City Search Advertising is fraud and a scam
By theoneut
Fraudlent Citysearch traffic
Avoid citySearch advertising scam
First off, I sure wish I would have searched for citysearch scam. I would have never advertised with them.
I am the owner of a small internet marketing company. I have found great success advertising with Facebook and thought I might have similar success with a large local business directory. Since Yodle and MerchantCircle don't have PPC for their businesses I would give citysearch a try.
They will commit you to 30 days with a minimum $200 month spend and $20 month service fee. After seeing the service fee that should have raised a red flag with me. The .40 per click or connection as they call it was way below the $5 click I was spending with google and even cheaper than the $1 clicks with Facebook.
2 days later I check my balance because I haven't seen any traffic from them. $66 dollars in charges 1 day and not a single visitor to my site. I immediately sent a cancellation email to them that they never responded to. That day I saw 10 clicks, none of them got my FREE service and all but 1 immediately left my site. Very fraudulent activity.
I immediately called to cancel. I followed their prompts to the cancellation queue which told me they were closed in the middle of the day. I followed the prompts to sign up a new account and got right in to a rep who I then informed I wanted to cancel. He wanted to know why, I explained what I saw. He basically said tuff you can't cancel for 30 days. I said if he tried to charge my card you will get an immediate charge back. Go right ahead he said. Wow. He doesn't even try to defend or rationalize their service.
I received some more charges on the account a few days later with traffic to my site and 100% bounce rate and 0 time spend on site. (I have some tracking code on my link with them.) Come on guys, if you are going to do that click on at least another page or something. How about get my FREE service!
Since I wasn't going to be paying for the service anyway. I was going to leave a nice message in my ad saying what a rip off. I don't think I was the first to think of it as they took away my ability to edit the ad. Too funny.
They still haven't charged my card, I keep looking for it so I can issue that chargeback. I will keep checking and update this post.
By the way. try Facebook. I got good results and I think you will too.
Comments
Update: I submitted proof of fraudulent activity to my Credit Card company who issued me a full refund. Now Citysearch has sent me to collections. If it costs me $5,000 to fight this, so be it. Even the collection agency is deceptive that it is trying to come across as a law firm.
I was with CitySearch for some time. When I questioned the click throughs and the trending (My other business is website design, so I know how to read my stats report) they said they would start being able to report on who actually called us (mostly telemarketers). So I requested my account be cancelled. When they continued to bill, I contested through my credit card. Now their collections agency is harassing me. Glad to hear I'm not the only one having problems with them.
I had similar issues with City Search. After several attepts and even confirmations of cancellation I was still billed. But what gets me the most is how unbelievable rude their customer service is - although I can't say I blame these guys. I'm sure they deal with customers who realize they've been ripped off all day ever day. Employee morale must be low. It's the price you have to pay for running a scam operation I guess.
I signed up with City Search hoping to increase my business only to find that i was getting a ton of clicks on my add but no clicks to my website. After doing some research i found that they were displaying my add all over the USA even though i selected to have my add run only in my local area. I did random searches putting in different cities and states only to find my add popping up everywhere. I'm still fighting to get my balance credited. I strongly urge small businesses to run far away from this scam. They will drain your advertising budget and you'll get absolutly no results. If there is a lawsuit pending please contact me 503-317-5154
5/19/2010 update
I haven't heard back from the collection agency. It seems threats of a lawsuit helped. The bbb.org gave them an F. Do not advertise with them. There are better companies out there like yelp.com who are not trying to screw their customers out of money.
If you people only knew. I was a sales executive for Citysearch for years, and finally had to quit as I couldn't sell it in good faith anymore. The vast majority of the clicks businesses receive aren't from local people, they are ran through the syndication network. This means that if a business has a $400 budget for the month, and is not trending to hit anywhere near that, CS will run them through their partner network, ensuring all the clicks are hit, and budget exhausted. Look at your monthly report, notice you'll go weeks without more than a handfull of clicks, then about a week before your month is up that your hits spike, and you're getting 100's of clicks? Many accounts that have an even amount of clicks are still syndicated traffic, i.e. junk traffic from uninterested parties that are from anywhere in the country, not local. This is a scam in the truest sense. There are many details I can't go into, but just trust me on this, stay far, far away. The company is a joke.
