Citysearch Pay-Per-Click Advertising & Click Fraud: My Adventure
January 26th, 2007Beware of Pay-Per-Click Advertising on Citysearch!
After spending many months focusing on getting good organic search engine rankings for my own website, I decided to get some experience with pay-per-click advertising for two reasons. First I wanted to see if it would increase my own site’s traffic. Secondly, I wanted to be able to recommend a pay-per-click strategy for my clients. I decided to start with well known Citysearch. (Update: I now am confident in recommending Google AdWords for those clients who need pay-per-click traffic - but you must actively manage the ad campaign. If you want help managing a Google AdWords campaign, click here.)
Signing up for an account was easy, although I was a little worried about the minimum monthly budget of $99. I’m a very small business with a very small advertising budget. Given that I was to be charged $1 per click, and given that my own search engine optimization efforts brought around 250 visitors to my website monthly, it seemed odd that Citysearch could bring me that much traffic. But since Citysearch reassured me I could delete my account at any time, I signed up. (Go here to read about search engine optimization and how it differs from pay-per-click.)
Since I’m a former engineer turned website designer, I love data. So I track my own website traffic meticulously. (Click here to find out how to track your website’s traffic - super important if you’re in a pay-per-click agreement!) For the first three days, nothing happened. But then strange traffic started appearing on my website tracking tool. Clicks from websites like “folksfound.net” “attpx.com” “redirect.clickshield.net” “folksfound.com” “seek4results.com” “bigapple.contextuads.com” “ppc.burnsearch.net” “arcadepod.com” “adrogo.com” “piqw.com” “dpxml.infospace.com” “peakc.com” “netquesting.com” for words unrelated to my website like “financial planning” and “MSN”. Every day, the number of these strange visitors increased. To my horror, the total number of these visits were exactly correlated to the clicks that Citysearch was charging me $1 per click for. After several days of this junk traffic, my account totaled $45, halfway to my preset $100 limit. The number of fraudulent clicks was increasing on a daily basis. At this rate, I would hit my $100 limit in a few more days! (Again, I wouldn’t have known this if I wasn’t tracking my website traffic…please go here to read about how to track the traffic on YOUR website)
Perhaps I was naive about click fraud or just curious, but I set about the task of going into some of these sites and trying to find what possible search or listing had directed people to my website. Although the number of junk visits and charges from Citysearch matched, I was still looking for proof that these junk visits had something to do with my Citysearch pay-per-click ad. What I found was awful. Many of these sites that visitors had come from were simply garbage directories and I was unable to find any listing that matched mine. However on a few, I was able to find the exact text that I had used in my Citysearch description….and so I knew without a doubt, that this junk traffic was related to my Citysearch ad. I now had the proof I needed to confront Citysearch. (Remember, you need to independently track your website traffic if you’re using a pay-per-click campaign to see if you’re getting your money’s worth…click here to learn how to track your website traffic.)
Three phone calls to Citysearch customer service resulted in nothing but frustration. They were unimpressed about my complaints of click-fraud even though their website said they had a whole Click Fraud organization. I offered to fax logs of my website traffic to their Click Fraud folks, but they weren’t interested. I was left no recourse but to close my account and argue for a refund, which I obtained.
All in all it was a horrible experience for me and I’ll certainly steer all of my clients away from Citysearch. I’ll also insist that they track their own traffic carefully when embarking on any online advertising scheme, especially pay-per-click. Remember to set up your own website traffic analysis tool before you embark on any online marketing venture to make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for! It costs less than $10 per month to sign up with Web-Stat and usually takes me about an hour to install it on a client’s website. If you’re paying hundreds of dollars each month for pay-per-click traffic, please contact me about installing a website traffic tracking tool on your website.
Addendum: Read Daniel Krieger’s experience with Citysearch Pay Per Click Advertising, another unhappy customer.
Another Addendum: Read Jeff Cheap’s blog article Citysearch Click Fraud Warning.
Yet Another: Read “The Middlemen of Paid Search” - Which views SuperPages and Citysearch as middlemen in the pay-per-click foodchain. He recommends that small businesses avoid these middlemen and go straight to the source, Google Adwords (and I agree).
If you have a similar story, contact me and I’d be happy to link to it.
