Scour is a Scam and Why You Should Avoid It

Here's the story of an avid searcher, who decided to try Scour but ended up getting scorned by what now looks to be a complete scam. The bottom-line for those not wishing to read the finer details of my story: Scour is indeed a Scam, one that has surprisingly attracted a lot of big buzz from Tech Blogs and Reviews.

Users are goated on to get points, and legitimate users will find that they are encouraged, but upon attempting to cash-out are subsequently banned for one of many loose reasons that can range from anything from having too many referrals, to making too many searches, or even possibly contacting them about a discovered bug.

Scour is a search engine that aggregates search results from Yahoo, MSN's Live and Google. By using AJAX, it is able to put the results together ordering them according to the placement shown on each of the search engines. The placement for a particular keyword on any of the search engines is shown to the right side of each result to give the impression of credibility and relevant results.

Now I first heard about Scour through TechCrunch, I signed up and began using it. I wasn't too pleased with the interface but the idea of getting paid for searches that you would already otherwise make sounded good. The idea wasn't as far fetched as it sounds, Yahoo already offers a similar service but is somewhat limited to those residing in the US currently (they have plans to expand their offer across North America, and Europe quite soon).

So I signed up for Scour, and began using it diligently as a replacement for Google. Scour allows you to earn a hefty amount of points from referring other users to use it, and in getting them to install toolbar and commenting on search results. It all seemed great, but what I should have realized is that the entire thing smelled a little too much like a pyramid scheme - fortunately a free one, that only requires an investment of your time (but then again your personal time is worth a lot more). Scour makes the entire point collecting quest into a competition by having a leaderboard and profiles to let you check out other users point collections, and ranking users according to their legitimacy of use and point collection. Basically the more points a person has earned the higher they are on the board (we're talking points earned through searches, it doesn't show the amount others have earned through referrals). So the longer a person appears on the leaderboard, the more likely they are legitimate user.

Over the course a few weeks I accrued the minimum amount of points necessary to cash out (which is currently set at 6,500 points). I want to emphasize that while doing this, I constantly had a few referrals who were also using it, and had Scour legitimately. I can't stress that enough, because over my time in using Scour I had noticed several users who had raced up the leaderboard and were quickly removed - many of these were clear-cut cases of spamming and abuse - which again I emphasize were understandablly removed. The stickler comes in that you can really identify spam and abuse on Scour by looking at the comments left by searchers. Since you earn the most amount of points with comments, it makes sense to leave as many comments as possible to rank up in points - and you'll find that all the scammers and almost 3/4ths of the Scour comment system are filled with these type of 2 word or copy + pasted comments.

Avoiding this I made the effort to do earnest searches, that means only leaving actual real comments typed by myself - both relevant and informational. I'm an avid and huge search freak, so I make a lot of searches in the day - using Firefox + Scour set as the default search engine made this all the more easier to rank up in points. From about the 4th day that I started using Scour, I was listed on the leaderboard (initially towards the far bottom, but as more users were removed and I began to collect points both through referrals and through searches/votes/comments I raised to the top). After about 2 weeks I had earned the minimum cashout and upon clicking the cash out button on the following Saturday - was surprised to see that the method to cash out was to send a simple e-mail to an address (support@scour.com).

With an entire system set up to do searches, it would have been so easy for them to have an automated system where clicking on cashout would alert them to a user requesting payment. But alas they wanted users to contact them via e-mail, this was the first clue that really made me suspect that Scour made not be on the level.

Still I contacted them on Saturday morning but recieved no reply by the end of the day, I shrugged it off as it was a weekend and thinking I'd recieve a reply on a workday. Monday came around and still I hadn't got any communication from them, I sent them another polite letter prodding them for a reply. I checked the blog and noticed they had posted a few days before about how they has resolved their e-mail server problem. Later in the day, I got back a message:

Congratulations! You are one of the first members to cashout on Scour.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you but we have had some email server issues due to the great traffic we have received.

We are currently working on a global gift card solution as our current
in hand gift cards only work in the US. We will have a solution shortly.

If you are outside of the US please send your Paypal email address and we will send your payment via Paypal.

Additionally, we would also love to hear any feedback you may have on
our service and are working to correct the slashes search issue - thank-you for sending that in.

Cheers and Search Socially,
Scour Team.

At this point I'm just ecstatic that they actually replied, their response about the e-mail server problems seemed a little shady considering that they alleged the problem had been fixed, but having experience with hosting, I know that problems that arise once tend to arise again (and man should that be Scour's motto).

