Do NOT use Citysearch PPC advertising

Citysearch is actually quite a widely used local directory, and in theory good potential for quality clicks. And at $0.75 a click, you're kinda hoping that will be the case.

Man, they SUCK! I put my dog walking business up there. As usual, when you sign up you submit your keywords - I thought everything would be OK. And you do get a lot of clicks from them. In fact, it was costing me a fortune. That would be OK if I was getting any responses from those clicks. After my clicks hit 70 and I still hadn't had ONE response from any of them, I decided to investigate my web logs. Turns out, the search terms that my clickers had submitted, which lead them to my site, were COMPLETELY irrelevant.

Examples include "Pet Spa", "gifts for pets", "dog yoga" and "dog breeders", among many others equally as useless to me. Turns out they are putting my business up there whenever anyone submits anything to do with pets or animals. Completely unacceptable. When people get a page of results, they tend to click on everything that comes up, mostly without reading the description too closely. So I basically got a load of very expensive, completely useless clicks. Not only that, but they make it a real pain to cancel - nobody answers the phones and emails come back undelivered. Even after I spoke to a guy who promised me he was stopping my account at that moment, I still had clicks for two days afterwards - all irrelevant as usual. Of course, I'm refusing to pay them for those days - they're damn lucky I don't refuse to pay the whole lot.

I've since heard other people bitch about the same thing regarding Citysearch - they're ripping people off left right and center with irrelevant clicks at $0.75 a pop! DON'T USE CITYSEARCH!

 

Thanks for the warning.....is .75 cents a click cheap for you?

I guess they're just not targetted well....or there's a very lazy algorithm

 

Hell no! I've used Google before and I never bid over $0.30 a click, with very satisfactory results. I read somewhere that Citysearch was good, so I decided to ditch Google for a month and give it a try. I've just restarted my Google campaign.

I don't think it's anything like a "lazy" algorithm, I just think they're shifty bastards who deliberately make sure you get lots of irrelevant clicks. My main gripe is that I gave them a full list of keywords when I signed up but nowhere does it mention that they're going to be adding a whole truck full of irrelevant keywords on top of that.

 

Do you have any stats or anything you could show us? It's just a bit weird having a first post being a bad reputation with no background.

I've never heard of Citysearch. But it seems their sites in 'categories' perhaps they just targetted your ads towards the entire pets and animals category?

 

Sounds like it didn't work. Time to just move on maybe?

 

Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing. I just thought if anyone was considering trying a Citysearch ad - and a hell of a lot of local businesses are these days - they should know what's possibly in store for them.

Citysearch has basic categories like 'restaurants' and 'events' and 'shopping' etc, but none of them lead to my ad which is for a dog walking business. Every click I get is as the result of a search inquiry, which of course is embedded in the URL the visitor came from, which I can see in my web logs. Almost all my clicks are from people who were searching for anything but a dog walker. Most of these search terms were terms I did not submit as search terms. I mean come on - "dog yoga" brings up a dog walker on the first page of results? "Pet gifts"? I don't include "pet" or "gifts" in my keywords. Another thing which pissed me off was that they sent me a ton of visitors from the Brooklyn Citysearch when I specifically requested Manhattan only on the application. That cost me quite a few $0.75s, I can tell ya. Being a very small operation I only have a small advertising budget.

I don't know whether this is down to intentional slyness from Citysearch or whether it's just a bad algorithm, but I would advise anyone who intends to give them a go to check their web logs carefully in case the same thing happens to them.

On a lighter note - I just noticed they still didn't take my ad down - I hope they don't think I'm paying for any of that s**t!

 

Credit where it's due - after my complaints to Citysearch, they have waived my ENTIRE PPC bill, so I'm being invoiced for $0.00 which is sweet.

 

wow, that's cool.

 

I don't know anything about citysearch so I'm not defending them. However, I had a similar problem with Google adwords until I caught on to the fact that you have to nail down the keywords they stay with.
With G, you have to use "KW" or, better, [KW] to force them to stay on target. Is the same feature available in citysearch?

 

What do you mean "nail down"? I sumbitted a list of keywords and phrases to them - is that enough or do I have to do something else?

What's this [KW] business also?

 

What's this [KW] business also?

Adwords allows Exact keyword match if you place it in brackets [] so if you say dog walker is your keyword but do not put it in brackets [dog walker] then your ad would show if someone typed "dog walker in nyc" or "looking for dog walker" whereas if you used brackets your ad would only show if someone typed "dog walker"

 

always use [ ] to filter out junk clicks. .75 cent per click is very expensive and not very cost effective.

 

It is too cheap.

 

Have you used citysearch?

Speaking for yourself of course.

What's too cheap?

 

75 cents is certainly not too cheap for a PPC system that directs people to your site from irrelevant keywords.

 

I had a ex-employee wrote a negative review on my Citysearch profile. I was able to proof it, and notify Citysearch. They ignored me for a week, and I complained again, and threatened to take pull my Ad out. Then they responded, and it was some auto generated message that this review does not warrant removal, and asked me did I respond to this negative review, which I did 30 days ago. This implies that they did not even look into my complain or my file, all they want is to take my money, generate as many irrelevant clicks as they can, and not have to do a damn thing. I pulled my Ad immediate, and will never use them again!

 

A big thanks on that tip!