Citysearch is a fraud. I signed up with this crowd in early 2010. The sales woman was very pleasant and from what I understood, Citysearch seemed a credible advertising vehicle for my small business.
No mention of a sign-up fee in the initial contract. Apparently the set-up fee is $199.00. I was also charged over $100 for click thrus to my web site. The only thing is I don't have a web site.
Got another bill for over $100 again recently. Still no web site but these were click -thrus, according to the customer service woman I spoke to. While on the phone, she said she had sent me a link to my account where I could review the click thrus and other activities on my account. I even asked her to repeat the email address which was correct. However. no surprise but no email yet. She said the emails might be in queue! I had also requested that my account be terminated. That was going to be emailed as well.
It was clear to me that she was stalling and lying through her teeth. There is a law firm in LA that is planning to file a class action against this crowd. I'll know more tomorrow after i contact them.
As far as I'm concerned, I've been tricked by this very disreputable company. That's my opinion based solely on my experience. Reseasrch "Citysearch fraud" and you'll see for yourself why doing business with this company might not be such a good idea.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH CITYSEARCH!!!
City Search is a scam. They guarantee nothing and use some totally unscrupulous methods to rip you off. Citysearch definitely uses some sort of shady method to drive up the clicks on your profile. It may or may not be legitimate consumer traffic (probably not), but whatever the case out of the alleged 400+ clicks my city search profile was charged for, not a single person contacted me. I looked into citysearch because I needed to get my business listed on some review sites. I set up my account with citysearch, filled out my profile. Then a few days later I was contacted by a sales person from citysearch. He talked me into a higher maximum monthly per click amount, around $400.00. He said this came with some more benefits because it put me in a higher priority category of some sort. I went ahead with it because I run a fairly specific niche business. I own a dance and martial arts studio. So I figured people entering keywords specifically for the services I render would be a manageable amount. Plus the guy selling me the package assured me that the $400.00 was just the maximum amount and would likely not get hit. About a week later I checked my account and it hit the $400.00 limit days ago. I hadn't received one call or email from any clients who had reached me from citysearch. I shut down my account immediately and canceled my credit card so they couldn't bill me for their service. Somehow they have since tacked on 200.00 more dollars on to that bill; I don't how they justified it. But I am not going to pay any of it. All in all, citysearch charges a ridiculously large amount for a totally mediocre service that is potentially not even legit.
Just got scammed by these guys too-- what can I do? they have my card info and I can't change it or cancel the account- customer service is awful. What a horrible scam, I can't believe I was STUPID enough to fall for this. But they did so well marketing and their service was so easy to sign up to-- such a shame, makes me not trust a lot of businesses now.
December 2nd, 2010 ***CITYSEARCH PPC IS A FRAUD*** I have experienced the same thing with CitySearch!!! I advertised both a mortgage company and a masonry stone company on CitySearch and got dinged $500 per month for each company ($1000) for 3 months ($3000). Zero traffic!! I spoke to a silky smooth spin doctor named Greg Schwartz (CitySearch collections) that gave me a hundred explanations as to why I didn't see direct traffic via Google analytics and a even more laughable explanation on how their "visits" are calculated. ALL BOGUS! I disputed the charges with Bank of America and BOA sided with me and reversed the charges but now CitySearch has turned me into collections and I'm afraid of them hurting my credit. How can CitySearch turn people into collections for charging for fraudulent marketing? Unbelievable!!When is the California attorney general going to go after this company? How can they be sued this many times over the course of 5 years and still be operating? Here is my reviews on City Search:
City Search Pay Per Clicks is a FRAUD
CityGrid media is a FRAUD
City Search Advertising is a FRAUD
CityGrid Media marketing is a FRAUD
CitySearch PPC's Advertising is a FRAUD
Write your City Search advertising reviews below to prevent future business owners from being ripped off.
If they continue threatening me with collections I swear to create and optimize:
CitySearchFraud.com
CitySearchPPCFraud.com
CitySearchAdvertisingReviews.c...
