BOT places! List them here!

Yeah...

The problem with that is that most people, including me, agree with him. Using bots to pump up your traffic is dishonest. If the only thing you can counter that with is insults, you might be better just walking away.


I did read 'em. Chip, and others, say you're dishonest and a cheat. It seems like you've got nothing to say to dispute that.

Maybe that should tell you something?

Allow me to unveil my newest and deadliest creation yet, The Shop Browser Master Bot Ultimate Edition Mark IV.

*gasps from the crowd* yes ladies and gentlemen, with this bot you can send hordes of bots to *any* shop location and browse the products that you find there. Each bot will send you back information on items and their prices. Unfortunately the buy function is not available in this version, however due to the declaration that bots are harmless and you have entitlement to use them indiscriminately, feel free to use as you wish.

What's that I hear? You need to get full store coverage quicker?
Then send in more Bots, in fact you can send in as many as the sim will allow.
Sim owner keeps banning your Bots? No problem, the product includes automatic new av registration and relogin to prevent permanent banning by sim owner.

Buy your Shop Browser Master Bot today and receive a free addon to automatically apply for group memberships. No need to go hunting those freebie giveaways any more.

((This is all tongue in cheek but very doable, would shop owners who run Bots to cheat traffic be happy with shop browsers who cheating browsing too? ))

Cool, thanks for that

I admire both Chip and Phil, Phil was out of order abusing Chip in that way but Phil is head and shoulders above Chip in marketing strategies and as annoying as it is to some, marketing is the key to a successful business and no amount of whining about bending the rules will change that.

People need to get real here. Marketing strategies work and a few people on the forums turning their noses up at those strategies really doesn't cut the mustard.

I guess we differ on how we define marketing then.

Camp bots are not some clever marketing strategy, they're just "push this button and make your traffic numbers look better than they actually are."

They're just a way to lie about how popular your place is. I see nothing admirable about that.

It's called realism Sindy, the real world uses all sorts of inducements to get people to buy products. They guys who made pc's and software in their garages because it was cool didn't have a clue about selling them, that's the way it works.

Using the available tools without breaking the tos is taking advantage of marketing opportunities.

Well inducement would be camping pads that are anti-bot.

The use of bots solely for traffic numbers is a bit into false advertising on the popularity.

It may not be against the TOS, but to many it is of questionable ethics

Much like there is no law that says keywords need to be relevant to a website/parcel... but people get upset when they go somewhere that isn't relevant to what they were looking for.

It's fully within the TOS to use those keywords even if you have nothing related to them, but it's not very ethical.

But it's marketing to get more buyers into the lot...

It's called being an egotistical, arrogant, ass, who is just tooting his own horn, inflating his chest, acting like the big man in town. Full of bluster and should be full of shame too.
He's bluffing us---no way does he pull in, what did he say? $5000USD net? Naaaaa, not going to believe it for one second.

He's nothing but an overgrown bully

Kylie

Who looks? Seriously, for products who looks at traffic? I keep seeing people saying it falsely advertises the popularity of someone's store but traffic and popularity are more for people looking for other av's.



Business and questionable ethics have gone hand in hand for a long time.



People won't buy though, false keywords are a very poor marketing tactic.

Search defaults to traffic as the sort. so being at the top means you get more people coming, hence gaming the system (camping at least costs lindens to do)

For a long time a lot of things were normal, then they got changed.

So is false traffic, many see campers and shrug... but traffic bots mean they leave.

So have politics and questionable ethics, but someone who rigged the voting machine to count phony votes would still be guilty of fraud, and no one would be complimenting them on their shrewd campaigning.

The new search doesn't and has been with us for some time.

Chip it's nothing like rigging voting. Come up with an alternative, the systems in place are all being gamed, that's marketing tactics at work and that's always the way it works.

places still defaults to traffic, always has

Well then, he wouldn't mind if someone created bots to stand outside his property lines and wore sandwich boards that had anti-traffic bot slogans on them


Or his competition could simply use disposable alts and badmouth the products while there to boost their own traffic by sending out landmarks when asked for them (say going "oh I found better stuff at this store, want a landmark"

The later would be about as ethical as gaming the search systems.

