404trafficbank

Just found this site ( http://404trafficbank.com/ ) and I am thinking of joining.

It is a traffic exchange program that uses the 404 traffic.

This means that when a page is not found in your site, the user will be redirected to another site, and you'll get credit for it.

What do you think of this service? Should I join it?

Is there anyone here that uses it?

I am not sure if those programs really work.

I have my own 404 script in my sites that redirects to the search page. For instanse if you visit http://www.thetopsites.net/online , it will redirect you to the search page using the word online as a query string. This way I keep the visitor to my site.

On the other hand if you have a small content site maybe this could help, but on any way I don't think that letting the visitor leave your site can help you.

I will agree with Nikolas. Keeping the visitor in your site is allways better.

That what I would say too! Why direct traffic away from your site?!

Sending away user may not be what you want to do. Although you can think about it two ways. The first way you look at it as sending away a user, loosing out on the extra hits,page views etc.

The second way you can look at it as gaining a hit/pageview. How? Well if i'm surfing a site and I click on a link that 404's aka sends me away to a new site, I'm most likely to go back to the first site I was at to finish looking around it. Their was a reason why I was their after all. Also with that credit you will receive a new visitor incomming from another site in the network. They may stay they may go back you never know. The reason that the person is 404ing could be that they are done looking around your site, and were poking around for more content. So that redirect to a new site won't hurt to much.

The other neat feature about 404trafficbank.com is that you can use 404 traffic from one of your popular sites to feed feeder traffic into a new site you just recently launched. Handy little thing I use myself.

It's all personal preference on what you would like to do with it. I just created another option for people. If you try it out I'm positive that you'll get a gain in traffic that will browse around.

;D

I definitly wouldn't recommend it. Think about it, if someone is directed to your site because of a 404 error, what are the odds they will stay? Very, very, slim.

So then what you say supports my comments. In the fact that if I surfed to a site and 404'd which sent me to a different site. I would go back to the first site because I had went there for a reason and would go back to it rather then stay @  the freshly loaded site.

So then you aren't sending surfers away from your site and you get a credit which equals a new hit and it costed you nothing, not even a surfer. No down side here really.

Isn't the whole reason of any website to get people to stay and use your site? Why would you want traffic that is not interested in your site and cause extra unnecessary traffic.

I still think that it isn't the greatest idea to steer your traffic away from your site either. I would just get annoyed each time that happened to me!

First of all I am happy that we talk about this service with the owner of it :)

Now about such a service, I would recommend it only to someone that don't have the abillity to take advantage of his/her own 404 traffic.

A great technique for using your 404 traffic is redirecting to your search page. An example is this site and the topsites directory.

On the other hand I can't see a reason to use such a service, because if you have so much 404 pages in your site, it means that you should code it better.....

Well annoyed yes maybe, but really WHY are you getting a 404, It's either because the webmaster has neglected his website and has bad links OR you/the surfer is poking around for files that don't exist. So really it's not THAT bad of an idea.

Although like you said about pointing them away, sure just edit your htaccess files to load the mainpage again or something. That works well too ;)

Ahh yes like I just said in my last reply, it's the webmasters fault for poor coding if tons of 404's are comming in, Or the surfer is poking around for more. This service is meant for people that don't know too much about utilizing their error traffic. I use it on a network of site I run and the traffic is actually productive.

Also to be honest this when I built this service, I had adult websites in mind. As adult website surfers ALWAYS poke around for more files. So why not build up some credits to feed new sites with. As most adult webmasters own and build multiple sites regularly. When I was building this too, I of course am going to cater to mainstream as well, But knew that they would be more picky about it. working very well for the adult traffic.

Which is where my idea for the feature to feed new sites came from. That actually was one of the main and only features I wanted in the begining. I had been building new sites and wondering how I could push some traffic to them. Then i'm like hmm I could just redirect my 404's from my other sites. That sent in a little bit by little bit. So I built a system to keep credits, then when you have enough you can just transfer some credits to a new site and let it get fed by multiple sites in the network. Rather then by one or two of your own. 

I'd also just like to ask you all a question.

Why do you make link trades with related sites then? If they click that link and find the other site better, that's not keeping the surfer on your site. The only benifit that you get is maybe some better SE rankings, which in turn brings in traffic, plus more traffic from the link placed on their site, considering they even have a steady flow of it. With a link trade as well you are promoting the other site right out in the open for them to see and potentially click and never return to your site.

At least when you send them away using the 404TB it was because of an error, and they most likely will come back to your site, and check out the one that loaded for them if they find it of interest, you also gain alot of traffic from 404TB.

Just makes me wonder how everyone says it's in your best interest to keep the surfer but they have outbound links all over there sites.

Just curious  :)

You have a point there, but I have to remind you that link trading is a different thing, because it is very related with your search engine rankings.

I agree! Link trades are usually related and I am usually selective of the sites I link to.