The other day I was visiting with a colleague who was bidding on a project for a Fortune 500 company here in the U.S.A.

The Company wanted my colleague to commit to bringing X amount of users to a particular website for a given amount of money. The hope, apparently, was that when users found this community site they would join and eagerly spread the word when the company launched a new product within a year or so. My colleague mentioned some competitors for the project that can guarantee a certain number of hits and even registrations for some astronomical amount of money.

I don’t get it.

Hits and traffic numbers are NOT directly related with a successful site. Even when outsiders did find Gilligan and his fellow S.S. Minnow castaways – they always seemed to find their way off the island and they never sent anyone back to rescue the castaways. Their only concern was getting off the island as soon as possible.

Google’s entire objective is to optimize the search experience of the user and therefore indexes the internet based on what previous users and linking sites have told it about the relevancy of a web site in order to produce only the top recommended, most relevant sites in a search query. Traffic alone does not indicate relevancy and will not, by itself, garner a coveted top spot in organic Google searches. If a community, or site, has thousands of members but the users don’t consider it to be a relevant, recommended source ( based on how they use the site and links from other blogs, communities, and other sites) then Google will mirror that and not recommend it to subsequent users.

Furthermore, flies don’t like fly strips – they just get stuck there. Just because people have come to your site and spent a few minutes creating a profile does not mean they love you. To create a community of any value you need to go further than simply setting up a place for people to land. Communities, particularly brand communities, do not consist of the 80% of people that use your product or service everyday – instead it’s the diehards, the evangelists – the people that would recommend you. If you give them the tools and a reason they will do that automatically.