How Fake Web Traffic Works (from Bloomberg Business)

Anytime data is involved, people will game the system.  I remember at least two different editors from "big 5" publishing houses saying that they consider how many Twitter followers someone when deciding whether they will publish them.  One even mentioned a threshold, saying they look for 10k followers minimum.  

I thought that was the silliest criteria for determining whether an author would get published that I ever heard.  They reasoned that having 10K followers means you have a platform.  I always thought this was just another hoop they made Black authors jump through.  In fact, I wrote an article saying writers don't need Twitter, based on the simple premise that the highest paid authors were not on the platform, and those that were, were not very active--like most people on Twitter. 

At the time, I knew authors who were buying followers.  

The idea that companies are buying traffic is bad enough, but the fact they are so easily getting away with it is worse.  Worse because you can determine when it is happening. At the end of the day robot traffic never buys anything.

Facebook was shown to be delivering fake likes for its advertisers.  Again, fake likes never convert into customers, so abysmal conversion rates are a dead giveaway.  Or would be if advertisers did not assume that they were doing something wrong and double down on their advertising spend.

I have never done anything to artificially hype AALBC.com's traffic.  Maybe that is my problem--just kidding, sort of...