results per page, but at least it sorts on relevance.

You talked yourself into a corner there: Adam Doe can just put himself #1 by creating/buying enough picks and otherwise cheating search if John Doe doesn't have that particular inclination.

That *is* what happens in practice, and yes, it makes search worthless.

And in reality it goes like this:
- Adam sells moderately decent items with no particular appeal
- John sells quality items that far outshine anything Adam could hope to ever create

As to why it works for you? Adam's equally moderate competitors will all game picks as well because it's the only way they can compete so you look at result 1 through 20 and only see the same moderate quality in each store and think "well, they're no better than result 1. This new search is good, I could just have bought at the first store and saved myself a lot of time!!".

And you never get to see John's store that would have suited you best because it's burried under all the faked "relevance" results.

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"Relevance" is a meaningless word when it can just be bought or faked. Something is either relevant or it isn't; if you can assign artificial relevance to something then you don't order by actual relevance, you order by "who fakes relevance the most".

That won't do him much good if the product isn't good though. I've just been to look at a mall that's packed with green dots, I'm not convinced any of them are buying and the selling point is the high traffic. I'm not going to rent there based on traffic like that, the product isn't upto scratch for me. I go elsewhere.



You've moved the goalposts there, Marcel was talking about someone selling 2 items compared to 200. However if John's products really are vastly superior then clever advertising and word of mouth will boost him. Having the best product has never been a guarantee of success, you still have to work at it but if it's a truly great product it should sell.



How will any search deal with this problem? Some markets are saturated, they're going to return many pages of results.



The name of items is also important, you could have the best products around but if you give them some bizarre name whose going to find them? If someone has a better concept of naming items is that gaming search too?

Which is besides the point since Marcel's comment was that "Adam shouldn't rank first", which he can if he just games picks enough. And in practice it's no a question of "good" vs "bad", it's between "more or less good enough" and "excellent".

Because Marcel's example just isn't realistic. It's not a choice between "store with 2 items" and a "store with 200 items", the quality involved makes all the difference (personal preference would be the highest factor but that's not terribly measurable).

The kitchen I bought for one of my rental's happened to be the only kitchen that particular store sold, but I love it and it's great quality. I also looked at dozens of stores that had dozens upon dozens of different kitchens where I wouldn't even rez some of them in my house if they paid me for it.

The rest of the items in the store I got my kitchen from were had similar quality so should it rank low simply because it sells less than a store that sells 10 times more items but which are all rubbish?

Getting 100 picks if you're paying for them is infinitely easier than getting 100 customers to add you to their picks all on their own.

You can change the argument all you like but if you accept the hypothesis that Adam's store is no good while John's store is great and Adam games picks while John doesn't then Adam will always rank ahead.

Just rank everyone as they would naturally rank without any artificial reshuffling of any kind.

Marcel used to make a rather big point of it that picks gaming got him up to #2. Did he earn that ranking? No, he just bought it, it wasn't based on merit of any kind.

Did he deserve to be ranked #2 rather than where he was before? Maybe, maybe not, but the store owner is the last person who should have a say in how they rank, we have classifieds for that already.

If you assume that he did deserve the #2 but could only achieve it by questionable means then you have a broken search that needs tweaking rather than gaming. If you assume that he didn't deserve the #2 spot then you still have a broken search since it ruins the usefulness when people can just semi-arbitrarily rank where they want to rank by bribing enough people.

On a search for low prim furniture? No he shouldn't. Not if he's only got two items compared to 200. Why would Adam turn up first on such a generic search term?



Yet you're a perfect example of someone who didn't buy items they didn't consider good enough, you found what you were looking for. You're not the only person who does that.



Why would anyone be putting a store in their picks unless they had some self interest? A store? What on earth is a store doing in picks? The only reason for putting a store in your picks is because you want to give the owner a boost. Clubs I can understand, hangouts, places where you had a good time, places of breathtaking beauty, but a store?



Alphabetically? That's natural order, we all know what would happen there. You can't rank by quality, a search engine isn't intelligent enough to do that and one man's meat is another man's poison.



