I'm beginning to suspect a trend in being able to spot fake profiles, at least some of them. Here are the clues to look for

1) User name made up of 2 words joined together, both words being in a dictionary and capitalized (ie. no misspellings) in format XxxxxYyyyy for example FreeCandy (not a real one I just made it up)

2) Usually but not always one photo of a good looking woman. Some are more elaborate with multiple photos but location can't be established from their backgrounds.

3) Short generic profiles and "looking for"

4) They usually show up in the US afternoon hours (when Asia wakes up) and go late into the night.

5) They answer your opening chat very quickly and keep the convo going - unlike most SB's

6) They try to establish a "connection" and eventually will ask for an emergency donation such as eye surgery for grandma or something

And we've discussed them at length here.  But I wouldn't say there are any more than usual, at least not in my experience. I'll add to your list of red flags:
7. They ask to move to email very quickly, then invite you to a bogus sex party which requires you to join a phone verification service first.  Which requires you provide your credit card number.
8. They put a nearby city as their location, but the recent location field says China, Ecuador, etc

Agreed, they become like static noise.  You recognize that the profile fits a certain pattern that you associate with fakes and move on.  It can get discouraging at times as they may be clustered together as you go through a search.

Pre-COVID, we all thought we had a pretty good handle on SB profile cycles. It was fairly consistent that more new profiles appear when:  

 
1. College semesters start
2. College semesters end
3. Just before end-of-year holidays
4. Just before Spring Break, and
5. At a more micro-level, the 3rd or 4th week of the month, in anticipation of rent coming due.  

 
The correlation of new to fake profiles stayed generally the same, with increasing new profiles, came increasing fake (or not serious) profiles as well. With COVID putting the entire planet on lockdown for what's approaching 2 years, all those somewhat predictable patters were tossed out.  

 
The patterns in place today, if they even exist, are much harder to see.   You can speculate on many reasons for this: Scammers see an opportunity to take advantage of "lonely" guys, more women willing to try sugaring due to lost jobs, support, opportunities - which may mean a "lower quality" of POT SB's as the noob's find out they really are not ready to sugar, more pro or semi-pro sex workers trying sugaring - including some percentage of the ROB community, and more mainstream press on sugaring - especially on Seeking, etc. Ultimately we will probably never really know which of these or any other motivation has impacted the sugar bowl.

 
I do think that Papa Sweet (sweetman) called out a general decline in the number of active profiles in general at least 4 months before anyone else (or at least I) did.  In north Los Angeles County, my standard number of search results dropped from around 925 to under 600 between 2020 and today.  And I have a sense that the overall percentage of those have a decreased amount of "viable" POT's. I now have to work through about double the number of POT's who message me to get the same conversion to BCD than I did pre-C OVID.  All scammers? Not in my experience, discounting the flood of profiles and messages from South America (which some have noted may not all be scammers).  

But the OP points out a very new and important skill that we all need to develop in the current environment:  

 
I'll call it "The Sniff Test."    

 
MDraft has spelled out his Sniff Test criteria for profiles to skip. I think it's excellent.  I do something similar, though I've never articulated as well as he did. But there is a feeling I get, sort  of a 6th sense for pussy, when looking at a profile. If it doesn't "smell" like I'm likely to succeed, I move on. And that has meant I've passed on profiles with seemingly gorgeous women who are generally local to me.  If they message me, I usually do a one-message reply that weeds them out quickly. LA is a big, big place. It could take you over 90 minutes to drive from the South LA to North LA.  I've learned not to bother with POT's that are more then a 30-minute drive from me. So I ask these POT's if they ever spend time in my area. The reply tells me a lot. And if I don't like the reply I just tell them good luck and suggest they contact me if they are planning on coming my way.  

 
Life is good

 
The Cat

All very true.  And the decline in overall numbers is very real.  My search results used to number around 1630, now it's just 1230.  And I am also working through many more profiles, sending messages, etc, in order to find some real BCD SBs.  The mining environment has changed; you have to sift through much more dirt to find the gems.

Usually my second question to catch them out is: "What part of town are you  in?"  which is not foolproof but hard for a scammer overseas to reply to properly. The answer I just got from a new hottie today was "United States, Az"

Next...

good question, I'm gonna use that one!