Again why hasn't the attorney general shut these people down
First of all, CityGrid (Citysearch) is NOT a scam. Just because a company has some dissatisfied customers doesn't make them a scam. Here's the problem, as I see it, from many of the above posts: you are expecting to be charged only for clicks to your website; however, CityGrid charges for clicks to your Profile page (which features your logo, no competing ads, photos, possible video, sales pitch, reviews, phone tracking, etc.). A website isn't even necessary in order to have a business listed.
Second, traffic is delivered regionally. If you are in Dallas and a customer in New York does a search specific to Dallas, then yes, your business may appear. However, your Dallas Business will typically only be shown to those searchers in the Dallas region.
Third, the CityGrid is comprised of over 250 web properties (websites, iPhone Apps, etc.) and has well over 250 million visitors to those properties on a monthly basis. They are very capable in driving any purchased traffic to your profile (again, if the customer doesn't click through from your profile to your website, that's another matter).
Fourth, CityGrid provides data to Bing, Yahoo and Google... not to mention, also has partnerships with Yelp and just about every other local marketing website on the Internet. It IS one of, if not THE, most trusted aggregators of local business information. A SCAM does NOT achieve the level of industry credibility that CityGrid has.
CityGrid,
I appreciate your post. I wish you would have responded a long time ago.
I am not unreasonable, but find many holes in your post.
First, I was under the impression that you were sending traffic to my landing page I gave you. After complaining I did get traffic to my site, but with a 100% bounce rate. That to me is a deceptive business tactic.
Second, ok.
Third, I know that you send traffic to third party vendors who are incentivized to create bogus clicks to get paid. I knew what was really going on with my spend. I was getting bogus clicks from these sites.
Fourth, I am not debating the value of CityGrid for organic search engine value. I am debating your advertising program.
You need click fraud detection. It is easy to figure out who the spammers are in your network. But you don't care because you make more money ignoring this problem.
If you can prove to me that you have any type of quality control, I would be happy to take down my post and retract my feelings that this is a scam.
Thanks for being reasonable about this... by the way, I'm not a CityGrid employee or official representative. I just chose this as my "handle" considering the topic being discussed. However, I do have a friends there and I will ask them what type of quality control measures are being used to fight fraudulent clicks. In the meantime, I'm going to speculate a bit and say that since the time you had your campaign running that CityGrid (not Citysearch per se) has tightened things up in this regard. I've got several clients who are on the Grid (since August 2010) and we've not seen any kind of fraudulent click activity like you are describing.
It is most certainly NOT a scam. I worked for this company and the value of what we sold was amazing. The problem (as I saw it then, as it clearly remains) is that it is complicated. Business owners do not understand HOW it works AND a lot of the salespeople don't either.
1- If you do not have a website, your profile page acts as your website and you will be charged every single time someone clicks on the listings page to go to your profile.
2- Once someone is on your profile page, you will be charged for clicks made WHILE they are there (maximum of three clicks total). This is one of the many fraud mechanisms in-place.
3- You WANT people to stay on your page. Time-on-site (so to speak) is a GOOD thing. Interaction is good.
4- The intent of a profile page is the page itself MORE than feeding traffic from your listing to your website. If you want the traffic to go to your actual website, that's great. But understand the value of your profile page as well.
5- Remember (and this is a BIG one), your Google Analytics will not line-up with your CityGrid ones. Ultimately, this was my biggest problem working for the company. Google Analytics do not always line-up (in fact rarely do) with any analytics installation (and I'm writing about the paid ones, expensive ones like Omniture and Coremetrics). Nor would the expensive ones line up with CityGrid. This is bc Citygrid is registering in-site activity. What does this mean?
6- Google Analytics measure WHO brought you to the dance. CityGrid measure what they did when they GOT to the dance. CItyGrid acts as your site analytics package for CityGrid only. Your referring sources come from your Google Analytics.
7- I left almost a year ago so things may have changed with the way reports look etc. But I can assure you I wasn't selling a scam. We didn't have the best customer service people in the world though. I told my clients to call me and I would handle it. I told them to NEVER call the 1-800 number. (ugh). I tried to NOT call it myself.
8- The collection agency you are writing about is, in fact, a law firm. But they are a law firm who specialized in collection law. 'nuff said on that one.