Linden Lab inform business owners that picks are important. Now after the way traffic went with camping, which is in effect paid traffic, how on earth can anyone be surprised that paid picks are here? I can't have been the only one who saw this coming, it was as plain as the nose on your face. Business owners are encouraged to chase picks, hence they're going to look for incentives to get those picks. This is the system that has developed, this was always the way it was going to go.

Some stores simply put up a sign requesting people put them in their picks if they like the products but it still boils down to business owners being encouraged to chase picks.

Picks have changed, if Linden Lab hadn't intended this change then they should have made no mention whatsoever of picks to business owners.

Until LL replace the phrase "Picks" with the phrase "Resident Paid Advertising", being paid for your picks, which is in effect being paid to advertise someone's location is as misleading as the word "traffic" ever being used as a metrics for search.

I have no real opposition to people making a few pennies for making themselves as walking billboards. My objection is to the idea that "Picks", as in your pick of an interesting place, as been bastardized into "Picks", as in a place that pays you to like them.

It's the lack of transparency in both being paid for picks and running bots 2000meters up that irks me.

Conduct your business anyway you like, but at least have the balls to be upfront about it.

Rename "Picks" as "Resident Paid Advertising" and you can game the system to your hearts content.

Because Adam games search while John doesn't so Adam gets ahead. And once more a store with only 2 items is a ridiculous example that simply doesn't occur in reality.

Because it's the minority, a higher ranking results in higher sales regardless of whether you're selling quality items or not. Again, look at the two high profile search gaming advocates on these forums.

Take a look at 2006 & 2007 abandoned accounts, you'll find people did put stores in their picks long before. I personally never would, but it happened without needing any monetary incentive.

If you accept picks as a good metric then it's whichever order results from that, without enticing people to add you to their picks.

When Jeska still had office hours in the very early days of the new search I brought up the fact that people were just switching over to "picks paying/camping" and she was surprised and never heard of it before.

If you think Lindens are aware of what happens in-world then you're walking around with blinders on or don't spend nearly enough time discussing things with them.

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The telling thing is that you completely ignored the point of manipulating search in the first place. If it's done to achieve a ranking you deserve to have then it's flawed, it shouldn't take those kind of measures since others can abuse them. If it's done to achieve a ranking you don't deserve then it's just as flawed as traffic and both need to be scrapped.

You can't argue for the need or merit of manipulating search without also admitting that it's inherently flawed or that you can't get sales without resorting to deception because what you're selling just isn't good enough.

I have a store with three furniture items in one location However you moved the goalposts, forget the gaming, in pure search terms the store with more matches for my search term should be more relevant. The gaming from having boxes with that term is a concern but purely on a search based issue, it makes sense for the one with more results to be ranked higher.



However supporting a friend is a reason people put stores in their profile. Friendship can be an incentive too. Let's face facts, there have been quite some time people who have picks that aren't there because they love the location.



I haven't checked my future of traffic meeting notes to see if this got raised there but it was obvious that this would happen. Surely some Lindens must have seen this coming, they can't all have their heads buried in the sand. Picks aren't a good metric, I've listed several reasons why. One startling issue with picks is that not all picks count, this is done to prevent gaming of course by someone having a pick army of alts.



Search is inherently flawed. I've pointed this out many times, I've pointed out why all traffic isn't equal for a start, time after time. I don't foresee a time ever when search won't be flawed. So working from that premise you need to limit the amount of gaming that can take place. I don't see paid picks as gaming because it still depends upon an individual to make that choice, the same with camping when it doesn't involve the owners own camping bots.

When Robin first mentioned this new search I said it would kill classifieds. I was wrong, but many people believe classifieds aren't as useful as they once were.

They could I guess take a more payment oriented approach to search and rank that way, but plenty of people wouldn't like that.

Some items I sell on SLX that never sell inworld. SLX actually has better options for search and although it's far from perfect, it does place more choice with the consumer. People have said they go to SLX to search for an item and then go inworld to the store. However not everyone is listed on SLX, but Linden Lab could learn a thing or two about search from SLX.

I really am not understanding the arguments being presented here.

The classifieds seem quasi useless. What is the problem for paying for advertising? I can understand the disdain at someone registering 50 bots to use for PICKS, but really, how is this different from anything?

LL cannot make these systems fool proof and they should not have to. We seem to do well governing ourselves by such actions as TPing away from places that use Bots and paid Campers.

