What is traffic in a computer network? What is internet traffic

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Those who are not related to webmastering will say that, most likely, this concept means Internet traffic, i.e. downloaded or given by you to the network through one or another Internet provider.

Sometimes this value is limited, for example, when using mobile Internet, and it is useful for users to know how much more traffic they will be allowed to spend per day or month. But today I want to talk about another use of the term.

Types of traffic and arbitrage example

Traffic is still very often called among webmasters and optimizers. visitor flow coming to the site. For the visitors themselves, I think this word will be unpleasant, but it is used for the most part among those webmasters who do not "bring reasonable, kind, eternal into the world." The owners of SDL (sites for people) rarely use this word, but you still need to know the meaning.

In fact, in a certain environment, traffic is a commodity that can be sold, bought, and then sold again, but at a higher price. In general, speculation in this market is flourishing and this process even got its stable name - traffic arbitration. Where do the streams of visitors come from and how are they redirected to benefit from this business?

Let's look at the simplest example. There is, for example, in which you intend to earn money by selling some goods (for each real purchase, you will be paid a percentage of its value). But where do you get visitors who come to a partner online store and buy something there?

Firstly, you can hang an advertising banner on your site (or write an article about these products and paste it there) and redirect your own traffic (visitors to your site) to the affiliate program. Secondly, you can do traffic arbitration if you don’t have your own resource or you don’t want to clog it.

You can, for example, create a series and direct users who clicked on them to the same online store. This will be arbitration - you buy traffic from Yandex (visitors who clicked on your ad in the search results) and sell it to a partner store. This process of speculation can only be called successful if you earn more than you spend.

But an ordinary webmaster who has his own website is primarily interested in his own traffic, and also how it can be turned into hard cash (read about this in the article -). You should not be ashamed that you are trying to get paid for your work, because it should be so, otherwise interest will fade, and with it the Internet project itself will sink into oblivion.

How to measure the traffic going to the site from the Internet?

So how do you measure your own website traffic? It turns out that there are quite a few ways. You can calculate visit statistics on the server itself using the appropriate scripts, or you can use plugins for the engine that your site is running on. But all this is not the same.

Most often used external statistics systems, which are called attendance counters (or, in other words, traffic counters). Again, counters are different - simple and fancy. The first ones include:

In addition, there are also deployed statistics systems that allow you to find out not only the amount and evaluate the quality of traffic, but also get data for very specific purposes. These include:

  1. Google Analytics

More detailed information about the design of these traffic measurement systems can be found in the articles on the links provided, as well as in the publication about that.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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Yandex is sweet, but Google is better and other search jokes

Sites with cats, jokes and beautiful girls get traffic almost effortlessly. It is enough to publish these most beautiful cats from time to time so that crowds of people visit the resource daily. And if the owner is savvy, then there is no need to publish anything. The community itself will bring, publish, comment and distribute new content.

Niche website owners have a harder life. They have to talk about something complex or boring: blade servers, bricks, principles of evidence-based medicine. To read publications, users are forced to strain their intellect or drink strong coffee so as not to fall asleep. Therefore, potential customers rarely come to the site, spend little time on it and do not repost. Can this problem be solved? How to get traffic correctly if the project works in a complex niche? More on this later.

What niche can be called difficult

yours. You probably from time to time close your laptop in annoyance and scold building materials, workwear, mutual funds, magic cream for all diseases, plastic windows or cat litter that you have to sell with obscene words. If you ask people you know, nine out of ten will say their topic is difficult. By the way, ten out of ten will envy you out loud and tell you how easy it is to sell this cat cream of yours.

Subjectively, most entrepreneurs and marketers consider their niche to be difficult. This assessment does not always coincide with reality. To understand whether you are really working with a complex topic, you need to use objective signs. Here are the main ones:

  • There is a lot of competition in your niche. For example, MTPL policies are sold by dozens or hundreds of insurance companies. Add to them dozens of large insurance brokers. As icing on the cake, think of lone insurance agents who are actively mastering online sales.


  • There are clear heavyweight leaders in your industry. This is one of the features of high competition, worthy of being singled out as a separate feature. Decided to sell smartphones? And the entire top issue was shared by Svyaznoy and Eldorado with Euroset. Want to operate on people with varicose veins? The issue was occupied by sellers of a miracle cream, which supposedly cures everything in one day without operations, registrations and SMS.


  • You are selling a complex product. What does it mean? You have to explain to most consumers the essence and benefits of the product. Examples? As many as you like: endowment life insurance, IT outsourcing, installation of autonomous sewers and septic tanks, trainings for company personnel. Heck, aren't website building, SEO, and content marketing complex products? It is difficult for sellers of such goods and services to attract traffic due to a number of reasons, including a lack of active demand, resource-intensive information campaigns, and a low level of audience awareness.


Among complex products, it is worth highlighting medical services and goods separately. This is a unique theme. Uniqueness is determined not so much by the complexity of the product and high competition for traffic, but by the huge responsibility of marketers. Do you know other niches where you can literally kill a person in the pursuit of traffic?


