Beware of Traffic Generating Schemes

I just analyzed a traffic generating site for a client and want to relay this information for others so they won't be taken in by these kinds of ploys. I'm not linking to the site or mentioning the name but you may be able to recognize it by the details below.

This particular traffic generating scheme encourages you to post links to other sites and other sites will be asked to link to your site. They put code in the links so you can track your traffic and you pay according to how much traffic you can afford. The problem is YOU must tell them who you want to link to and also who you would like to link to your site too, and you also have to provide contact emails for each site, i.e., you're doing all the work to find those links and yet you're paying them for this "service". All they do is send out (automated) emails to all those people and try and get them to sign up for their service.

They don't have any other info on their website, no testimonies, no proof that their service has helped others, no list of subscribers, etc. Also their site has PR 0 (Page Rank Zero) and they aren't even indexed in Google.

If this is such a great service why are they doing so poorly? Surely they would use their own techniques to boost their own site. It's a new site that went up in Feb of this year but even 4 months is more than enough for their whole site to get indexed. They may have already been banned from Google because their plan is designed to manipulate Google.

The problem with these kinds of services is that it's likely that related sites will be linking to each other and the links to other sites will have extra code in the link so they/you can track the traffic. This produces a pattern that Google can identify as a network which can incur a penalty in Google.

Also exchanging links with other sites is known as reciprocal linking and they cancel each other out as far as their ranking benefit is concerned. They may bring traffic but if Google penalizes this particular bunch of links for being involved in a "network" then none of them will rank high enough to gain any visitors/traffic.

Google is bound and determined to penalize sites that are manipulating their engine so I wouldn't get involved in such a scheme.


Lori Eldridge
Lori's Web Design
Copyright 6-24-08
All Rights Reserved