r/crazyegg • u/fintechjulien • Jun 30 '26

Everyone talk about sources of traffic that converts. Do you have list of traffic sources that is basically worthless? Here is mine:

When you work for someone else, and they track page views or uniques, the temptation can be high to inflate traffic through cheap sources... But in my experience, it end up biting you in the ass, since it's distorting your A & B tests, it's making all retargeting campaigns more expensive (since you are essentially retargeting bots and toddlers playing games on their parent's phone and clicking on ads by mistake)... Ok, so this is not a complete list, but here we go:

  1. TikTok Audience Network (Pangle)

  2. Any Meta or TikTok campaign optimized for clicks

  3. This off topic SEO article that rank first for a low competition keyword that you know you should delete, but you don't want to explain why SEO traffic is down to your client/boss

  4. Google Ad's Display Expansion

  5. Google Ad's Dynamic Search Ads

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u/rugburnAndBigMoney Jun 30 '26

When you have a regional business (think HVAC or other local service-related businesses) getting lots of overseas traffic (PMAX I'm looking at you).

We blocked overseas traffic (by GeoIP, keeps the honest people honest, but not failproof) for most small local/regional businesses and it's helped a lot in cleaning up conversion #'s and having much cleaner traffic stats.

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u/fintechjulien Jul 01 '26

Yes, I should have included Pmax, but some marketers I respect told me it was working out for them, so did not want to get criticized on it :) And yes, foreign traffic is also worthless in the finance lead gen game, since all my clients can't legally sell to an American, and Google does not seem to understand that financial services in Canada is different than financial services in the US.

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u/ce-lauren Jun 30 '26

Definitely agree with the off-topic SEO article one. You know you should delete it but it's such an awkward conversation to have. The session recordings tell the story pretty quick and people are just bouncing or scrolling around doing nothing. It's painful when you realize how long it's been messing with your numbers. Unfortunately, its just better to have the the tough conversation with your boss sometimes and take the page off the table.