Spotting Bad Traffic Exchanges Part 6: Where are the Hits?

First comes the traffic, then comes the results. Without traffic, you can’t get results. So this week I will focus on the quantity of traffic,  next week I will focus on the quality of traffic.

How To Track Your Traffic

Before you can do this, you’ll need to be able to properly track your traffic. Both TEtoolbox and HitsConnect will be able to track for you. Once you have your tracking URLs or rotator placed in all the exchanges, then you can continue on with asking, Where are the Hits?

Traffic Consistency

The first thing to notice is traffic consistency. By this I mean the actual stats. Does the tracker and the exchange in question have the same number of hits displayed? If you assign 1000 hits, did you receive them? With the nature of the internet in mind, realize you won’t always receive 100%. Packets get lost all the time, so it’s possible a few here and there don’t make it to you.

But if you keep track and notice a considerable difference than the industry average (or even the average for that exchange), it’s very possible cheaters are present. This happened with TS25 and can happen with any exchange. The best thing to do here is contact the owner and let them know you see a difference – they might not realize there is cheating going on. And if it doesn’t get back to the industry average or the owner doesn’t respond, big red flag.

Traffic Volume

The next thing to notice is the volume of traffic. The number of hits per URL you are receiving. Tony Tezak recommends deleting any exchange that can’t deliver 100 hits in a week. I agree with him on this one. It comes back to the whole point of an exchange, to exchange traffic. If you can surf 100 pages, you should be able to get 100 hits back.

A quick note is to remember that some exchanges 1 credit is not 1 hit. So if you assign 100 credits on those exchanges, expecting 100 hits in a week..  it won’t happen. Also, many exchanges allow you to set a max views per day. Obviously if you select less than 15 you won’t get 100 hits in a week.

Traffic Exchange List

One great way to check the health of an exchange is by viewing the stats on Traffic Exchange List. Click to view the page on StartXchange. You can see week and month graphs, and in the paragraph it’ll tell you how many hits were tracked on the last 6 week report.

Why is this important? Well because these stats are driven by thousands of members and millions of hits. It’s not just a one man show or a clicking team, it’s a pretty big chunk of the industry using one of the services that records the data. So if industry wide it can’t deliver 100 hits to thousands of members in 6 weeks, well it’s a dead exchange. Want to see a list? Just click on lists and sort by traffic. Ouch.

Of course before nixing an exchange you currently use, check and see when it was added to the report. Not every exchange is on there yet, and they usually aren’t added right when they launch. I’ll post a comment on the page saying “hey I added it today” so you’ll see the date it was added.

To the Owners With Little Volume

I’m a bit tired as I write this, so straight to the point: Limit the number of URLs each member can add, and limit the number of hits each URL can receive. If you are small or way desperate it’s better to limit to one URL to get traffic flowing [even for upgraded] than to not limit and watch the exchange cripple itself. Lower your ratios, and lower your bonuses. Do some contests and consider buying back traffic you can’t deliver from members with large amounts.