  • You are selling an expensive product. Here, not even attracting traffic comes to the fore. Of course, during a crisis, people are less likely to be interested in houses in London or holidays on the Cote d'Azur. Therefore, competition for traffic may become more intense. But the main problem here is converting visitors into buyers. Potential customers can actively come to the site, but this does not guarantee purchases.
  • You are selling a product that, for one reason or another, a significant part of consumers do not believe in. It can be network marketing, dietary supplements, financial pyramids, Kirby vacuum cleaners, pension savings funds, work in the office of a young promising company without sales and investments, consultations with psychologists, coaches, and personal growth specialists. Are there many people among your acquaintances who actively search the Internet for information about a counseling psychologist working in the framework of Gestalt therapy and a body-oriented approach?


  • You work in a very narrow niche. For example, sharpen straight razors. Because of advertising, everyone chooses “nothing is better for a man,” so you can’t count on a large flow of visitors. Niche projects should hardly waste money on attracting inappropriate traffic. Instead, it's better to bet on increasing your conversion rate and other performance metrics. By the way, many innovative projects can be attributed to this category. They have to break through the lack of information and distrust of the audience, as well as the lack of demand associated with them.


  • You are selling a boring product. Here again, objective signs are needed, since after a couple of years of work, even the owner of a sex shop can consider his product boring. Look at the problem from the client's point of view. If he considers your product to be ordinary, it will be difficult for you to compete for the attention of visitors. Examples? Matches. Yet? Toilet paper, egg production, office cleaning, car washing.


Have you found objective signs by which your project can be classified as complex? Then read about ways to attract traffic. By the way, they will be useful even for sites that work in simple niches and sell a clear product.

Method #1: Attract Low-Frequency Traffic

Grandmaster Sergey Karjakin will easily beat Nikolai Valuev in chess. But in the ring, a chess player is unlikely to last even a minute. What does Karjakin need to do to always beat Valuev? That's right, Sergey should face Nikolay at the board as often as possible and avoid boxing fights.


This analogy explains why using low-frequency queries to drive traffic in difficult niches. With the Long Tail, you solve the problem of competing with industry heavyweights.

It's about this: large and experienced players are firmly occupying the issuance of high-frequency queries. You can break their hegemony by spending a lot of time and other resources. Or you can't break it. There are no guarantees that serious investments in the promotion of the query "buy OSAGO" will allow you to take the place of "RESO" in the search results. But you don't need it.

In order to get guaranteed traffic, you need to move along the widest possible semantic core. Why does it work? Why haven't heavyweights privatized long-tail search results yet? It's very simple: they try, but they can't. There are infinitely many low-frequency requests. Therefore, long tail guarantees traffic at any level of competition.

How to properly promote a site for low-frequency queries? First rule: forget about keywords. Close KEY Collector and don't terrorize your brain with its little brother with an obscene name. Instead, spend time researching the market, studying the audience and its information needs. And start satisfying them.

Create quality informative content. Try to dive deep into the topic and exhaustively respond to user information requests. So you will surely use all the most relevant low-frequency queries in the right forms and with the right number of occurrences.

Let's do it again: To ensure that you attract low-frequency traffic, you need to focus not on key queries, but on research and meeting the information needs of the audience. Look for confirmation of this thesis in Svetlana Kuznetsova's articles about LSI (one and two), as well as in Denis Savelyev's article about the quality of content from the point of view of search engines. For a snack, leave the Searchmetrics study, which confirmed the decline in the role of keywords in determining the relevance of web pages.

Do you want to know how promotion for low-frequency queries works in reality? In 2015, the Facebook page promotion guide became the leader in views on the Texterra blog. In February 2016, this material received more than 13 thousand views.


Management gets search traffic through low-frequency queries like “how does Facebook promotion work” or “how to tag a job in your own facebook company”. At the first request, Yandex.Wordstat displays one impression per month. On the second - generally zero. However, despite this, we constantly receive transitions from them.


Now look at the screenshot below and pay attention to the frequency of transitions from search engines for a particular query. Of course, Google Analytics does not display the lion's share of keywords. But not only high-frequency players are probably hiding behind Not Provided.

Method number 2: advertising

This is an obvious tool for attracting traffic, without which it is difficult to imagine any integrated marketing strategy. Before including a new expense item in your business plan, answer two questions: what kind of advertising to use and where to send paid traffic.

Here is the answer to the first question: you need to use the type of advertising that is best suited for your project. Other things being equal, for new businesses operating in a competitive niche with popular and in-demand products, it is better to pay attention to the “context” and advertising in social networks. It is these tools, when used correctly, that provide high performance at optimal costs, flexible campaign management, and excellent traffic quality.

What if you are not selling cosmetics and children's toys, but cinder blocks or fittings? Contextual advertising is great for you. But instead of social networks, it is better to choose specialized publications. For example, building materials are best advertised on sites dedicated to construction and repair.

What about the second question? There are no universal solutions here, since it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the project. But you can still find patterns. When it comes to Google AdWords or Yandex.Direct contextual advertising, the cost of clicking on competitive transactional requests like “buy something with delivery” will be relatively high. You again find yourself in a situation of "chess player against a boxer in the ring."


