GeekArm Organic Web Marketing Blog

Good vs. Bad Affiliate Traffic

Despite our rigorous authentication and acceptance processes for our Affiliate network, we periodically bust Affiliates who are sending bad traffic by various unethical tactics. Just the other day I wrote up some specifics on the Affiliate traffic fraud we find periodically. Well last week Scott was dealing with yet another scammer, and he gave us the same old song and dance when asked to disclose traffic driving methods. Apparently his "trade secrets" had been stolen before, so he wasn't about to explain his unorthodox traffic patterns, lack of any referring URLs, and not a single Affiliate link active on any of the sites configured within his account. So by failing to provide transparency, as per our terms of use for Affiliates, we said bye bye to him.

We know how to make an analysis of web traffic that makes it 99.9% probable that Affiliates are using CPV/PPV Networks to drive traffic, as in this case. We have the secret sauce, and the cheaters don't know what that is. And neither will anyone reading this article...

At any rate, during the vetting this individual didn't seem to understand what we meant by "bad traffic", so Scott spelled it out for him in an email. I thought it was worth posting here to help others understand what we believe to be Good vs. Bad traffic:

We would consider "good" traffic to be (but not limited to):

1. Sites that visitors come to naturally or through search results, and then click through affiliate links to merchant sites.
2. PPC bidding (not on trademarked terms and that follows our network level and merchant level terms and conditions) on search engines to drive traffic through affiliate links.
3. Opt-in email campaigns (not SPAM) that drive traffic through affiliate links.

We consider "bad" traffic to be anything not covered by the above, including (but not limited to):

1. The use of browser toolbar/add-ons that trigger content including affiliate links to users and as a result intercept the natural click stream of the user.
2. Trademark-term PPC bidding and/or any PPC bidding that violates our network level or merchant level terms and conditions.
3. Spamdexing, or any attempt to use black hat SEO methods to game the search engine results.