Traffic Gaming

[Dominick Benazzi]

Does anyone know if LL is no longing looking at those who violate the traffic gaming rules? I went to a store yesterday that had a traffic listing of over 70,000. When I arrived there had to be at least 50 bots on the land, but no one in the store.

I went to another place selling a similar product - one that I know won't bring in 10's of thousand's in traffic. No on in store, yet over 41000 in traffic. I look on map and there's a bunch of bots up in the sky.

Went to 3rd vendor. Same thing. over 20,000 in traffic, but no one in store and bots in sky.

Have the rules changed, or has LL just given up?

Do people use web search rather than places now?

[Freya Mokusei]

I don't know official policy - how could I, I am a user. But yeah, everyone should be using web search by now.

Traffic gaming is pretty obvious (as you saw), and using it as a tactic is pretty seedy. The userbase is pretty good at detecting and avoiding places like this, and I'm not certain that traffic makes any significant impact on Search placement.

You can probably AR their behaviour under some category or other if you feel the need.

[Marigold Devin]

The rules haven't changed, but you should submit an abuse report when you see this happening, because Linden Lab aren't all-seeing.

[Tamara Artis]

---

Do people use web search rather than places now?

---

90% of the things I buy are thrown at me, there are Facebook ads, Flickr ads, Pinterest boards,  blog posts, G+ posts that come to my email, in-world group notices, tons of subscribers and random notecards so you could say I am a bit lazy when it comes to search. 

And there is this other thing... I don't do any advertising for my business, traffic is usually around 100-200 and on the rare occasions when I am in-world on my parcel I can see that visitor comes in, buys the things they like and teleports out. And with the trafic numbers so small I have nice sales.

High traffic numbers are for clubs/live venues and shopping events, for normal shops it can only mean that the owner has outdated thinking and believes traffic still matters lol, or that the shop is laggy as hell so you have to take a nap while waiting for everything to rezz.

[Pamela Galli]

I have dismal traffic numbers, but most of the time there are shoppers in the store, and my business does very well. Not only is traffic gamers' thinking outdated, but, I would say, so is that of people who search by traffic numbers.

[Max Nova]

LMAO! Nope, they never ever did not even a little! In fact you can see this goes back to 2009:

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Land-and-Sea-General/Further-Clarification-on-Bots-and-Camping/ba-p/643765/page/20

If you really want to see people running alts, bots and camping stop by your nearest Star Trek sim but be careful because they have guards that will eject and ban you if you try to see them. 

[Darkness Anubis]

Please realize I haven't run a shop in like 6-8 years in SL. Is traffic even still a thing? I thought I remembered LL planning to do away with it.