To bring the confrontation to the board, drive paid traffic with information requests. Can it be converted into real transactions? It depends on the quality of the resource and content strategy. Here is an example of an application from the information page of the site:


And here is another application from the same page (the dialogue itself turned out to be long, so we shortened it, but it is the source of the appeal that is important here):

When it comes to advertising on social networks, direct traffic to the pages or groups of the project. Of course, this recommendation is not suitable for all topics. For example, users will be clearly bored in groups of concrete mixer manufacturers. But if the topic gives at least a small chance to use social impulses, use paid traffic to increase the number of subscribers, advertise specific posts, and spread information about promotions.


Method number 3: activity in social networks

This is another universal tool for solving the problem of complex topics. With the help of a successful SMM campaign, a small player can bypass a large corporation, draw attention to a complex or expensive product, and gain the trust of the audience.

The Rockwell Razor story is a great example of the power of social media. In 2014, two students decided to create a quality product that would save men from having to spend money on expensive replacement cartridges from modern shaving systems. The guys creatively rethought the design of classic razors and offered users a modern version of the razor.


According to one of the founders of the project, Garrett Everard, at the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey, he did not understand marketing at all. Garrett, with his friend Morgan Nordstrom, devoted all his free time to developing the design and prototype of the razor. When everything was ready, the guys published the project on Kickstarter and went to bed.

Here social networks did their job: the project instantly went viral. The morning after the publication, the startups raised $18,000 when they only needed $12,000 to start production.

It was only at the new stages of raising funds that Rockwell Razors began to actively use SMM tools. Firstly, they rebuilt themselves from a competitor - a well-known manufacturer of machine tools with three and five blades. The guys launched a campaign, the main weapon of which was financial calculations. According to entrepreneurs, the buyer of a razor could save several hundred dollars in the first year of using it, since replaceable double-edged blades are much cheaper than cartridges. Rockwell Razors also promised all crowd investors a free supply of blades for 5 years if the goal of the second round of funding is achieved. The campaign ran with the hashtag #5YearsFreeBlades.


Are there situations when promotion in social networks is not worth it? Yes, these are boring products and the B2B segment. But even here there are options. For example, B2B sellers in the bourgeoisie recommend using LinkedIn as the main platform for promotion. In RuNet, LinkedIn is more often used for job search and recruiting. If you sell in the B2B segment and want to connect with the heads of partner organizations, use Facebook.

If you are selling something not to companies, but to people, feel free to use Facebook, Vkontakte and other popular social networks to attract traffic. How to attract traffic from social platforms? This is a topic, if not for a book, then for several huge guides. The main areas of work can be summarized as follows:


Method #4: Guest Blogging

With the help of publications on popular industry sites, you increase your audience reach and gain trust and authority. Remember the main secret of guest posting: you do not need links, but the attention of real users. Therefore, focus on the quality and relevance of the content.

What problems can prevent guest posting? If you work in a narrow niche, finding suitable thematic sites is not so easy. The problem can be solved in only one way: publish notes on sites and blogs working in related topics.

Here are some tips to help you plan your guest campaign:

  • Publish guest articles on popular sites. Their topics should be close to yours. The popularity of a resource can be determined by the counters, which are usually located in the footer of the site. If there is no counter, you can get approximate data using the service for checking the attendance of other people's sites or the Alexa analytical platform. The popularity of the resource and the involvement of the audience can be indirectly assessed by the number of comments and distributions of the publication in social networks.
  • You can find popular sites and blogs in your industry using ratings, for example, Liveinternet.ru. You can also use search engines and community search in social networks. Or borrow ideas from our mailing list "".
  • Prepare interesting informative articles for guest posts. They must be useful to the audience. Do not try to sell at a party: this way you set readers and site owners against yourself. In no case do not publish low-quality content on third-party sites. You will not only fail to solve the campaign objectives, but also spoil the audience's impression of your project.
  • With the help of a guest post, you need to attract the attention of new users and get clicks to your site. This is the main purpose of guest blogging. Don't think about links, think about potential customers who read your post.
  • How often should you guest post? The more often, the better. This is true if you can publish articles on at least several different sites. If you publish content on one site too often, its audience will stop moving to your resource.

This pattern was noticed by the famous marketer Neil Patel. He posted on popular Internet marketing sites, one post per week. Readers actively went to Patel's website. When the specialist increased the frequency of publications to 3-4 posts per week on each resource, the number of clicks to his site fell sharply.

What are the benefits of guest blogging? Here are some examples:

  • The aforementioned Neil Patel claims that guest posts bring 20,000 visitors to his site per month.
  • BufferApp CEO Leo Vidrich says guest posts have brought his project 100,000 users in less than a year. Pay attention, 100 thousand customers, not site visitors. To get this result, Leo wrote 150 articles on external sites.
  • And here is an old but still relevant story about a blog that increased traffic by hundreds of percent with the help of guest posting.

Again, please note that you are not guest posting for links. If the host site agrees to openly refer to you, do not refuse. If the host wants to close the link with the nofollow attribute, that's okay. If the receiving site does not agree to put a link at all, it is better to refuse cooperation. Of course, if we are not talking about an image article on Lente.ru or Vedomosti.