Comes down to something really simple at the end of the day, if LL had meant traffic to be used this way then you would not have to have 20+ bots to achieve the same effect. There would be a simpler mechanism in place such as paying for traffic or allowing you to just make up any amount and enter it as traffic into the system.

What you seek is for Traffic to be some sort of objective measure of business qualilty, or some sort of Linden Lab endorsement system for businesses, or both.

Not only is Traffic poor at being either, it was never intended by Linden Lab to be either (unless there is some sort of official statement by Linden Lab that I have missed, but I have searched through Linden Lab sites and found nothing more than I've already linked to on this thread.

There is further no real analogy between Traffic- as either an objective measure or Linden Lab endorsement- with real life business. Our government in the U.S. is not in the business of endorsing products (it prohibits dangerous products, but endorses none). There are further no completely objective, numbers-only ways of determining product quality. The closest to something like that may be Consumer Reports, which may do rigorously scientific testing of products, but it's reports are still only as good as the tests that form the basis. Measuring product quality remains a subjective matter, left to the consumers.

My solution to the problem of Traffic has always been put it in the Second Life consumer's hands- allow the searcher to click an option as to whether to include or exclude Traffic in ranking the results. But no one is really interested in allowing consumer choice; merchants (and probably Linden Lab) are really interested in manipulating consumers.

People run traffic bots predicated on the idea that potential customers will choose the candidate that has the most votes (traffic), so they rig the system to count phony votes to win. I think it's a pretty good analogy, but let's go with your theory that it's just marketing...

According to West's Encyclopedia of American Law, which I quote only partly to be facetious, to establish that an advertisement is false, a plaintiff must prove five things: (1) a false statement of fact has been made about the advertiser's own or another person's goods, services, or commercial activity (yep); (2) the statement either deceives or has the potential to deceive a substantial portion of its targeted audience (uh huh); (3) the deception is also likely to affect the purchasing decisions of its audience (if it didn't what would be the point?); (4) the advertising involves goods or services in interstate commerce (check); and (5) the deception has either resulted in or is likely to result in injury to the plaintiff (whom we'll assume is a competitor who had their search ranking displaced).

The ethics aren't exactly gray unless your ethical yardstick is based on what can be gotten away with instead of what's honest and what isn't.

Sure they could but negative advertising in that way is far more likely to evoke a negative response against the people running it than Phil running bots. The vast majority of people don't give a flying fig about someone like Phil running bots. They get annoyed when club owners do it because people want to go to clubs to meet people, it's a horses for courses scenario.



The search system is gamed to hell, has been for ages and will continue to be gamed. Have you seen the state of parcel names and descriptions?

It's still advertising.

And you think it's alright to keep doing it simply because it's always been done that way, regardless of the ethics?

For a while many companies would have literal trade wars on the high seas with privateers engaging the competition... should that be brought back since ethics don't matter?

Absolutely, whilst it's within the terms of service. I'm still waiting for those crying "It's unethical" to come up with an alternative.

Sure as hell isn't going to be a solution based on everyone playing nicely.

He's advertising low prim furniture, there's nothing untrue about that fact, you're clutching at so many staws here. If he was advertising clothing, you'd be onto something.

It's why threads pop up like this:

Educate those out there about the way the systems are being gamed.

List those that are using the unethical means.

Let the consumers educated in the systems decide if they want to do buisness with those that use such methods.

Basically: Let an educated market decide if they want to go to a place where the owner admits to using unethical techniques to get their money.

After all if you are unethical in promotion, odds are you're going to be judged unethical in all aspects of business.

He is falsifying traffic statistics garnering a higher rating through the use of multiple bots, as well as other means of gaming the search systems.

Actually he is making the search system advertise him as the most visited low prim furniture maker and that is where the falsehood comes in.