I think that's it from me. Oh wait, Yelp! ugh. Yelp! is it's own can of worms. At least if you refuse to advertise on CityGrid, wretched reviews don't mysteriously and suddenly appear on your profile page en masse!
Bottom-line: Like any company, it ain't always pretty and it could ALWAYS be better. But it's not a scam. The world of SEM is very complicated. I've been in online media for 10+ years and I learn something new every day. For real.
I appreciate your comment. You may be right about employees not knowing what they are selling. I was buying traffic to my site which I know gets a 30% conversion rate.
I think what happened was they sent the traffic to my profile page which didn't convert anything. After I complained they sent a bunch of traffic to my site, which still didn't convert anything either.
I have been in the search business before and we knew fraud was in our traffic and found it pretty and quick and blocked it. It is easy to turn a blind eye to this because it makes money for citysearch.
Scam may not be the right word to use. Fraudulent might be a better word to use.
hmmmm. Well it would be unethical if you told your representative that you did not want traffic to your profile page and they sent traffic there anyway, rather than to your website.
It would also have depended on your budget bc traffic will not be sent to your website via Google or Yahoo etc if you don't have enough cap-- as it costs more for CityGrid to get traffic from the search engines; they have to buy it. (As opposed to receiving it for free from their own users). Still with me?
So first, you would have had to have a higher cap. (Which would depend on your category, market, competitive landscape etc. Bars in NY would need a way higher cap, for example, than bars in Orem).
Second, you would have had to have informed your rep and (hopefully) had it written into your contract that way. Perhaps more importantly, why bother with CityGrid if all you wanted was traffic to your website? Why not buy from the engine(s) directly? You sound pretty savvy. Just do AdWords... (Just curious).
As for the unethical/fraud part part of this, reps get paid the same either way so I can't imagine why they would care where your traffic came from--as long as you GOT traffic.
Funny, here I am in this hub writing about this. I got so sick of this when I worked there (bc I inherited a whole bunch of clients). But I always ensured my people understood what they were buying. At least I think I did...
I had a similar experience with CityGrid. I made the mistake of setting a $400.00 limit on my account. Part of my experience was my own ignorance. However, they made no effort to rectify the situation and were equally as rude and unwilling to cancel my account immediately. I received 0 results from this product. Put $400 in my hand and I can generate two solid sold leads without a doubt. I work hard for my income and if I ever pulled anything like this with my clients I would go under instantly. This is a prime example of big national business taking advantage of large contracts and a high volume of clients with no real product or service. They offer no guarantee of satisfaction or service. I would suggest staying away from this company.
CityGrid is a fraud. They promised an interview and reviews and bing and urbanspoon and mobile aps and myspace and facebook.
Most of these sites are FREE and many have user terms that forbid third party charges.
They cost 30 to 50 times more than google for the same number of views, and they do not count "CLICKS" to my site only their half baked sites that are EQUAL to the free sites.
They max my budget for 3 confirmed calls! They did not include the "media" they promised and may not even have legal rights to the "media". For example they promised "My Space", but no site was ever created. They promised "Bing", but only included the "Free Bing". They promised an "interview" but none occurred.
Please do not do business with them.
Don't listen to any so-called "employees" or "friends" of City Serch on here! It's a total scam and they ripped me off good. They had me locked into 250 a month for a year! This was in 2008...I don't know if they have yearly contracts at this moment. I was not allowed to cancel and had to fight them with everything I had - listen to tape recordings of me saying "ok" to a speedy description that didnt mention the "partners network" ie. Fake clickers from all over. I got no biz from thyem and paid them good. I run an on-site computer repair biz and I also know about who calls me and when as I answer the phone for my biz. I also saw no clicks for days then 100 in one day etc etc... STAY WAY FROM CITY SEARCH!!!! YOU HAVE BEN WARNED!!!