Paying for profile PICKs rental space is just advertising. No harm no foul, just yet another cost of doing business.

It seems leaps and bounds more legitimate than having 40 bots in a skybox bumping into each other.

Ratings...... Removed due to gaming
DI.............. Removed due to gaming
Traffic........ Under fire due to gaming
Picks......... The next step due to gaming?

The Classifieds were the portion of the search that was intended to be based on pay for ranking.

Both Traffic and the Picks measuring was intended to depend on popularity - one on time spent at a place, the other by who favors a place.

There was no place on the search intended to depend on people using multiple accounts designed for the sole purpose of influencing ranking.

How well the systems actually work has nothing to do with their intended purpose.

Kitty, you did not understand my example, apparantly I was not clear enough.

My posting had nothing to do with gaming search, it proved how random results render search worthless. People searching for a kitchen, will expect a shop that sells kitchens, not a shop that happens to sell one kitchen. Relevance is what search is about. Quality is so subjective that it can never be indexed, SL is not Utopia.

Search all shows Phil and me first when looking for low prim furniture. Very relevant as we both sell that. The other 8 on the first page in fact sell less low prim stuff as we do, so the results seem right and relevant. Random results would get people on page 1 that have a few low prim items. Now I don't know about you, but if I search for something, I rather find the most relevant places instead of completely random ones...

This discussion of Picks influencing Search results has evolved much the same way that the discussion of Traffic did.

The problem is neither with Picks or Traffic themselves. The problem is the philosophy that Linden Lab uses to create its Search engine.

The gaming that so many hate is only a successful strategy because the gamer can take advantage of the fact that the gamer understands the Search engine far better than the non-gamer, and the searcher is not able to effectively order search results to filter out results the searcher does not want.

The Linden Lab approach to creating a Search engine enables gaming by making the workings of the Search engine mysterious (except to the gamer, who spends an inordinate amount of time reverse-engineering the Search engine), and preventing searchers from filtering results effectively.

A good Search engine should help searchers obtain search results relevant to them, and help writers of listings to create listings that will produce relevant search results for searchers. To acheive that, the Search engine which was transparent in its operation, and allowed searchers more choice over the criteria that affect their Search results.

If the Search engine were transparent instead of mysterious, merchants who don't have time to devote to learning how to reverse-engineer, and game, the Search engine would be on equal footing with everyone else when placing an listing. If the Search engine were transparent instead of mysterious, searchers could figure out how to fashion searches to provide searches relevant to them. And with more Search options, searchers could tailor search results to be relevant.

Let the searcher decide whether to include Traffic or Picks links or whatever in ordering Search results, and a lot of the gaming goes away.

Otherwise, this discussion will continue to appear again and again with every new Search engine that implements a mysterious formula to prevent "gaming."

Basically LL assumes that people will be honest.

Instead they should assume people will cheat.

I believe that the critical mistake is that Linden Lab assumes that their technicians are much smarter than the residents.

Linden Lab is so smart that they can develop a mysterious Search engine that another resident cannot reverse engineer, given a bit of time.

Linden Lab is so smart that they can decide what factors (i.e. Picks, Search) I care about when it comes to ordering relevant Search results for myself.

Linden Lab should stop trying to outsmart residents, and instead make tools that smart residents can use.

OUCH! Nice observation.



Makes sense.

Neither of you would be there if it wasn't for search manipulation. You're not there because the results are "relevant", you just cheated your way their by manipulating the search variables that determine "relevancy".

If you have two websites on the same topic, you need some way to rank them. If you wanted to rank them by "popularity" based on a metric then site A ranks first because its score is 180 because it's great while site B's is 5 because it's not compelling enough. If B starts manipulating to artifically raise its score to 250 then nothing truly changed: B is still uncompelling and A still has the best content, yet B ranks before A. There is no way you can invoke "relevancy" on manipulations because the only reason site B is suddenly "relevant" is because it had to resort to cheating. And eventually the popularity will start to shift because whoever is first gets traffic just for being first, regardless how good result 2 is.

Which is no different than the objection you yourself made: you don't belong where your rank now and you can't make any claims that you do because you had to cheat your way there. Tampering reduces the usefulness of search because people have to visit throughdozen other unremarkable stores to find something decent.