I agree they are destroying mine, my wonderful animal care facilities because they incourage competitors to post negative reviews. Then once anyone of your 23 employees when fired can make up even more lies when they know your only weakness is this site.

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $9.68

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $8.95

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $7.25

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $9.70

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $205.54

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $6.99

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $21.99

Pending ODP\SWP DR MEMO $7.25
Pending POS DEBIT TMO*CITYSEARCH 800-611-4827 CA $359.95

Happy to be a non citysearcher

Some of their bogus policies are:
-Per unique IP address they will charge you THREE times (at .40cents per click) per session. If that person gets off that web browser and jumps one a new one, it charges you again.
-Google maps- someone clicks on your map on google that is attached to citysearch, they charge your account
-Reviews, addresses, phone numbers, click over to YOUR OWN website.

It’s unbelievable. Also two of my locations were not authorized for SEM campaigns. When I signed up my third store, they placed this info on all three of my accounts. I started going through $800-1000 in 10-12days instead of a month-long campaign.

The regional manager for my acct. exec finally called me AFTER I canceled when I had requested to speak with him several times before I finally said goodbye to citysearch. I mentioned the clicks and the information I knew… my old acct. rep did last another three days apparently because of the convo I had with the boss. Fired for being honest to me about how the clicks work. LOVE IT.

I ended up doing a charge back on all three locations because they would not return my phone calls or email in regards to confirmation of the accts being canceled.

I purchased some tracking addresses to see how many clicks from citysearch were going to my webpages when the numbers got really suspicious and no one would contact me. I also put my traceable phone lines on the profile, NOT A SINGLE ONE. They all redirected to the main website and off to other locations of my business.

Citysearch is the biggest rip off, I hope someone takes them down. If I can jump on the Citysearch Lawsuit bandwagon sign us up. They owe me at least a couple grand in SEM clicks.

Let’s say you own a dress shop in Chicago and you only serve the Chicago market. You contact CitySearch and setup a listing/profile page for your shop to be listed on CitySearch’s “Chicago” directory because that’s the market you serve. You give them a budget and guess what, you quickly receive enough visitors to your profile page to max out your monthly budget! It doesn’t seem to matter how high or low your budget, somehow you get enough clicks to max it out. How can this be? Gee golly how can your little dress business get so many hits? Especially when you don’t see an increase in business on your end. No phone calls, no emails, no big jump in visitors to your own web site, virtually nothing.

The answer?…. drum roll please …

When you sign up for a listing for your “Chicago” business to be posted on their “Chicago” focused pages, you think that’s all you get, right? Heck no. It turns out they also bury on their site dozens of additional links for your business. They post these buried links on pages that are devoted to other cities/markets. So, they list you in Chicago as expected. But they also place listings/links for your business on their pages for Atlanta, and Los Angeles, and Houston, and New York, and San Diego, and St. Louis, and so on. Each of these additional listings or links automatically “redirect” to your “Chicago” profile page when they are visited or “clicked” … once clicked, presto! You are charged for the visit to your profile page. Remberber, CitySearch charges you when someone (or something) lands on your profile page, not on your own web site.

Now, these links are quite buried so no actual person will find them in a normal search. So who finds them? Search engine spiders do.

There are thousands of them out there that race around the web day and night. They follow every link they can find no matter how buried the link may be. These automated spiders are used by firms like Google, or Yahoo, or lesser known search engines to catalogue the entire web. Anyway, when you have dozens of links plastered all over CitySearch’s site you’re gonna get “hit” by these spiders and then get charged by CitySearch.

How can you verify what I’m saying? How can you tell if CitySearch has listed your firm on dozens of pages that have nothing to do with your geographic market? Simple. Do a Google search that contains two terms. 1) Your company name (it helps if your company name is fairly unique) and 2) the word CitySearch. What you’ll find are links to your paid listing in the city you chose, but also dozens of other listings in random cities around the country. Google may determine many of these listings are very similar and post the following text at the bottom of their search results list: “In order to show you the most relevant results, we (Google) have omitted some entries very similar to the (#) already displayed. If you like, you can (link starts here) repeat the search with the omitted results included.” Press that link and you’ll see all the additional links CitySearch has posted. Links that you did not request and that do not apply to your business’ geographic territory (assuming you are a small or mid-sized company with a regional focus). Press any of those additional CitySearch links, say the Atlanta link, and it will automatically forward to your Chicago profile page. Congratulations, you just charged youself for a visit!

In addition to the links on dozens of CitySearch City pages that are unrelated to your business market/geography, they give your info to “partners” who post links to your profile page on their web sites. Some of these will not be geography specific either. But CitySearch doesn’t care. What they want are as many links to your profile page as possible. More links means more clicks (even clicks by spiders). More clicks means they make more money. Simple as that.

Anyway, there’s a good reason why they create “profile” pages for you and charge you when the “profile” page is selected. I mean, wouldn’t it be better if they sent people directly to your website instead? After all, you’ve likely invested a lot of time and money on your site to communicate your brand, what you sell, etc. Do you really need a profile page with your address and contact info? That’s already on your own site! What gives here?

