Does google punish for purchasing traffic from services like TargetedVisitors.info? I've been thinking of trying this service out for one of my current projects, but don't want to permanently hurt a good domain. I've heard opinions on both sides, but does anyone have an experience w/ this?
Purchasing traffic is a total waste of time and money. Better look for other ways of getting visitors to your site, like advertising or trading links.
Agreed. I don't think purchasing traffic is worth it. I've done it once and learned my lesson, even though the price was small. Look into other avenues of advertising, so that you can find your target audience, instead of the pushed page/pop-ad that displays your website.
I'm involved in both advertising and link trading. I'm completely open to changing my mind on this, but if purchasing traffic isn't considered taboo then I wouldn't mind trying it out once. For years I've focused on SEO and building content. However, if I drive 10k visitors to my site w/ one of these services and only 1 person buys one of my products it will be worth it. I understand the traffic isn't quality and won't have a high conversion, but it sure is cheap (I guess that should be my red flag right there...too good to be true)...just my view.
Thanks for the response. I know most in the community think purchased traffic is horrible (my final view of this may fall into this category as well) b/c the majority of us are SEM minded. But, I'd like to hear exactly what bad experiences you had so I can weigh the information myself. Would you mind sharing?
I haven't heard of anyone that has purchased traffic and had some conversion... And most of those "people" are just ghosts, they aren't real visitors. Another thing you should be aware is that some traffic sites show yours as a popup or popunder... that would go against Adsense tos and could get you banned
When I first started my site I purchased a lot of traffic from It Pays to Learn. As I do not sell anything on my site, it's purely for fun, I was quite happy with the results as I found many visitors actually visited more than 1 page and some even linked to my site and added to favorites. IMHO, in my case, just starting out, it was well worth the money for me, but It's not for everyone.
Thanks fryman. This is the type of info I'm looking for. The project I'm working on at the moment isn't a content site. No ads. It's a shop.
Thanks for the response. Do you recall how many visitors visited multiple sites and didn't exit on the first page?
I highly doubt it punishes you, it is just a possible waste of money and doesnt bring targeted users.
I purchased 1,000 visitors from them on 4 or 5 occassions over the first month. They aren't the cheapest running about $.02/unique but I found it good traffic. I figure about 20% actually stayed longer on the site, visited extra pages, etc. than the required 20 seconds and about the same % bookmarked the site according to cpanel. There was an increase in clicks on AS, but nowhere near enough to cover the cost of the ads, but that wasn't the point.
As fryman said, on some of these traffic sites you get shown in a pop-up or pop-under which is against AS terms and you can get banned. You need to be carefull which company you deal with. If you want to try something out without spending any money try clickthru.com. You get credits for visiting other sites then use them to get visitors to yours. The company has been around since 1998 or so and as far as these types of sites, I'd say they are one of the better one.
i really don't think that google will punish you for purchasing traffic. btw, it is a waste of money to buy traffic...
I bought some traffic from them. Shortly after, I received a letter from Google about using programs that encourage clicking..I'm assuming that's what they were referring to, wasn't using anything else that could be classified that way.
I don't know who you're referring to but rather than take the word of anyone on this forum if you're considering buying traffic, take the few minutes and email AS about your intentions and the traffic program you intend to use. Just because it worked for someone does not mean it was within the rules, just might have not been picked up by AS. At least with a response directly from them you'll know for sure you're safe.
Im currently buying traffic from adbrite... Im making 98% of what it costs me back, and Im getting a LOT of bookmarks and a lot of people register to my site as well. Its well worth it for me.
I tried this - five times I think - targeted traffic for various websites. Google didn't complain, nor did it convert, lead to regular visitors or affilate sales. Just heavy server load. Some people may know how to use these kinds of services profitably but it must be mighty rare or the traffic providers would be very rich. Richard