If the rep from CityGrid has no clue what they're saying and can't answer a concern of yours from the beginning without hesitating, then don't sign. I work for CityGrid Media and there are a few things you need to understand. CityGrid Media does not create the pages on all of our partner companies, Myspace or bing for example. All of the partner sites and mobile apps have the option to pull content from us. If they choose to do so, the content from the Citysearch page is then pasted onto YOUR business' listing already on that page. It is atthe discretion of the nearly 250 websites and mobile apps to pull content from us. CityGrid Media is now the leading supplier of trusted content and information across the web. If anyone on this post knows what the Los Angeles Economic Counsel is, or the USC Marshall School of Business is (just to name a couple), you should know that CityGrid Media has won the award for the most innovative and useful online product for 2010! We know what we are doin and we get results. If your lacing out your budget and not seeing any result, it is because your rep isn't doing a good job at making your pages specific enough to weed out the looky-loos. If they are tailor-made to each business like they're supposed to be, you should and will only receive quality clicks.
If you take a look at you business' Google Places (maps) page, as a customer you will notice that Google now pulls the majority of it's content for YOUR listing from YOUR Citysearch page. Anytime someone views your google page, that is free traffic to you, but with info we provide. We only charge 1 click rate per page view now. His is to keep in line with Google & Bing.
If you don't understand completely how something works and your rep can't explain it properly to you so you can make an educated decision, then Don't Sign The Paperwork!
This company is the worst. Please keep us updated on the class actions lawsuit. Thank you so much for the blog and information. I will be posting this on twitter and facebook shortly. I suggest everyone to post on Twitter and FB, let google start linking to all this type of fraudulent action.
As I read through these posts I see that some people are very unhappy and some people are defending Citygrid. Is there service a ripoff? No. It is worth the money compared to other services out there. No. The actions that make them a ripoff to me is that they have a auto enroll campaign system that will start generating bills weather you like it or not. They entered random zip codes in my account information, push traffic to a profile page with a separate phone number, and have no trace of my website address anywhere. After talking to customer service it was easy to see how common these complaints are by the scripted responses to each complaint I made. Even after I cancelled my account they charged my credit card over $800.00. They are a nighmare.
I wanted to reassure everyone that nothing has changed...they are still the same shady company...please avoid at all costs.
email bsk@kbklawyers.com, he is managing the class action suit against CityGrid
Thank you for this valuable information. I signed up just last week! Took care of the potential problem with my credit card company. Does anyone know a reputable service for increasing local traffic, specifically, traffic that becomes potential sales?
Does anyone have the full list of sites that are part of the CityGrid network?
I want to make a few suggestions,I too have been scammed by city search, but not as bad as I could have been, had I not used a per paid card, so they weren't able to take the attempted funds, of 316.00, I was told I had a 30 day trail, which I canceled no sooner then I signed up. I have recorded conversations, were the guy Micheal/Shawn told me they wold cancel my membership no problem, well why am I getting threatens to be sent to a collection agency and lien on my business for the amount of $600.00 first off I know my rights, and I know the law, I have told them not to contact me again, I'm thinking in the near future to avoid scams like this, maybe it is best to use a prepaid card, that way they can't take more then you put on, in case the company is like these phonies.
I am a former employee of CitySearch/City Grid Media. All of the posts listed here (except those clearly posted by a member of IAC's PR staff) are completely on the mark. Through the network of City Grid sites (most of which are small and unknown), your profile is pushed as often as possible to assure your CPC ceiling is achieved. More often than not your profile page will not even be seen through this transaction. Further, you'll never receive a list of those sites that are part of City Grid; most are small and come and go. As someone mentioned, employee morale is terrible; sales staffs turn over with unbelievable frequency. Quite frankly, I'm shocked they're still in business!
You are right, this is a nightmare. I cancelled my credit card after reading this blog that I used to initially set up the account. We are now being hounded by their collection's agent for charges for services never provided. Like Notgoingtotakeit, they are threatening to turn us over to collections on an amount of less than $200.00 I too know the law. I think we should all contact our appropriate State Attorney generals and submit a complaint.
Everyone here is on point with their remarks. CityGrid Media is a complete scam! You can get the same exposure across the CityGrid network spending $200 a month as you would spending $1,000. Also, for those that are currently using the service use google analytics as well and you will see the statistics to be off when comparing the reporting CityGrid gives you and google.
