What's the use of of Traffic Exchange Sites?

[Auror]

If you look around the web, you would see that there are a number of sites that offer traffic exchanges. These programs operate like this:

1. You click on a random site shown to you
2. You view the site for a few seconds
3. You earn credits
4. In return, your site gets clicked by others as well

Are these programs effective? Have you used traffic exchange sites before to market your website or blog?

[Rainman]

Traffic exchange sites are worthless to all but those who have enough money to outsource the boring and time-consuming obligation of having to visit different web-sites to get surfing credits. Since they're only good for brand exposure [since most of those visiting your site may actually have been paid to do so] then if all you want is traffic that might buy what you're selling, it's best to avoid TE sites.

[crimsonghost747]

Are they effective for what? That's the question. They will increase your page views dramatically (and from different sources, different countries etc. In some they even allow you to choose which countries you want visitors from) but 99% of those people will close down the window as soon as they can. Some also provide a automatic function which changes the page every 15 seconds or so, this obviously is great for the views but gives you even less in exposure.

[cpefley]

Personally, I think they are dishonest and don't provide results. People aren't paying attention to those ads, they just want to get through them so they get paid. There are better ways to gain organic traffic, like through social media. If your products/services are something that people want/need, then they will spread by word-of-mouth.

[fredkawig]

Most of these sites are scams. Those which offer money are good at first but eventually will turn out to be a scam. People are looking for ways to earn online and these types of sites are a classic example of those people. Most of these are spam which are closed immediately by some people unless the content that their looking for is only through these websites.

[SimplySidy]

The point considering is - who are the people who click to visit your pages. If there is someone who is on look out for something and lands up on your page, s/he will make use of your website. Otherwise, it is all trash and non result yielding as far as business from website is concerned.

The negative thing about using such traffic exchanges is that there is more visit from the same IP (just because normally these sites display your page on a frame of their website) and bounce rate which does not go well with Search Engines specially Google.

[LindaKay]

I would be hesitant to use those. Google can penalize you for it and remove you from the search engine rankings and take away your Adsense. They also don't bring good traffic, just regular traffic of any kind. People might not even speak your language or might not be interested in your products or services at all.

[myepicdemise]

Definitely ineffective. Everyone will obviously view the sites for the purpose of earning credits. Sometimes the fact that you even need to use such a service may give people the impression that your website is not attractive enough to obtain traffic on its own.

[Auror]

Most of these sites are scams. Those which offer money are good at first but eventually will turn out to be a scam. People are looking for ways to earn online and these types of sites are a classic example of those people. Most of these are spam which are closed immediately by some people unless the content that their looking for is only through these websites.

I wouldn't consider them as scams as they are not promising people loads of riches. Traffic exchange sites promise people views. They do not promise that your website will be better than the other websites not using traffic exchanges.

I've used traffic exchange sites before to try and promote my referral links. Guess what? I didn't get a single referral. Haha! But at least, I didn't spend any money.

[nowicki2013]

I wouldn't really use them either. The traffic that you get from them is pretty much pointless. Also, like someone else said, Google will probably penalize you for traffic like this. They're pretty picky so you don't want to get on their bad side. The only thing this would be good for would be CPA offers, but then again, I don't think you're supposed to use traffic exchange sites for them anyway.