Paying for Traffic: Some Issues
November 25, 2009
Paying for traffic takes a number of forms. For example, the for-fee backlink is a nifty method. A person can pay a webmaster to put a backlink on a site and point to another site. At the other end of the scale, a big company can pay another firm to withhold content from a vendor. If that content is a magnet, that money hurts one company and benefits the person paying for an “exclusive”. When I read “Microsoft Tries To Silence Revelation Of Bing Cashback Flaws; Leads To Revelation Of Other Problems,” my understanding of the pay-for-traffic methods gained some useful insights.
For me the most interesting comment in the article was:
…various retailers that offer “cashback” via Bing purchases are showing higher prices if you search via Bing. In fact, the price people can pay if they do certain searches on Bing is higher than if they’d gone direct.
If true, perhaps there will be more fancy dancing as companies try to find a way to generate traffic. If you are not indexed, you don’t exist. I wonder if money can change this basic fact of online life. What was the Beatles’ line: “Can’t buy my clicks?” Well, something like that.
Stephen Arnold, November 25, 2009
Oyez, oyez, Department of the Treasury, no one paid me to write this article about paying people to do stuff for them.
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