BOT places! List them here!

Yes.

[added]
It's promoting the business, as distinct from a specific 'promotion', such as a half price day.

Okay then.

I see no debate here.

You are being honest with your deceptive tactics in an effort to gain an edge over your competitors. Some people are able to resort to willful acts without guilt of conscience, others are not.

Ethics and morals are subjective. They vary in their application according to many psychological. physiological and upbringing factors.

I am not saying that this is the case here.

It is just a fact of life.

/me puts on her devils advocate hat on.

Is it fair to leap-frog over your competitors in the search listings by placing a L$50,000 classified ad?

Is it fair to leap-frog over your competitors by using the name and description fields of your land to list keywords for the purpose of getting your site listed higher in search?

Is it fair to your competitors if you offer a better product for less L$?

For that matter, is it fair to be a well established "brand" in SL, when there may be more talented people who are not better known?

Thanks, Phil....could you go into detail on the minutes spent by the avatar, and how that counts....like if someone visits the store for 15 minutes....that adds an extra traffic count? I thought it was just one hit counted. And if the same person comes back again, 30 minutes later....that is another count? If I go to my store 3 different times today....is that counted as 3 hits?

I'm used to selling a unique item, where traffic doesn't matter...it sells right away, with a classified ad....but since opening the store...trying to figure out how this traffic thing works.

One very important difference Johnnie.

None of the above are meant to deceive or "deceptive" in nature.

Traffic bots hidden in a cramped box high above the sky, or underground, solely placed there with the intent to leap-frog you ahead of your competition in "search" are.

I don't consider what I do as deceptive, but I understand and accept that some people do.

I was in the search engine optimisation business for years, and nobody connected with that thinks of it being unfair, and yet it's function is to get websites and pages higher in the search ranking that they were, which naturally pushes the competitors down. All the web subscribes to it - search engines, every website, including every household company name, etc., and nobody thinks of it as being unfair, just because some do it and some don't. It's simply promoting the website (business). It's the normal way of doing business on the web, and it's a normal way of doing business in SL. The reason that it is objected to is because some SL people want SL to be different from the normal world. "ideal" is a word that's been used in this thread.

What is the correlation between traffic in websites and traffic bots in SL Phil?

Even though the wiki says different, and even though some Lindens will quote the wiki, traffic is simply avatar minutes. If someone is in your place for 15 minutes, it will add 15 to your traffic score. If they come back and spend another 30 minutes, it will add another 30 to your traffic score. The figues shown in the Places tab are the totals for previous 24 hours - from a set time to a set time.

Actually they are not. Mine are high in sky, and out of sight, so that they don't cause any lag for anyone in the sim. The intention of using them is not to deceive anyone. That's where some people get it wrong - understandably, but wrong.

Would you rephrase that?

Traffic in websites is measured differently by different people. It is site visitors, but some people prefer to use 'hits', which are quite different, some prefer to use unique visitors, and some prefer visits, which means that someone going back to the site counts again. Website traffic is nothing to do with search.

Have you ever had a half price day?

So why the SL search, Traffic Bot comparison?

hehe. No. It was the first thing that came to mind as a 'promotion'.

Were your around when cloaking was big? Many people thought that was unfair.

I wasn't comparing them. I was saying that the whole accepts search engine optimisation (pushing websites and pages up the rankings at the expense of competitors), and nobody considers it to be unfair.

Not exactly the same though, is it?

Again, not an accurate comparison thought, is it?

Of course not. I made the distinction between place promotion and a set promotion, and used that as an example of a set promotion. It was so that my answer to your question was quite clear. You sais something like "you consider it a promotion", and I said that I consider it promotion as distinct from "a promotion".

Yes it is. They are both promoting something in the search results. One promotes websites, and the other promotes places.

No matter how you put it, putting traffic bots high in the sky in an effort to leap-frog ahead of your competitors in search would never be considered a promotion.

Where is the correlation though?

What in website traffic would be equivalent to placing traffic bots high in the sky in an effort to leap-frog ahead of your competition?

Yes I was. Some people think of cloaking as the biggest spam method, but the engines see it as a grey area. There are very valid uses of cloaking, that the engines readily accept.

There are several meaning of the word "promotion", and I think you are mixing them up. I think everyone would agree that doing things to move a places ranking higher in the search results, is promoting the place in the search results, even if they disapprove of the way it's done.

Website traffic has nothing to do with search. What are you getting at? I didn't introduce website traffic into this - you did. I introduced promoting websites in search engines.

Umm in a way if you were not trying to deceive customers you'd have them wearing solid color skins and where they could be seen.

If you are feeling the need to hide them, then you are being a bit more deceptive than you try to let on.

Or do you have a sign stating you are using bots in order to boost avatar traffic amounts to push your place to the top of the list?

Are you informing visitors to your store that you are using bots?