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Traffic Exchanges Are Another Type Of Spam

We've been exploring bogus redirection of reader traffic, for a few years.

Similar to dubious awards and web rings, we have "traffic exchanges". Traffic exchanges are similar to "affiliate marketing", where readers of one blog are randomly shuffled to another blog, then to another - all the while, lighting up ads on each blog.

The companies who pay for the ads, featured on the blogs in the traffic exchanges, want to pay for readers who are interested in the contents of the blogs.

Advertising dollars reward blog owners for hosting ads.

The ad companies target the blogs, based on content - and their advertising dollars reward the blog owners for hosting the ads. They do not want to pay for random hordes of readers, wandering from blog to blog, without even looking at the ads.

Google wants Blogger blogs that are capable of hosting ads - whether or not the blog owners actually choose to host ads. Google does not want Blogger to be a haven for spammers.

Righteous blog traffic comes from search engines - and from righteous content.

The owners of blogs who depend upon traffic exchanges to get traffic, do not understand that righteous Blogger blogs do not use dodgy "awards", traffic exchanges, or web rings - they use content, indexed by the search engines. The readers who follow the search engine indexed content are the ones who look at the ads, and buy the merchandise.

Search engine traffic is the only valid traffic exchange. Random traffic exchanges are another hall of mirrors - and represent fraudulent misuse of advertising dollars.

Work on your blog, and add content - not traffic exchanges.

Work on your blog - and add informative, interesting, and unique content. That's how you get indexed, that's how you get traffic - and that's how you justify the ad dollars.

And beware the phony "excellent Blog Award" badges.

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