Method #5: Use Communities

This is not about groups or pages of your company on social networks, but about neutral communities in which potential customers and even competitors communicate. Simple Example: Community "Content Marketing" on Facebook.

Do not abuse trust: even announcements of the most useful content can bother readers and administrators. Follow a simple rule: participate in discussions all the time, and link to your own content only from time to time.

The most important question: where to look for communities? First, they can be created. For example, if you add a forum to your site and make it popular, consider yourself winning the lottery. Secondly, if you want to work successfully, you must know your industry inside and out. This also applies to communities.

Didn't have time to join the most popular groups in your industry and didn't register on the forums? Get started now. You can find suitable sites using Yandex or search through communities in social networks.

Be sure to use the same userpic and real name on all forums and in all groups where you communicate. It is necessary for the audience to recognize you.


Method #6: Turn New Visitors into Loyal Customers

The target visitor who first came to the site should turn into your regular reader and client. To do this, you must publish useful quality content and sell a good product at an affordable price. What tools provide return users? Here is the list:

  • Invite visitors to subscribe to your newsletter and RSS feed.
  • Use remarketing.
  • Offer potential customers a bonus program.
  • Encourage subscriptions to social media pages.
  • Install Disqus or a similar commenting system that notifies panelists of new comments by email.

Notice how artisan cosmetics manufacturer Barrister and Mann literally lassoes the user from the first visit:

  • The company uses retargeting. After one visit to the site, B&M ads are displayed every time you log into Facebook.


  • The company offers users an attractive bonus program. Visitors can earn reward points for taking suggested actions. For example, registering on the site brings 500 points, indicating the date of birth another 500 points, reposting on Facebook gives 50 points, and so on. Reward points can be spent on the company's products. 100 points equals 1 USD.


  • The site has a newsletter subscription form. Do I need to say that the user also receives bonus points for subscribing?


Internet marketers are well aware of the adage "an old friend is better than two new ones." And specialists working in complex niches can safely change the order of numbers: "An old friend is better than a new hundred."

Method #7: Create a Free Useful Resource

It can be a service, a tool, an instruction for which users return to your site over and over again. Simple examples: Glavred, a spell checker from Advego, a service for evaluating test results.

A useful resource guarantees you visitors. For example, the traffic of the resource Text.ru, on the main page of which there is a service for checking the uniqueness of texts, exceeds 10 thousand people per day. The site of the Advego exchange, which has services for checking spelling and semantic text analysis, is also visited by tens of thousands of people a day. Among them, there are probably users who got acquainted with the project thanks to useful services.


What kind of service does the audience need? Look for the answer to this question yourself. The main thing is that the resource turned out to be very useful and free.

Method #8: Improve Traffic Efficiency

The space for extensive growth ends sooner or later in any niche. And in a complex environment, it may not be there initially. Therefore, grow intensively: increase the efficiency of existing traffic. We are talking about improving behavioral metrics: conversion rate, viewing depth and time, user engagement. This can also include financial metrics, such as the average order amount and the number of transactions.

How to improve behavioral metrics? This is another topic for a book or dissertation. Here's the answer in a nutshell: your website, content, product, and even yourself should be interesting, relevant, useful, and user-friendly. To work successfully, this topic will have to be studied in depth. The following resources will help you:

The list can be continued by adding at least a few dozen materials from the Texterra blog to it. But even they are not enough to exhaustively reveal the topics of increasing conversion, improving behavioral indicators, ensuring usability, creating high-quality landing pages. Therefore, use the suggested links as your direction of travel. With their help, you will find a lot of useful materials both on our website and on other resources.

This method was successfully used by the company "Mosigra". With the help of detailed and descriptive product descriptions, the project's marketers increased the conversion rate and other behavioral metrics.

Method number 9: become a sticky fish

A small sticky fish attaches itself to sharks and whales to travel long distances. A similar marketing tactic is great for projects that work in complex niches. Its essence can be described as follows: if it is very difficult for a project to attract traffic on its own, use popular specialized sites for promotion.

Here are a few examples: freelance exchanges, TripAdvisor, Yandex.Market, a project for selling DIY goods in the Masters Fair category, bulletin boards, online auctions, catalogs. With the help of promoted sites, you can attract traffic to the site of your own project and at the same time sell the product.

The stick fish tactic can be used in any industry where there are suitable popular sites. Here are some examples:

  • Web agencies often register on freelance exchanges. This helps to sell services and at the same time drive traffic to the site.


  • Like other service providers, Bizon Steakhouse uses TripAdvisor to attract customers and manage its reputation. Traffic to the corporate website is provided by a link in the company profile.


  • Online stores actively use popular directories such as "Yandex.Market" and "[email protected]". This is one way to increase the visibility of the site in competitive niches, where the struggle for customers is mainly through price.


  • Participants of the Masters Fair project sell complex products with low active demand. For example, most people usually buy factory-made inexpensive children's toys. In order to attract traffic to the site of a master who makes dolls on his own, you will have to win competition from large online stores and manufacturers. The problem is solved by the profile on Livemaster, as the audience of this project is consciously looking for handicrafts.


