One of the things I'm considering to generate hits is the RefControl add-on for Firefox. I would set it to give the site that I want to be hit as the referer for all 3rd party links. I know this isn't going to generate a lot of hits but it will generate some in the course of leaving the link in various stats and logs throughout our daily operations and it takes no time or resources other than installing the add-on and filling in a couple of fields. Is there any reason not to do this? Thank you for your input
For the most part I think this would be a waste of time. You will likely get some links from stats pages, but how many of those pages are indexed in Google and how many have PR? Any traffic you get from this strategy would just be confused webmasters wondering why your website sent them traffic. They would be very unlikely to buy anything from you or click on any of your ads, especially once they realize that you were just scamming a link from their stats pages. Your time would be better spent building real links that will give you real traffic & real rankings boosts.
Thanks for the reply. Are you in Vancouver? You seem to be suggesting that hits alone have no effect on PR. Is this correct? Have a good weekend.
Yes I am in Vancouver. Are you too? PR only relates to your backlinks and the PR of those links. It has nothing to do with hits. The search engines do not know how many hits each website receives. Do not confuse PR with search engine rankings. PR does not translate directly into search engine rankings. The links that improve PR also help rankings though. A lower PR website can still outrank a high PR website if it shows that it is somehow more relevant.
Please don't do it. It generates hate towards your site, because you are faking your referrer and anyone wanting to analyze their stats will not be able to do it with 100% accuracy if people started doing that. Not to mention, any webmaster traffic you get will be useless to you so there is no benefit to you either.