Still a problem, I had $500 charge and 0 calls with only 3 website views that immediately bounced. Just cancelled so know sure how that is going to go yet
citygrid media now owes me $3,000 and i can't seem to get anyone on the phone. this company should be shut down
I signed up with Citygrid Media in September 2010. I did not look at the traffic they were sending my way, but when my budget of $1,239.00/month ran out on the 3rd week of the month I signed up with Visistat.
The number of fraudulent clicks CityGrid delivers is staggering. Over a period of 6 months 43% of the visitors they delivered is pure fraud.
STAY AWAY THEY WILL ROB YOU BLIND
I signed up with CityGrid Media on a one month trial base. I believe it was in the month of June 2011. They gave me a falsified promise, that they would not charge my credit card until I give them the OK. I was never happy with the way they represented my business. I realized, there was a lot of wrong information. I contact them many times to correct it. Unfurtunatly, with out my knowledge they went ahead and charged me $300.00 on July 17. Since this was credit card charge, I found out about it when I received my statement on August 10. I immediately, call them and complained, no use. I officially canceled the contract. Amonth latter I saw another charge of $300.00. I tried to contact the company and reason with them. It was no use. My credit company is reversing the charges, which I am happy for. To me this is fraud and I can not support that kind of behavior. After I went on line, and checked the reviews, I realized I am not alone. They have done many wrong things to people.
Most the the issues with city grid come from poor sales reps that do not service their account after they sign a client. The product is not a scam and is the best local ad network in the country. No ad program is perfect. Also, the old city search from 2 years ago does not exist any more. City grid media product is not perfect but many other major sem companies buy their traffic. I know for a fact that Yellow pages, reach local and yodle all buy the cost per click traffic for their clients.
True it has been 2 years since my post. But there have been comments made to my post in the last few months that tell me nothing has changed since two years ago.
CityGrid is truely a scam... after one month thr reports they provide showed 29-35 people per day "contacting our site" which is completely false! This company needs a class action lawsuit to help them come to grips with their scam... Google PPC is the only thing that has ever wored for us, expensive, but it works!
I know for a fact that its a scam. I advertised with city search, received not 1 enquiry, not a single phone call not a single customer. They want $1.50/click. within 1 week they said I had over 400 clicks but not 1 phone call. Then I ran the same add with google at$15/day and average of $0.53/click. The first day I got 26 clicks and 8 customers. So far my google add has brought me at lease 30 new customers/week! and has cost me $283/in 20 days. Citty search is unnecessary and over priced.
I signed up for a service with an electrolygist in my area based on her multiple positive reviews (see: http://syracuse.citysearch.com/profile/7652318/eas It took me six months to figure out she was not actually doing the job she was suppose to be doing and I fired her and moved on to someone else. I then tried to write an honest review of my experience with the first electrolygist on her website. It disappeared from her website and wound up pasted onto the website of my new electrolygist: (http://syracuse.citysearch.com/profile/629866690/s As you can see, all of the reviews are completely useless on both sites and there seems to be no attempt on the part of Citysearch to police this at all. Attempts to complain about this have been completely ignored. I think people like me, who were scammed by the fake positive reviews and threw a ton of money away as a result should start a class action suit against this company.
Can I stop CityGrid charges legally? I am out of $.. they said you will get so much business and charged me $465 the first month... not one client. They told me they traced 590 hits to my profile and phone calls. They didn't have the correct phone number on my site for 20 days and said I agreed to a toll free number... never! My business line rejects transferes from toll free #s. I tried to cancel, they told me I was under contract for 3 months but I never recieved anything concerning a contract from them! Can I stop the charges? They said they would sue me and win?
All true they got me for $900 for 4 days at the end of the month and not one click through on my analytics. immediately canceled the service and they still charged me an additional $900 the next month for nothing!!!
Citysearch and CityGrid are scammers. They promise lots of things and deliver nothing. Zero customers after paying them hundreds of dollars every month. Then, they leave web sites all over the Internet with the wrong address and phone numbers. They promise to fix them, but after years, they have not.
theoneut 2 years ago
10-5-09 update
Nice, my blog is now on first page for "citysearch advertising fraud". Since my complaints clicks to my site increased with 97% bounce rate. They spent the whole $200 and said they will "Invoice" me on the 8th. Good luck with that "Invoice".