I sent back a reply giving my paypal information, and giving them some feedback on another bug I had noticed. Take note that they explicitly state that they are resolving the backslash problem - a problem that goes unfixed today (personal programming experience shows me that this problem is easily rectified - a simple $search=urlencode($search); will fix that problem).

Still I my hope in Scour's legitimacy remained in hopes that they would send a timely response this time around. I slowed my usage, waiting to see whether they would pay or not - whether this was all a scam, or whether it would be legitimate (in which case I would continue using Scour in full replacement of Google). I got a message at one point telling me that one of the comments I made had been deleted for 'Being too long, slowing down load time.' The comment was about 2-3 sentences, nothing I'd consider long - compared to the other comments which I find are generally very small and usually just spam to collect points for commenting. This was my second clue that Scour seemlingly prefers shorter comments, even if they are spam - other comments appearing for that same site were clearly spam including the following comments(verbatim) "lol good ......", "write comment..","Enter your comment...". All of the comments are trailed with ... to meet the minimum requirement for comment length - all of those comments were approved and accepted, but my comment that actually discussed the relevancy of the site was removed. Trés pecuilar.

I waited and waited, and some 2 days later I recieve this message (notice how in the previous message they had verified my account and were ready to pay me, such a deep departure from what I was about to recieve - which was the third clue they wouldn't pay ):

Hi,nnCongrats!

After careful deliberation, you have been unbanned from the Scour network.
Welcome back!

The Scour Team.

Please note that the spelling mistake (nnCongrats) was on Scour's end, and not a typo on my end. This should be the fourth clue that Scour seems to lack professionalism - there are several such errors throughout the site that indicate that Scour does not proof-read it's own work. Aside from the spelling mistak,e there are a few things to note:

1. The previous e-mail to me indicated that I was going to be paid, and had commended me on my search usage and in being amongst (not the first, but one of the first) to reach the cashout and be verified by Scour.
2. Having not recieved any prior messages from Scour, this indicates that I have been unbanned. Why did I not get a message stating I was banned (they do send messages to those who have been banned - according to their own blog as well as by several users who have complained on both their blog and on TechCrunch).
3. If I was banned somewhere between the time (3 days) that they requested my payment details and the time of the unbanning notice, why was I still accruing points from both referrals and searches/comments/votes? Why would I continue to be ranked amongst the top 2 on the leaderboard?
   
4. If they had quietly banned me, why did they decide to unban me?
5. Lastly, why are they congratulating me (a suspected abuser of their service) for being unbanned?

Well I decided to fire off a letter to them asking why I still hadn't recieved payment, and why they had unbanned me when I had never been formally banned to begin with? I say formally because I don't know how hell a user would know, except for the e-mails they send out. Here's what I sent them:

My Message:
Hi,
I just got the following message. [edited out for space]
I was unbanned, when was I never banned to begin with? I don't get it, I've been using Scour legitimately - I even made the cashout and applied to get paid, I've sent a few e-mails and have been waiting 2+ days to find out when I'm going to get payment (since I live outside the US).

Now as of today, I get this message saying I've been unbanned - thus implying that at some point between I had been banned. I never received any message stating I was banned, and if it would be quite odd seeing as how I've legitimately used Scour and even managed to recommend it to friends and peers acquiring what I believe to be a large network of users for Scour. If Scour can not accomodate my searches I will happily use an alternative search engine and stop recommending Scour. I hope this was in error, because I think right now Scour in it's infancy is having problems, which is obviously understandable, but the lack of transparency and inability to communicate problems with Scour makes it difficult to understand your actions. I understand you're probably have a difficult time weeding through the abusers and actual users, and in time I'm sure that you'll find a balance in measuring out what is legitimate use and what is not - but a lack of dialogue with your userbase is what will ultimately determine whether Scour stays afloat or not, I recommend having better support - so far I've been waiting 6 days just to cashout.

I don't know how many people work at Scour, or whether it's a one-man show which it sort of feels like right now. In recommending this service to others, I've had a hard time as many people have constantly argued that such a system lacks a proper business plan, additionally its risky to recommend a service without having actually achieved success or payment with it - there are already complaints on the Scour blog amongst other places (TechCrunch comments) that Scour is banning users before they can cashout. While I'm uncertain and suspicious of the legitimacy of these users, I am now confused as to how Scour operates - considering that I was never told I was banned so does this mean I was to guess that I was banned, or was this [an] error, or will this be a persistent problem for searchers with high volume searches. I for one use search readily - the availablity of broadband connections and multiple tab browsing via Firefox and Opera makes it possible for more tech savvy users such as myself and most likely quite a few others, to open numerous searches to avoid wait times required in loading searches. I'm not sure if Scour was created with this in mind, and it may be a major oversite in the overall architecture of Scour.