  • Small online stores do not shy away from selling goods on online auctions. They are registered under the guise of individuals. While communicating with the client, they redirect traffic to their website.


  • Specialized online directories are another way to overcome high competition and solve the problem of a boring product. For example, furniture manufacturers publish information on thematic sites. They both drive sales and get traffic to the site at the same time.


Method #10: Bet on Video

With smartphones and tablets, you can watch videos anytime, anywhere. And thanks to these devices, you can shoot video anywhere and anytime. Even commercial.

How can video content help drive traffic in difficult niches? It is easier to fight for the first positions in the search results of YouTube and other video hostings than for the top positions in the general search. This is true even for very competitive topics for a simple reason: your competitors publish texts more often than they shoot videos. In addition, the video increases the credibility of the seller. The audience sees that they are dealing with real people, and not impersonal nicknames on the site. This further stimulates sales and website traffic.

Pay attention to the example of Shanti-Shanti.rf. The guys shoot video reviews for each product and publish it on the description page. This is good for customers and search engines. Another similar example is Shave Nation, an overseas razor shop. Its owner has created one of the most popular educational YouTube channels. In the description of each video there are links to a specific product or selection of products.


Method #11: Distribute your product freemium

According to software company OPSWAT, Avast antivirus software is the second most popular antivirus software in the world after the regular program MS Windows Defender. According to Avast Software's own data, in 2015 the company controlled 21% of the global antivirus software market. In 2014, the investment company CVC Capital Partners valued Avast Software at $1 billion.

Why this information? The $1 billion company is distributing its flagship product for free. And Avast Software earns by selling premium program features.


In what niches does the freemium business model work? Here are a few options: software development, games, various web services, selling services offline. For example, this particular model is used by the Lingualeo foreign language learning platform.

Why is the freemium model guaranteed to bring in sales and traffic? First, the free distribution of the product attracts an audience. Secondly, the free use of a good product builds loyalty. And loyal users always buy. At least out of curiosity or a sense of gratitude.

Method #12: Make a Great Email Campaign

This way of driving traffic works great in any niche. To successfully use the tool, you will have to answer two global questions: where to get subscribers and what to send to them.

Here are two hacks. First, if your business model allows, send discount coupons via email. They should be a nice addition to the information. And second: you can publish emails on the site. However, new releases of the mailing list should appear there with a delay. For example, new letters can be sent on Mondays, and the information on the site is updated on Fridays.

Now to the question of subscribers. When your newsletter is known and appreciated, the audience will find it on its own. But first you have to use all the available ways to attract an audience. Here are the most effective tools:

  • Use the subscription form on the site. Experiment with aggressive tools like Hellobar or popups.
  • Trade your subscription for something of value, like free content or discounts.
  • Include sharing buttons in your email template. If you create really useful content, subscribers will definitely want to publish it on their social media pages.
  • If your content strategy allows, give subscribers the opportunity to choose the subject of their emails.
  • Specify the link to the subscription in the signature of the work email.
  • Enable newsletter subscription as a default option when registering on the service website.

Want to grow your subscriber base quickly? Create highly useful downloadable content and sell it for a subscription. Your offer must be truly valuable. For example, check out the 100+ Practical Hacks for Internet Marketers eBook. Do not attack new subscribers with commercial offers. Take advantage of best practices to turn email recipients into customers without imposing. By the way, the success of an email campaign is highly dependent on the capabilities of the mailing service. So choose it carefully.


Method #13: Interview industry-renowned experts

Even if your niche is very narrow, complex and boring, successful and charismatic specialists probably work in it. Post interviews with them. This works for two reasons. First, interviewing leaders makes your blog or website more interesting and useful to existing audiences. Second: the name of a specialist will attract a part of his audience to your resource.

Will leading experts agree to give you an interview? In most cases, it depends on your ability to communicate and diplomacy. For example, our site has interviews with Rand Fishkin, Denis Kaplunov, Alexander Alaev, Dmitry Shakhov, Dmitry Sevalnev, Viktor Karpenko, Sergey Lyudkevich and other well-known experts. By the way, here's the No. 13/1 way to get traffic: give interviews to everyone who asks for it. At the beginning of a business career, this is easy to do.


Method #14: Mention Famous Experts on Social Media

When you post or tweet about a well-known expert on Facebook, their followers see your post in their feed. To mention someone, write the "@" sign followed by the username without a space.

Almost every user of the World Wide Web knows such a thing as Internet traffic. If speak about mobile operators, then they have, the greater the amount of available traffic, the higher the cost. Most operators have tariffs that do not have traffic restrictions, but their cost is significantly higher than that of analogues with restrictions.

Internet for personal computers, which is provided by providers, is most often estimated based on the speed of the Internet.

There are billions of computers on the World Wide Web. Some call servers - they store some information, others connect to these servers in order to receive this information. From this we conclude that computers exchange information with each other.

Data received from other computers is incoming traffic, while the data sent by your PC is outgoing. This category includes messages in VK, audio recordings, videos you uploaded and much more. The unit of measure is gigabyte, megabyte or kilobyte.

