Autosurfing sites are sites that will simulate traffic on your site, usually through an exchange: something like “for every 30 seconds you view one of the sites our members have submitted, another one of our members will view your site”.

The end result that autosurfs advertise is that your site gets Real Traffic Fast^TM, while the end result in reality is that your site gets a bunch of low-quality traffic from disinterested readers who are just running out the clock so that someone else will do them the same favour. They don’t work, but have an appeal to someone who wants to see their hits go up, no matter how it happens.

Wikipedia has a great article about them, with a few main takeaways:

• they don’t work
• they are often structured as pyramid schemes
• those that aren’t structured as pyramid schemes are often structured as Pozni schemes, and if money is involved, can actually be illegal
• the larger autosurfs, like 12DailyPro, collapsed under SEC investigation and legal troubles in 2006, but many are still around

So generally, they’re something you want to avoid. If you’re a Project Wonderful publisher they’re definitely something you want to avoid, as using autosurfs to inflate the page views of your site goes against our Terms Of Service, and will result in your ad boxes being deleted and your account being shut down. So just in case you’re tempted by the promise of “REAL TRAFFIC NOW” — we’d advise you to look twice, and do the research.

This is neat. Over at Mashable.com I just came across this selection of advertisement friendly Wordpress Themes. check them out.