A good piece of digging by Wildefire Walcott is summarized on Massively - it appears that avatars without payment info on file are not being included in the new Linden Lab search system.
What this means is that you can't create hordes of bots which include your business in their "picks" simply to add to your ranking in the in-world search system. Of course, you could create avatars and then add payment info on file by making a small purchase, but over a large number of avatars that would start to be an expensive.
I regard this as a good thing. The more holes in the system which allow people to game it, the harder it is to have a search system which actually works for consumers.