Many providers have a so-called "Grid" - this is a place on the network or the Internet organized by the service provider, being in which users can download movies, music and exchange other information, but at the same time consumable fee traffic is not charged. Only users of this particular provider have access to the "Grid".

It often happens that one computer starts sending data to another without the knowledge of the PC owner. This happens when the computer is infected virus. In this case, outgoing traffic is significantly increases. To avoid such unpleasant situations, you need to use antiviruses that track any malicious software and neutralize it, preventing information leakage.

How to find out the spent traffic

There are several ways to find out the amount of traffic used. Let's start with the simplest way.

We use the standard functionality

It gives us the opportunity to find out how much information was received and spent during the current internet session.

On the taskbar, find the icon that displays an active Internet connection.

By clicking on it, you will see list possible connections, you need to choose yours.

Click on it right click.

A window will appear that will display information about the connection duration, Internet speed, sent and received packets (this is traffic).

When you turn off your computer and the connection is lost, the data reset to zero.

If you have multiple accounts on your computer, then you can find out the same data on them. You will need to do the same manipulations.

Third party software

You can use special software to determine outgoing and incoming traffic. Here the choice is huge. We settled on the Networx program.

Very simple, informative, intuitive program.

After installation, it will always be on your taskbar. You can contact her at any time and get all the necessary information.

When you hover your mouse over the icon, the program will show you current internet speed.

If you click on it right click, then a window will pop up.

Clicking on the button statistics, you will receive traffic data, both current and per day, week, month, year, you can view the hourly report.

Traffic on mobile devices

On mobile devices, traffic is consumed much more economical. This is ensured by mobile versions of sites that are optimized specifically for the convenience of users accessing the Internet from gadgets.

The easiest solution to the issue is to install the application. Each provider has developed software for smartphones that reflects the full traffic statistics.

You can also find out the short number (it differs for operators). By sending an SMS to it, you will receive information on traffic in response.

Good day! Today we will talk about what is traffic? This word refers to different areas, but it can be found especially often on the Internet. In fact, all earnings in the network are built on it.

Traffic is in essence movement, activity, transition from one place to another. It can be a lot or a little, it can be fast or slow. The word traffic itself means in translation from English it means just movement!

Now let's think why you need traffic? In each area it is necessary for its special needs. For example, in the IT field, it denotes the number of megabytes. If they are, you can go online, but download a movie or music, or whatever depends on the amount you need to buy.

Webmasters often need it to earn money and everyone strives to have as much of this valuable movement on his site as possible!

Types of traffic

Now let's analyze all the types of traffic that I managed to find!

car traffic

Such traffic refers to the number of vehicles at any point. For example, during a lunch break on some street, 500 of them can pass in an hour. And this is a very large traffic of cars.

Owners of auto outlets can sometimes think about how to attract traffic to a car dealership? By this they mean ordinary customers, buyers. To attract, you just need to use advertising, that's all!

Autotraffic needs to be measured for various studies. There are both automatic methods and manual measurement methods.

Road traffic or road traffic can show the level of pollution in a particular location. After all, the more cars pass there, the more voluminous will be the accumulation of gases in this area.

Pedestrian traffic

Such a species is purely composed of those who use zebras. I think that this species can be attributed to animals. After all, they sometimes also move to a specially designated place.

Pedestrian traffic is essentially people walking on a striped road - a zebra!

Sometimes a lot of pedestrian traffic can cause difficulty for motorists, so there are services that monitor its amount. Although in practice I personally have not seen anything like this.

Maritime traffic

This is the movement of various seaworthy vessels. For example, such as boats, ships, steamboats and others! Often people search the Internet for this phrase to find out the movement of maritime traffic in real time! Surprisingly, there really is a display on the map on the network. You can go and see where the right boat is!

What is traffic in trading?

Under such a phrase is understood the number of customers who came to the store and bought something. The same can be said about traffic in business. These are just people who came and took something, giving money in return.

Most often, traffic is traded on the Internet, but it can be sold in everyday life. For example, by recommending a product to a person who is sold in a certain store. Moreover, you must have an agreement with the owner of the trading shop, and he must understand what kind of client will come from you today. If successful, the owner of the establishment will pay a percentage for the arrival of the buyer!

What is internet traffic?

Under this word, two designations can be distinguished on the network:

  1. The number of megabytes, gigabytes.
  2. The number of visitors to one of the sites.

The first Internet traffic, aka network is when you want to go online. To do this, you need a package with the above units of measurement. Very often it is limited by mobile operators. For a home computer, you can connect wired Internet for a fixed monthly fee. For example, for 400 rubles you can download as many movies, music and other files as you like. Here, the restriction can only be on the speed according to your tariff. You pay this amount once a month!

On the mobile Internet, for this money for a month, you can take, for example, 3-5 GB and that's it. If it runs out, then either you buy more for a not very favorable price, or you wait for the connection to expire. For example, you connected 2 GB on the first of May, but used them up by the 7th day of the same month. This means that the remaining 23 days will have to sit without the Internet, either pay extra or change the tariff.

