Surfing Around the Traffic Exchanges

Whenever a traffic exchange has a contest and there is a monetary prize there will inevitably be cheats waiting to cash in and claim the main prize. I do not think that there is one exchange that is totally immune to cheating whilst surfing. A smart programmer can create a surf bot for any exchange if he or she wants to win the competition.

As a surfer, I have competed in surfing competitions and I have won some of the competitions, fair and square. On at least one occasion I just had to surf and surf to beat the competition, I would come on and the other person would be ahead, so I would do as many pages as possible to get and stay ahead of that person. This is the fair way of competing in a surf competition. However, some people are not content and they try to create bots so that they will end up as the surfing competition winner. In a lot of cases they do not claim their prize – and by not claiming the prize these cheats have spoiled the competition for everyone else.

However, this is the beginning of the story and not the end of the story and yes I do have quite a few opinions on the matter. Surfing cheats use up the credits of other surfers, and this is not fair to these other surfers. It is possible for a surfer to protect him or herself in an exchange where one can change the number of times that a url is seen each day. I use this form of protection in the exchanges where it is offered. However, if I have no control over the situation then my credits are used up as fast as I can earn them. I do not want to waste my hard earned credits on surfing cheats.

From the other side of the coin, there is the measures that should be taken by traffic exchange owners to catch the cheats. Having to click on multi icons such as in StartXchange is not a good enough protection. I doubt that one can even call that particular surf bar a reliable measure for cheat protection. Some have expressed concern about using the hover technology claiming that it is open to the cheating, especially where there is a single button, but again this is not necessarily true. It all depends upon the other cheat check measure that have been put in place.

A good example of an exchange that has cheat checks in place is Lords-of-Traffic. This exchange has been criticized by at least one other exchange owner because it uses both hover technology and a single button. What the critics fail to see is that there are plenty of other checks in place and the cheats are caught. For example, if a surfer has found more helmets than pages surfed, then that person is a cheat. What the person has tried is to constantly refresh the page. He or she is caught out by the other members of the exchange when the helmet count for the weekly helmet competition is way too high. Other examples are the links for bonus credits as well as text and banner impressions, plus the Halt Page. I am not the only surfer who can miss these links – it can happen at least once. All it takes is for the surfer to be tired and mistakes will happen. However, if the surfer has never clicked on the links then it is more than likely that he or she is using a bot. A daily log is being kept and checked by the exchange administration. Those who constantly fail to click on the links will end up being suspended.

The purpose of writing this is to encourage both surfers and exchange owners to have their say about this very important issue of cheating. Therefore I want to encourage a discussion of this very important subject so that both the surfers and the exchange owners can come up with a best practice to try and stop the cheats.

Despite the posturing and protests of the big boys in the traffic exchange industry, it seems that the hover technology is catching on fast, especially amongst the small exchange owners. Now I happen to think that this is a good thing, not a bad thing. There are many exchanges that are using the Walker script and it seems that hover technology is now being offered by Walker as a modification or upgrade.

For the first time yesterday I noticed that Buck King’s HitWars has been converted to the hover technology. Now I was a member of the exchange and was probably deleted because of inactivity. However, I joined again to take a look at what Buck was presenting. On the first day it was just the usual start button with the words, “hover your mouse here”, but today when I took a look, I noticed that Buck has a very nice new gunship helicopter icon in place. I must say that the new button looks great. I found to my delight that the exchange is very easy to surf as a result of this change. This is really helpful for my fingers.

Today, I discovered two more exchanges have converted to the hover technology. They are TipTopTraffic and Show’n'find owned and run by Thom Pearson. I have been surfing them for most of the day on and off. As a free member of Tip Top Traffic I see the coloured buttons, which is not unusual in the Walker script for free members. I find that it is very easy to hover over the correct button and it has been a real delight to surf the exchange today. At the other exchange I am a founder-pro member and there is just the one start button. It could not be easier to hover over the button.

There is one more exchange that is experimenting with the hover technology and it is one of my favourite exchanges. That exchange is GreyWolverine. I have been a member since the exchange began in November and I find that I get lots of sign up referrals through this particular exchange. I do hope that the Hubbards will go with the hover technology because I really enjoyed surfing 100 pages this morning.

The hover technology is the way of the future in traffic exchanges because it really takes off the pressure on the fingers from clicking the mouse when surfing. Anyone who has arthritic fingers or other hand, upper back and shoulder problems can appreciate the difference from using the hover or no-click technology. This is still manual surfing and the only difference is that you hover the mouse over the button rather than clicking.