The reason they and others like Yellowpages use “profile pages” is so you cannot see and monitor in detail the click activity for that profile page. They control the page, they control the server, they control the data. All you get from them are crude visitor reports. If they charged you when people clicked directly to your actual web site then you would be able to monitor the activity in great detail. How so? Well, if you have a decent web analytics program you could see what time of day the clicks occur on your site. If a lot of the clicks occur between midnight and 5 a.m. there’s a huge chance the clicks are not human, rather they are spider activated. Or worse they are activated by humans who are overseas and paid pennies to click on sites like yours to raise the click count. Here’s another thing you can check with a good analytic program …. How long are the visitors on your site? If a lot of the visits are less than 1 second then you know the visit was by a spider. They come and go within milliseconds and show up on most analytic programs as a 0 second or 1 second visit. Again, you can only monitor this sort of stuff on your own site with a tool like Google Analytics (a free program). But since you are charged for clicks on your CitySearch profile page, you are at their mercy when it comes to reporting. And all they share with you are raw visits or something like that. And as I’ve discussed you have no way of knowing who or what caused those visits, when they occured, and so on. I have talked with CitySearch’s click fraud team (the foxes that guard the hen house) in the past and demanded more detailed reports. I was promised them but was also told that they would take weeks to produce. Did they ever send them? No. They never called back. They never sent the reports. I can’t say I was surprised.

In closing, I see someone has initiated a class-action lawsuit against CitySearch. I wish them luck.

In addition, once I canceled my account in July, they illegally re-opened in a month later and began charging me again. I didn’t find out about this until I went to get new tires for my car and my debit card was declined.

I called my roommate, and asked him to look at my account and tell me what had happened because as far as I knew, there was plenty of money in my account to cover that $185 purchase. He said that there was a hold placed on my account from Citysearch in the amount of $264.65.

At this time it was about 6pm EST and I tried to call Citysearch to resolve this matter. I was transferred over and over, placed on hold, hung up on while on hold, sent to the wrong departments and so on. I called on both my personal and business cell phone for an hour and was given the run-around by everyone that I spoke with until, conveniently, they were closed at 7pm EST.

I called the bank to dispute the charges and there was nothing they could do until the transaction had gone through because at that time it was just a hold placed on the account. I was stuck at the tire place, embarrassed, with no way to pay for my new tires even though I had, until Citysearch illegally withdrew the money from my account, the funds to cover that important purchase.

The next day, August 26, 2008, I called again and spoke with a man named Ray. As you can imagine, I was understandably not the most pleasant person and will freely admit that. I wanted to have my money back. He asked me to forward the email that I had sent to Michael Goggins (the rep in charge of my account) on July 21st to him, which I did. At that time he offered as a “courtesy” to refund me only $200 of the $264.65 that was withdrawn stating that I would only be refunded the amount from July 21 (the date of the email sent to cancel the account). This was unacceptable after everything that I had already gone through, and the fact that I was told by a representative of Citysearch that I would no longer be charged, so I asked to speak with a supervisor.

I spoke with Joyce Marshal and she stated that she would listen to the phone conversation from July 24, 2008 (when I finally called to cancel because Michael Goggins wouldn’t return my calls and emails) and get back to me between 3:00pm and 4:30pm on August 26. I informed her that after 4:30pm I would be in session with clients and would not be available. She did not call me back until 6:05pm at which time, as I had previously stated, I would was not available.

The next day, after my first client, I again called Joyce Marshal and was again only offered a refund for the amount after July 21, 2008. She stated that she listened to the phone conversation and that the man I spoke with on the 24th did not say that I would not be charged. This is wrong. I know what I heard, and I specifically asked him if I was to expect any more charges because I need to be able to keep up on the money coming in and out of my business. I am not a stupid person, and I make my living as a hypnotherapist listening to people and taking down every detail. I know what I heard.

After this I began writing letters to every email address for Citysearch employees that I could find, including the president. I was contacted by Scott Asher and told that I would receive a refund. That day, instead of receiving a refund, I got another charge for $6.90 adding to more overdraft fees.

He also stated that he would refund the overdraft fees but when I emailed him a copy of my bank statement with all of the charges, he said that they wouldn’t email it until I signed a settlement agreement with them, which I am not willing to do.

My car insurance was canceled because of all the overdraft fees, my business cell phone shut off and numerous other expenses that would take forever to list.

Citysearch destroys small business and the lives of the owners. This isn’t about making a buck for me, this is about right and wrong. I wonder how many other businesses had to close their doors after being scammed by these crooks.

Several calls and emails to citysearch requesting details about the clicks but citysearch can’t offer me details, such as IP address, http referrals or such.

How can I tell, as a customer who should have the right to know what I pay for,
1) repeating clicks from same IP
2) how local are the ppl who clicks (supposed to be local advertising service)

By the way, according to their terms online (available @ myaccount.citysearch.com), in order to cancel the service, i can email to an address. however, that email address is undeliverable.

Another thing is that I can get a month to month contract if I sign up online. The sales person deceived me into a minimum 3 months contract. I’m glad I pick the minimum budget to start with, which is $200 each month.

One more thing is that there should be a $30 discount if sign up online. The sale person agreed to the $30 discount and it is in the recording. The email from that sale person confirms that too. Now the account manager says the discount / credit will be applied to the account in the second month, instead the first month bill.

I’m glad I have tuned up my customer’s web site good enough to show on the first page @ google when search for certain keywords. I guess I don’t really need to waste that ~$210 / month to citysearch anymore.

Still waste me ~$630 to get out of the contract.

I don’t know a whole lot about the law, but that’s the basic principle, right?

Somebody remind him that not all business investments pan out. Just stop using the service, call it a day, and go somewhere else. Even if this lawsuit goes through, it’s just adding in rules which an unscrupulous company wouldn’t follow anyways, let alone that it could have some ripple effects for other advertisers who may have to increase costs for compliance.

This won’t stop click fraud.

I think a competitor was trying to screw one of my clients

(allegedly) don’t sue me bro!

Can you imagine their first meeting?

“You’ve been harmed”

LMAO