Jill
--------------
J. Olkoski
Aldebaran Web Design, Seattle
Jill Olkoski has a BS in Engineering, a BS in Computer Science and a MA in Clinical Psychology. She delights in using her advanced technical, psychological and interpersonal skills to help small business owners develop cost-effective and successful websites.
Liked This Article? Please Bookmark It!
StumbleUpon
July 16th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Hi there,
I’m curious about your citysearch experience, and whether you have been in contact with others (besides Daniel) regarding similar experiences. I am an attorney and have had an ongoing love-hate relationship with citysearch for a couple years now. Every time I get finally fed up and cancel my account, an account rep convinces me to stay and says he’ll change up my program so I get better traffic. Bull****!
If fraud is really occurring, this is a case ripe for a class action suit, and it’s something I am looking into further.
If you have any more information or contacts, I would appreciate you passing them along. Thanks!
My e-mail address is jonathan@jphuberlaw.com.
Jonathan
October 5th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Thank you for sharing!
October 10th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Hi Jill, I had a negative experience with Citysearch ths past year. I signed up for the trial period and thought I was getting a lot of legitimate clicks since it was my busy season and people said they found me on the web. (Well of course I do have a website.) No one actuallly mentioned Citysearch, but I didn’t have enough stats to see otherwise. During my slow time, my numbers were still really high and when I finally got around to asking my rep, he finally told me that I was linked in to their “Partner Sites” That made me very angry because I thought I was getting clicks from just Citysearch. He said he would refund me a small amount etc, I kept taking the bait, There’’s a lot more to the story, but it would take me a while to explain, but they also kept me rotating through different cities like Austin, Portland, MEmphis…. I am a local business and noone will hire me that way. Again they said they would refund some money. I finally quit, after they took out money from my bank account when I was assured that the credit card I had initially given them was just as verification but would not be used for billing. My bill was one month overdue and I had received no notices that that could occur. I immediately cancelled my account. The final balance is $56 and lo and behold one month later I get an email that says I owe $109. I have no idea where they came up with that abritrary number, just the same as all the abritrary clicks and over a thousand dollars that I wasted with them this past year. Citysearch is using bogus billing and click per play tactics. They were not honest with their customer. Beware of Citysearch
October 27th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I became immediately suspicious of Citysearch when I recieved their bill today. I basically only had less than a handful of hits and then all of the sudden I had about 38 hits in one day, 12 the next day, and maybe one or two more before the end of the billing period a week later. I automatically thought that they are up to something and it was confirmed by reading the above blogs. I will be contacting them on Monday and if I don’t any satisfaction, I will be seeking legal advice and filing formal complaints.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I have had the same problem with Citysearch as well. After signing up I started to notice that their user interface was highly limited. For example I could increase my budget but not cancel my account on line. Another thing was how the clicks came in. I knew through my analytics that no clicks came to my website via Citysearch. Still 75.00 dollars of my budget was clicked away in a four day period. To put that in proper perspective my budget was 100.00 dollars over a thirty day period. When I contacted customer support I was shocked at how amazingly uninformed they where. Though Polite the rep I spoke with didn’t have a clue what Citysearch Click fraud division did to prevent click fraud and he offered no compensation as well. After he fumbled through some paperwork for 3 minutes I told not to worry about it and inquired instead on how to cancel my account. in my opinion Citysearch is a good looking local search service that was released to soon. Maybe I will give them a try in another year but at this point it looks to be a waste of time and resources.
I encourage any Citysearch rep to contact me for my input. My business name is Trueline Striping and located in Orange County Ca.
Look me up!
James~
November 27th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Hi Jill,
I am new to this, I just published a website in June and tried some pay per click with another company. It didn’t get me any sales so I cancelled it. Then I got a call from a Citysearch rep who assured me that they would be a better service and I would get the traffic I wanted if I signed up with them. In order to participate they required a 6 month contract. I first signed up for the local side, Atlanta, since we are located in Ga. I didn’t get any orders although I did get some clicks. The rep suggested I sign up for the national side to get more clicks. I did and I am so sorry. Now I have two 6 month contracts and I can’t get out of them. I am getting charged for so many clicks that are not even making it to my website. I was told that if the customer goes into my profile on Citysearch I am charged and I could be charged up to 3 times from one customer a day. They said they are giving me the traffic and are not responsible if the consumers do not buy. I tried to cancel but they will not let me. They have my credit card and they said that if I cancel the card I will have to pay the cost plus attorney fees. So far I have been charged over $700 in pay per clicks and not one sale. This service is only good for Citysearch, not for businesses like mine that need sales to survive. The contract allows them to do whatever they want and take money from you. They do not care that it is not a benefit to you, they just want your money!