There is evidence of resistance amongst some exchange owners. It is up to each owner whether or not he or she will embrace this particular technology. There will be surfers like myself who will continue to benefit as exchanges introduce the technology. If the big boys do not want to introduce it, and they do bellyache about the number of exchanges in existence, then they can be certain that members who are getting nothing from their exchanges (I get nothing from some of these particular exchanges) who will vote with their feet and they will find memberships being deleted in the future.  This new technology will help those small exchanges to thrive and grow.

From the start I want to say that I have a form of arthritis that affects my fingers. Sometimes using a mouse can cause a lot of problems for my hands. As a result I have fully embraced the idea of this hover technology. The technology itself is not new as some have claimed, rather it has been used in programs such as Object Dock and has been quite successful over a period of years. With object dock you can hover your mouse over an icon to start a new program.  Therefore when one new exchange owner gets her nose out of joint over not being the first to launch with this new technology for traffic exchanges it can be seen by a surfer such as myself as getting one’s nose out of joint. There is room for many more exchanges to provide the same option to the surfers, if it is wanted.

The first exchange that I used that incorporated the hover technology was NewWay2Surf. I was using it in the pre-launch stage. What did I think? Well at that early stage there were quite a few problems that needed to be fixed before launch. Also, it uses the rather old idea of having to determine which icon to hover over. I have used it on and off since the launch but have not surfed enough in that exchange to be able to give a complete write-up. In other words I am still rather cool about that particular exchange. This might change when I spend more time surfing there.

The first exchange that launched using the hover technology was Lords-Of-Traffic and I really do like this particular exchange. It is still growing and there is much of interest to make the exchange fun. The surf bar will be changing again in the near future, but at present it uses an arrow – hover over the arrow and away it goes onto the next page. There is a dynamic surf ratio, such that after surfing 100 pages the ratio starts to go up. This is a feature in a traffic exchange that I like. It is far better than an exchange that only offers “surf 30 pages and you go into a draw” because more often than not you can surf in such an exchange and never win that draw (that has been my experience to date with a particular exchange which makes me less than enthusiastic with regards to promotion). Lords-of-Traffic also has two letter hunt games. The new one has just started and the first to collect all of the letters is the winner of the extra credits. The helmet game is also new and will run over the period of a week. These games add incentive to surf the site.

Kenneth Krakstaad was the next to offer hover technology by converting Generalen to use that feature. He has the one button (a tank) and this is also very cool. Today we saw the launch of another Krakstaad exchange called Hover Traffic, and this has been launched in partnership with Alan Karltsen. It is very similar to the set up at Generalen. It also has a dynamic surf ratio and it is fast.

Now there are other TE owners who apparently have their noses out of joint or at least they are taking sides with Jennifer Herrald who is claiming to have invented hover technology. Whether she did or not does not matter at all to the users of these exchanges since there is room for all of them. Ultimately it is the users who will make the decision upon which exchange best suits their needs, and not the TE owners. Some owners have already declared “I would rather stay with clicking” and they can do that if that is what they want. However, a surfer with finger, neck and shoulder problems is less likely to continue to use their exchanges into the future.

I am not finished evaluating these exchanges. It would be unfair for me to come to any conclusions or to make any recommendations regarding which form of exchange is better. Users have their own sets of criteria with regard to what is and what is not a successful exchange. Not all of us can afford to upgrade in these exchanges and that means that the number of urls that we can advertise is limited. In some exchanges we can only advertise between 1-3 urls, whereas in others we can advertise between 5-20 urls at the free level. On top of that in some exchanges the surf ratio is in my opinion extremely poor, and when there is only a promise of a bonus reward for surfing so many pages, then you have to start thinking, why am I wasting my time here when I get so little in return? Eventually the users are going to leave these exchanges when they realize that they are getting very little for their surfing efforts. It is no use being snotty to the new kids on the block because in the end the users are going to have a good hard look at those exchanges and they will leave to seek other pastures.

What needs to be kept in mind as far as this issue is concerned is:

1. It is possible that the idea for using hover technology in traffic exchanges was developed independently; thus those who are committing the act of sour grapes do look rather foolish to the surfer.

2. If surfers want a way of relieving pain in their fingers because of excessive mouse clicking then they will seek that particular way.

3. Exchanges with 20 and 30 second timers are not going to keep surfers who do not want to see ads for beach bums or lawn chair millionaires. They will go elsewhere, seeking an exchange that has a timer that is set at a lower rate. If a surfer wants to read the ad then a 5 second timer will do the same job as a 30 second timer, the difference is how the surfer responds.

4. If the exchange provides nothing of interest then it will become and remain unpopular.

5. The TE needs to be newbie friendly and some exchanges are not all that friendly.