My internet traffic is 7GB per week, Tariff Zabugorishche! This is the Internet from mts for 600 rubles. Payment once every seven days for 150 rubles. Such conditions suit me quite well, especially since seven gigabytes is for new users. I connected earlier and can download as much as I want without restrictions at a moderate speed.

The second given Internet traffic or web is the attendance of any resource on the Internet. For example, about 400 - 450 people a day visit my blog on the Internet! As a result, I can say that my traffic is four hundred visitors a day!

I think now what is traffic on the Internet is clear even for dummies!

What is mobile traffic?

In fact, these are people who came to you through a device - a phone! Some people may still ask, what is mobile internet traffic? Well, this is the amount of Internet traffic, which was discussed above!

If you receive a notification that there is little traffic left, it means that the Internet will be turned off soon. Usually this happens after the number of megabytes is 10 or 50.

Motivated traffic

A similar appearance means that a person did something at someone's request. For example, you have registered in one of the affiliate programs, online games. For bringing 1 person to it you will be paid 20 rubles. As a result, you go and do the task on a special service. Ask people to register for a reward of 5 rubles. Your profit will be 15 net profit! A person infiltrated the game because you asked him to do it for money.

Targeted traffic or thematic

I’ll tell you about this option using the example of a group in contact or a community. A person created something similar and gathered there everyone who is interested in the release of a new iPhone. A lot of people just want to get it! Let's say 20,000 people gathered! And so he entered the market, the author, without thinking twice, found a real store with an affiliate program of 5%, usually deductions in official stores are small. But besides that, he fussed and found an affiliate copy. Not everyone can afford the original. Offered the community two options! And as a result, he received a good income in the amount of more than 100,000 rubles! And because all these people were interested in buying, they hit with targeted or thematic traffic!

Well, and not a target, it means, for example, that DNS laptop advertising goes to a person who dreams of a computer from MSI. In fact, this is a dummy, a waste of money, because he will not take it.

What is doorway traffic?

Let me demonstrate again with an example! There is a lot of competition on the Internet for the sale of almost any product or service. Therefore, some people, in order to get around this obstacle and make money on affiliate programs, follow the following path:

  1. Choose a product on which they want to earn.
  2. They are not looking for a very competitive phrase from this niche, but to be entered into the search frequently.
  3. Create a site with the domain of just this keyword.

As a result, the site is specifically dedicated to the product, for example, an action camera or a water hose. Well, if this is the case, the search engine, in particular Yandex, tries to set it as high as possible. As a result, people come in and some of them buy traffic.

In short, traffic comes from a doorway or a customized site for a specific affiliate program.

Referral traffic

Surely such a phrase is used by the owners of affiliate programs! They count how many direct sales they made, and how much referral traffic, also known as affiliate traffic, brought.

That is, if you are a partner and drive visitors to the product, then the owner of the product will call you a referral.

Or you can say that this is a user who came through someone's referral link to the service. And then he brought more people to the same project using his link! Which in the future can already be called referral traffic.

outgoing and incoming

Most often, this applies to the Internet tariff on your computer. If you use a program to account for it or you have a mobile modem, for example, from MTS, then you probably noticed that there is a schedule there. In addition, there are inscriptions for incoming and outgoing traffic. Well, in the process of surfing the Internet, you exchange data with a server on another computer. Some of them leave, and the other part comes to you in the form of software, films, pictures, music, etc.

Videos traffic

These are essentially user transitions using video content. For example, you can specify links under the video on YouTube or stick links into the clip itself. Active and popular YouTubers are able to bring a huge number of target users!

Search traffic or organic

That is traffic from search engines! Let's say a person is looking for a flash drive and the search engine gives out a lot of sites. Well, if he visits any of them, then for the site this visitor will be considered organic! Such transitions can be from different search engines, for example, from Yandex, Google, Mail, etc.

Direct traffic

I'll start right away with an example. You have a friend and he recently purchased a juicer in an online store. This service gave him a 20% discount, and even gave him a set of cups! Looking at your friend, you also wanted to buy something in this store for such a promotion. And so ask him for the exact address. He naturally gives it, and now you go to the site, make a direct call without any systems. We typed the address and went to the main page of the project. This will mean that you have become direct traffic for this store.

Traffic from context

Many people trying to sell their services or products make contextual advertising on the Internet. This is an advertisement that you probably saw while reading articles on the Internet.

Well, if a person clicks on an ad in the text and goes to the product, then he will just refer to traffic from the context!

What is fraudulent traffic?

This variety indicates not quite clean traffic. In translation from English, the word fraud means fraud. For advertisers, this type of visit means a loss of money. How can this happen?

A bunch of site owners can use click-through tools. For every click they get paid. For example, I did a teaser ad in one of the Runet networks, well, I spent 600 rubles and got 800 clicks and not a single sale. What's this? Yes, this is the use of cheating by the webmaster of the site where my advertisement was spinning.

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Internet traffic is information that a computer transmits and receives.


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Imagine a family budget. You received your salary and put it in an envelope at home. You need to buy a refrigerator - you got the right amount from there. It's time to pay the rent - they took the money from the envelope.