December 10th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
My story with Citysearch isn’t over yet because there is some very strange activity on my website and I need help explaining it.
But to start:
I received a $99 voucher to Citysearch when I contracted with 1and1.com to host my website. It seemed pretty easy to set up and I really didn’t expect much to happen…my website is online only and Citysearch is for brick & mortar but I figured for a free $99 I would throw it out there.
As expected, I didn’t get much action, until the end of the month came up, then suddenly I was all clicked out of my $99. In fact, my account showed it had gone over the $99. Then I tried to see where I could cancel my account. There is no possible way to cancel your account yourself. No way to suspend it, downgrade it to a lower amount, delete it, delete your credit card, nothing! I emailed their customer service and told them I wanted to cancel. No reply. Then I got an email saying I was going to be invoiced on Dec. 10th for my next $99. Then I tried to call them. Nothing. The phone number is an endless loop that referred me to a different phone number which then referred me to the same phone number I just called. Then I sent a fax threatening to report them to the BBB and sent another email to their “WOW!” email address where they expect you to say good things about them.
The next day I got a phone call and the man said yes, it’s true, you can’t cancel your account yourself, you have to call customer service. I explained to him all of the ways I had attempted to contact customer service. He said if I could prove that I had attempted to cancel my service before the next billing cycle they would refund my money and cancel my account. I forwarded him the emails and the next time I checked my account had been cancelled.
BUT now every time I go to my website to see who is online, there is a Citysearch referral. It’s not a true referral and I know this for several reasons. The “person” or “bot” is only there for a second, the walk-in and walk-out time are the same. There is no referring click in my analytics program and when I try to trace the IP, they come from all over, like Texas, where I am in the San Francisco Bay Area and no one from Texas would be looking at that area of Citysearch.
So now I’m wondering, what is their game? What have they done to my website? Should I be concerned?(too late! I’m already concerned)
If you have any idea of what this activity is or how I can stop it I would love to hear your thoughts.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Citysearch is totally scamming me. I feel so powerless. The problem is, I got locked into a 6 mo contract!!! With a $1000 cap each month! The way the acct rep made it seem, I would not reach that. Week 1 goes by, only 4 clicks. Week 2 goes by, 400 clicks!!!!!!!!
Tried contacting them to change things, and still no luck.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Good news, I made progress. It took contacting the VP of sales to do it, but I did it!
December 24th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Hi Disgruntled,
I’m so happy for you that you stuck with it and got some progress. And to all others out there trying to get your money back from Citysearch, don’t give up!
Jill
December 31st, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I signed up a with Citysearch few weeks ago. After 3 weeks I had only received 9 clicks (2 were mine, 1 was from a client whom I requested write a review). On Dec 22 I emailed my Citysearch Account Manager to cancel my account because I had not received one client from those 9 clicks. I only advertise on craigslist and had though I would span out a little bit, which led me to try out Citysearch. My ACCOUNT MANAGER wrote back on December 26, saying I need to call customer service to do so, you would think that an ACCOUNT MANAGER could cancel your ACCOUNT. But that’s when I realized that her job roles are not Account Manager, they are SALESPERSON. I did not get around to calling right away since I was really busy. I looked online today (Dec 31) to see that I had received 84 clicks since the 26th, which is when she wrote back to me! That is interesting.
Let’s go over that. First 15 days = 9 clicks. Ask to cancel and hear response on the 26th. Clicks on the 26th 22, 27th - 16, 28th -16, 29th -18, 30th 12. Interesting. Even more interesting is that I use Google Analytics to track my hits and activity on my website. It’s not a busy site, only been up for a couple of months and has a total of under 50 hits in the last 3 weeks. I would think that I would see a definite increase in hits on my site. Of course not everyone that looks at my ad will go to my site, but my services are very specific and there is slim to non competition to be found in San Diego. However, no increase in hits at all.
Obvious fraud. I have emailed Citysearch saying I will not be paying for these charges. I will keep you posted on how they deal in resolving this situation.
