#The Fake Shop Problem

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

random venture
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Since the main YouTube channel is finally advertising the plush (a bit late lol) I was reminded of a problem that annoyed me when I bought my own plush.
It's the prevalence of fake Neuro shops. (Hopefully this thread isn't a repeat. There was one just a few hours ago but that was more about a specific one rather than the whole problem and what to do about it, so I felt it was all right to make this.)

First take a look at the images I attached, no idea where they will show up because I'm doing this on my phone. I'm searching "vedal plush" (which is a likely search term) in two different search engines duckduckgo (what I use) and google (for what most people use)

The Neuro shop isn't even top 2 on duckduckgo and it doesn't even show up on Google first page. I looked.
Given statistics and how easily people trust the first result there is bound to be at least one poor fool that got tricked, and that irks me to no end.

Tbh this is really weird. I have ordered indie community plushies before and I haven't encountered this many fake stores (I counted at least 5), and none have ever been the first result.

And something exacerbating the issue that I noticed is that on the community post on the YT channel that advertises this doesn't link to the shop. The channel has no links there on the info page, and unless someone looks at the latest short, they won't find it. Leaving them ripe for deception. So probably whoever manages the channel should edit that with a link.

So the question and point of the post is... What the hell should we do about it as a community? Like sure Mr. Ved-Al is the only one that has the legal authority to do something (and given how he probably doesn't like losing money/people getting scammed, I'm assuming he looked into it at least), but I feel like as a community we can do some mass action too, like reporting for scam or misleading advertising. Just something, because it makes me mad that these people are probably getting money.

shopduck.png Shop.png Neuro.png
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Oh and if its just my own browser algorithms that are screwed up, lemme know. I would rest easier if this issue was not prevalent.

frosty garnet
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The SEO for the real site might be fucked then because it makes no sense for it to be on the second page of google. You're not wrong about the link not being easy to find on youtube and twitch as well which is also a bit annoying and can only be fixed by someone managing the channels like Vedal and J0ker

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As for what the community could do, There probably isn't much other than raising awareness and maybe reporting the fake websites

indigo scaffold
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As a community, the viable move would be to spread awareness.
Regarding the legal side, as you've said, only Vedal can do something on that side.

frosty garnet
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Maybe Vedal or the merch company (whichever one manages the website) can improve the user stats like interaction and SEO of the website then that would help against the site being ranked low on search engines but that's just my guess for why it is not being prioritised by google

random venture
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Weirdly enough, now that I checked, I wasn't able to find the real link on the second page either, but the first result for images comes from the correct website. IDK why. Thankfully most secondary links that show up like reddit posts, twitter and youtube, link to the real one. But it's still sad that the first result is fake.
And what makes me even madder is that they are full of stolen art too, but that is to be expected I guess.

random venture
rare hazel
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Thanks for spreading awareness. I was the one with the post earlier, and if i hadn't bookmarked the real website it would have been a real pain in the a** to finde the official one.

rare hazel
visual vine
random venture
vocal pilot
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I'll do a check on the site at some point and see how good the SEO is but yeah if the real one is on the second page that could prove to be a bit of a problem