Anyways, I await to hear Scour's response to my concerns, as I think you have a great idea here but execution of it is somewhat flawed. Additionally I don't know how you will moderate users, as leaving users to moderate over others has not panned out very well on Scour - with endless amount of spam comments being left and few of these actually being removed. I think the best way of flagging abuse in my experience from using Scour is to watching user comments. Users with a high volume of comments, and low quality of comments are clearly gaming the system. Compare the comment left by a user to the description of the site they are commenting on, if it contains 20% or more of the description it's SPAM and the user is very likely an abuser. I'm sure you have other ideas on combatting this. I'm still awaiting payment and would appreciate some dialogue as to what is happening?

I slowed my Scour usage even further, making very few searches as at this point. I became uncertain of Scour entirely. A day later I recieve this message, the message seems clearly to be in reply to my above comments, maybe in retaliation for my criticisms and concerns:

Hi ,Your Scour account has been banned due to excessive abuse of
user privileges.

If you feel this is in error, please email support@scour.com with your
username and why you feel your account should be reinstated for review.

Thank you,
The Scour team

Well I think that about shows their lack of communication. Instead of giving me a reply, they decided to just out right ban me - they cite excessive abuse of user privilleges. I had progressively used Scour less and less, and at the point that they ban me - it becomes apparent that they don't consider me an abuser, as they had clearly unbanned me from which point my suspicion lead me to use Scour less (meaning my search volume was less) - at this point, Scour falsely attempts to accuse me of outright abuse and ban me - this makes no sense at all since when I was actually profusely using Scour they were fine with it and even went to the extent of unbanning me for whatever reason they had felt to silently ban me. Now after using the site less, they felt the need to trump up charges to get rid of me without having to pay me or send me a reply.

Their reason for banning me is purposefully left obscure, with "excessive abuse of
user privileges" could mean just about anything:

• too many referrals signing up under your account
• too many searches being made
• too many long comments being made [see clue #2]
• too many search items being voted on (something they promote all searchers to do)
• too many search results being visited
• too many e-mails being sent to them
• too many profiles being viewed
• too many times inspecting your list of referrals
• too long spent looking at results
• too long spent searching for keywords
• too long spent comparing sites showing up in searches
• too many times searching for one keyword (even though only earn points for each search once)

and forth, there's so many possibilities for why you could be banned with little explanation given. I've sent an e-mail back to them, as per their request in the e-mail to explain my side - I've appealed to them but since I didn't get a reply from them even when they knew I was a legitimate user - I doubt I'll get one now that they think I'm an abuser of their service.

Fortunately for me, all I invested was time and a few referrals - nothing that will be missed. But the knowledge gained in that sites like Scour, which was previously known as After Vote and hence has been renamed and rebranded as Scour - Social Search, dilute the market of actual credible web startups and lend bad name and press to those that have reviewed them without actually having tried them or committed to them. So far no one has openly recieved payment - there are countless reports of people claiming to have also been banned - again I can't verify their use of Scour - they possibly could have been legitimate users - I don't know. All I can say is that my experience with Scour has been really sour, and without a decent explanation and payment for my searches - I can not recommend a service that does not have the common courtesy to communicate with visitors, nor respond to bug problems, nor deal with users in a timely manner.

Scour is just a drop in the ocean, of search engines. Only Scour fails at almost all turns, it's slow and unresponsive - sometimes not loading results at all - but seemingly showing ads still. The lack of a privacy policy has lead many including those at LifeHacker, to speculate the validity and credibility of Scour. I can't vouch for the company, nor can I attest to them stealing or abusing user information - however I can attest to Scour's inability to maintain professionalism, an inability to treat visitors decently and repsond to their communication in both a timely manner or with respect. They seem to hold all searchers with contempt holding a guilty until proven innocent type system that makes using Scour a chore.

Scour simply does not have the legs to hold itself up, as a search engine aggregate it can barely maintain itself - at times it's just plain dead or shows irrelvant results favoring MSN's faulty results over that of Google which tends to be more relevant. The Scour platform is sloppy and slow, using it is clunky and you're never guaranteed that it will actually work. The get-paid-to-search seems to be an afterthought that was added to intice users to use it - they lack a business plan besides a few intrusive ads scattered throughout the search results, many of which border between intrusive (appearing above search results) and irrelevant (buy [keyword] now, try searching for slaves or 'nothing' and you'll see how quickly irrelevant and untrustworthy those ads become).

I await a response from Scour, until I recieve one, Scour is a Scam