I have decided to start exploring various traffic networks and to find out how the traffic they send to web hosting providers affects their websites’ Search Engine rankings. So I created accounts with a few traffic generator sites and begun browsing. How do traffic generators work?

In general there are two types of traffic systems (traffic exchange networks) – auto surfing and manual surfing. When a website owner signs up with any auto-traffic (auto surfing) system, all they have to do is to open a web browser that has a small frame which belongs to the traffic generator website. The system automatically opens different websites in this frame. Those websites belong to other members of the traffic exchange network. Every member opens their web browser and loads other members’ websites. The system loads different website in different time intervals – usually 15 – 30 seconds. This way all site owners, members of a such an auto-traffic network exchange visits.

The manual surfing systems work the same way, except one small difference – their members have to manually click on a button or link to load next page, which belongs to another member of the network.

Which web hosting providers participate?

I found that Bluehost, Webhostingpad and Justhost were members of at least 2 of the 3 traffic exchange networks I joined. Bluehost even was breaking the rules in one of the traffic generator systems. I can only offer a one possible version of what they did that. The result was that when the system loaded Bluhost’s website it broke and wasn’t able to continue reloading other member’s websites. Then any of the auto-surfing system’s member got to Bluehost’s website saw a pop-up window that offered them 2 opportunities – to stay or to go. No matter which one a member chose they stayed on Bluehost’s website. As a result of this effort Bluehost gets thousand of daily visitors who not just load their home page, but also land there instead of continue browsing other websites. Once landed on the company’s website a large number of them stay on the web host’s pages for quite some time.

Do web hosts benefit from traffic exchange?

The more visitors any website receives, the higher rank it gets in Alexa, Google Trends and all other traffic meter systems that determine how important is any website. Of course the more visitors a website receives the more important it becomes. Two of the first 10 websites that appear in the first search engine result page in Google on search term “web hosting” participate to a number of traffic exchange networks. What do you think, whether their participation in those traffic exchange networks increased their Search engine ranking?

I think they do. Although the websites visitors that come from any kind of traffic exchange networks can not be defined as targeted traffic they still help any web site to increase its visibility and its overall importance.