From the user's point of view, Internet traffic is an incoming and outgoing flow of data. In this case, money will be the units of measurement of information - bytes, megabytes, etc. When performing any action on the Internet, the computer transmits or downloads data. This exchange is called internet traffic.

Internet traffic - what is it

When using a desktop computer, the traffic flow is greater than when viewing from mobile devices.

Traffic for websites - the number of visitors who visited the resource during a period of time: day, month. Let a website be a store and its visitors be buyers. It is important for the store to ensure the influx of new and regular customers, to disseminate information about the choice and quality of the assortment. With websites, the situation is similar, traffic expands the capabilities of the resource and brings profit for further development.

Types of traffic

Traffic can be viewed from the point of view of an ordinary Internet user and from the point of view of a web analyst.

For the user

Internet traffic is divided into two types: outgoing and incoming.

  • outgoing data.
    Information that a computer uploads to the Internet. This is what you send to other people: social media posts, photos, documents.
  • Incoming data.
    Information obtained from the Internet.

The computer constantly receives and transmits information, therefore, when working on the Internet, both types of traffic are consumed simultaneously.

Sometimes the computer sends information without the knowledge of the user. This happens due to viruses that increase outgoing traffic. Scan your computer for viruses so you don't lose personal information.
Previously, there was a division into internal and external traffic.

  • Internal traffic is information transmitted over the local network. The provider does not charge a fee.
  • External traffic is information that comes from the Internet to a computer or is downloaded to the Internet.

Now this division is outdated: technology has improved and the border between internal and external traffic has disappeared.

Another type of traffic classification is the division into mobile and desktop traffic.
The difference between these two views is in the device that is used to access the Internet.

  1. Mobile traffic is used on phones and tablets. Its speed is limited, information is loaded more slowly than on computers. For a month, the provider offers a limited traffic package. After the expiration of free traffic, the provider significantly reduces the speed. Additional megabytes can be purchased for an additional fee. There are packages that provide high speed and unlimited during fixed hours of the day, for example, at night. Mobile Internet traffic is gaining popularity. According to a Cisco study, in 2016 global mobile Internet traffic grew by 63%.
  2. Desktop traffic or stationary is used on computers. Providers limit the speed, not the amount of information, but nevertheless, the speed of the Internet on computers is usually higher than on phones.

For web analytics

A web analyst is a person who analyzes the traffic of a resource, the effectiveness of promotion. For him, Internet traffic is the flow of visitors to the site. =

In this case, traffic can be divided into groups according to the type of site audience:

  • Target.
    The flow of visitors interested in the content of your site. It can be purposeful buyers, students and so on.
  • Non-targeted.
    The flow of visitors who are not interested in the content of the site. For example, a random visitor.

By type of traffic source - where the user came to the site from.

  • Purchased traffic or advertising - visitors come to your site through paid ads or sponsored links.
  • Direct traffic - visitors who like your site and visit it regularly.
  • includes referrals from other sites.
  • Traffic from social networks - people who went to the site through links posted on social networks.
  • Search traffic - visitors who came to your site through a query in search networks.

How to calculate traffic

To always have Internet access, you need to monitor the amount of traffic. This can be done using the built-in settings on the device or special programs. Here is a list of programs for Windows OS:

  • NetWorx - measures the speed and load of the Internet connection, issues notifications about traffic overruns and has a list of actions in this case, for example, completely disconnecting from the network.

  • BitMeter is a simple and free utility. Shows a variety of statistical parameters. In addition to standard functions, it has a number of additional ones for detailed study of specific actions on the Internet.

  • NetSpeedMonitor is a free tool to monitor internet speed and traffic. It has a wide range of settings, for example, units of measurement, fonts, location.

  • NetBalancer is a free tool that has antivirus capabilities, prioritizes network activity, distributes traffic between applications.

  • NetLimiter - analyzes applications in real time, contains a built-in firewall to block unwanted processes, limits the access speed of a certain process.

  • GlassWire - nice visual design, built-in firewall, notification log.

What does website traffic mean?

Web traffic is an indicator of the popularity of a resource and contains the following parameters:

  • The number of unique visitors over a period of time.
  • The number of pages viewed per visitor.
  • The page from which visitors get acquainted with the content of the resource.
  • The page where visitors end their introduction.
  • A typical path is which pages of the site the visitor viewed.
  • The average visit time of the resource.
  • Average time spent on one page.
  • The time when the website is at its busiest.
  • Popular pages that are in demand by customers.
  • Unclaimed resource pages where visitors do not linger.

Based on this indicator, the analyst can predict the growth of the site's popularity. He evaluates the effectiveness of promotion methods. For example, contextual advertising was launched. Money was invested in it. To understand whether the costs are justified, you need to evaluate the traffic that came to the resource through this advertising channel.

For analytics, various systems of metrics and traffic counting are used. The most popular are Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics.
Yandex.Metrica is a tool of the Yandex company. It allows you to upload detailed reports on website traffic and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Google Analytics is a free website traffic tracking service.


Thus, Internet traffic can be understood in two ways. For users, this is all the data received from the network and transmitted to it. For websites, these are visitors using its resources. It is important to track traffic statistics in order to be on the wave.