(Jill: Tom asked that I include a screenshot of his traffic pattern to better demonstrate the Citysearch fraudulent clicks)
UPDATE 1 FROM TOM:
Surprisingly, when I called Citysearch, the first person I talked to, once I explained everything that happened, said okay, you won’t be charged for anything. So I am still not happy at all about using Citysearch, but at least I am not pulling teeth and getting charged for those clicks.
I am now looking into Google Adwords and before I launch that I am reading Perry Marshall’s book on it, I read some really good reviews about his work.
UPDATE 2 FROM TOM:
Back to square one.
Apparently everything I was told was a lie, and nothing was taken care of. My account ended up being charged for $69.97 several days after I spoke with someone at City search who told me it would be taken care of and that I would not be charged. I will be following the advice a reader suggested on your site and disputing the charge with my credit card company via sending them proof of the events.
Arrghhh What a waste of time, money and energy!
December 31st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Hi Tom,
Thanks so much for the story and the data from your Google Analytics. Funny how those clicks started right after the phone call to Citysearch to cancel your account. Please do keep us updated on your refund progress.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I signed up with CitySearch in summer 2007 — had an experience much like Tom’s above. After a couple months, I noticed a HUGE discrepancy b/w what CitySearch claimed was traffic going to my site and what my Google Analytics was reporting. (CitySearch was charging me over $200/month.)
I won’t go into all the details, but have two pieces of advice:
1) If you suspect fraud, contact your credit card co. ASAP. I filed a dispute with mine, which involved sending CitySearch’s reported results and my Google Analytics traffic reports for the corresponding months. My credit card co. took it up with CitySearch’s credit card co. and then issued a credit to my account.
2) Go after CitySearch, relentlessly. If you have third-party proof (e.g. Google Analytics) that their numbers are nonsense, they have no case.
Fight the good fight.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Hi, Jill and All,
I do believe I experienced City Search Click Fraud. I requested the sales rep to send me all IP addresses that clicked our ads at City search but he refused.
Our sales reps do track every single lead source by asking our customers: “How did you find us?”. We then record the lead source to our CRM-SalesForce.
Here’s our lead source data for the period between April and December, 2007:
• We paid $9432.20 to CitySearch and generated only 2 leads ($1 per click). However, for the same period,
• Every $10,000 we paid to Google, we generated over 328 leads.
Yang
March 11th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hi Yang,
Thanks very much for the comment and the data. Wow, that’s a big difference in conversion cost between Citysearch and Google AdWords. So via Citysearch, each lead cost you $9432.20/2 = $4716 per lead. And Google AdWords cost you $10,000/328 = $30.48 per lead. That’s massive. It’s funny how some companies don’t consider poor quality traffic as “click fraud” and how others do. I certainly think that if Citysearch was charging you that much for that little quality traffic, that also falls under the rubric of “click fraud”. Again, thanks very much for sharing your data with us.
March 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Hello All,
I have had some problems with citysearch lasting for over a year. I have clients who had a collection agency after them for fruadulent charges made by citysearch. I contacted a law firm, Stoll, Nussbaum & Polakov to represent them. They were able to help my clients and clear everything up with a couple of phone calls and within 30 minutes. If you need help you should contact matt@stolllaw.com.
I hope this helps!
Catherine
April 10th, 2008 at 11:43 am
It is funny I have the same exact same experience. My friendly City search rep calls me after I agreed to spend $100 per month with them. He offered to reduce my per click charge from $1 per click to 30 cents per click if I agreed to increase my budget to $300 per month. I did not have $300 per month to spend on this however I thought if I had over 900 clicks I would probably be getting enough calls to pay for the services. Unfortunately what I feared happened. My first bill was ok. It came in at just under $100. Then the second month started and I was ironically just under $300 in clicks ($270). I then contacted my rep David Grumbs dgumbs@citysearch.com to cancel my account. He didn’t cancel the account and again this month I got a bill for $286.55 again. I think CitySearch is a scam. There is no way I got 900+ hits without a single phone call. Beware of this company or maybe any company that charges per click without supporting documentation.
User Actions Amount $270
Profile Page Views 904
Map Views 9
Click to Website 1
Mark
April 10th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Hi Mark,
Thanks for sharing your experience and your data with us. Whatever budget you set, they “somehow” generate enough clicks to make sure you’re getting charged the full amount every month. Beware is an understatement….
Jill