Website traffic services: what they do and what they do not

Website traffic services send visitors to a URL, usually with a choice of country and referrer — traffic that arrives looking as though it came from Google, Facebook, or a named site.

What it is genuinely useful for

• Testing that analytics, tracking and geo-targeting behave as expected.
• Making a new page look active while genuine acquisition ramps up.
• Load and behaviour testing under sustained visits.

What it will not do

It will not create sales, and it will not move you up search rankings on its own. Search engines rank on relevance and links, not on raw visit counts. Anyone claiming a traffic package will lift you up the results page is selling a story.

It also will not survive scrutiny in an ad account. Traffic bought this way and sent to a page monetised by an ad network is a fast route to a suspension.

Choosing sensibly

Pick the country you actually serve; mismatched geography is the most obvious tell in any analytics report. Choose a referrer that makes sense for your site. And keep the volume in proportion — a page that normally sees 40 visits a day receiving 20,000 is not a story anyone believes.