All Over The Map

Google Webmaster Tools notice when Crowdflower clicks stop

This is a follow up to my previous post about unwanted traffic from Crowdflower.

Now that the Crowdflower traffic to the site has stopped, here is the notice below that you will see in Google Webmaster Tools.  It's nothing to worry about, but it's Google's friendly way of telling you that something has caused a significant decrease in traffic to your site and you might want to investigate. 2,200 visits from Crowdflower in December, 1.62 pages per visit and 97% new visitors. Only 15 visits in January. Finally, the unwanted Crowdflower traffic has discontinued.

If Crowdflower has bombed your site with unwanted traffic and you subsequently see the message from Google, don't worry. It was bogus traffic anyway and only served to falsely inflate your traffic reports. I had to filter the traffic from my reports for two months so it wouldn't look like I did something to cause the traffic decrease when it discontinued.

Crowdflower.com sends spam traffic to your website

Have you ever noticed a spike in Referral traffic to your website? You probably got all excited thinking your website traffic is receiving a nice increase in traffic that will improve your website goals.  And then you examine your traffic analytics reports more closely to figure out where the spike came from. You discover that the traffic is coming from www.crowdflower.com.  :(

I examined the behavior of visitors from this domain and they don't do anything!! They mostly enter through the home page. They might visit one more page. They spend about 45 seconds on average on the site. Try to look at any of the many referring URLs and the pages won't load.

I looked up their street location using Google Satellite view.

2111 Mission Street, Suite 302, San Francisco, CA 94110

It looks like they are on the second floor of a dingy building in some dingy part of San Francisco.

They don't respond to my calls or email inquiries. I want to know who they are and why are they sending so much bogus traffic to my company website every month.  I have to filter this traffic from my monthly reports so they are not overinflated. The increase in traffic on the surface looks like I'm doing something wonderful to increase traffic. But, it's not legitimate quality traffic we care about, so I'm excluding it.

Maybe someone from Crowdflower will find this blog post and stop sending traffic to the site!

How to setup a blog with a GoDaddy domain to load without WWW

If your domain hosted at GoDaddy points to a blog, i.e. yourdomain.typepad.com, and you want to load your site without www, here is how you set it up.

• Go to the Domain Manager.
• Choose the domain (if you have more than one)
• In the Domain Information section, the last item in the list is Forwarding
• Click on the "Manage" link on the right.
• The windows indicates at the top: Forward yourdomain.com to:
• In the box below it, enter your domain with the www, like this:  www.yourdomain.com
• Click OK

It will take about an hour before it propagates.

I previously thought you had to add something to the CNAME (Alias) to make this work. But you don't have to make any CNAME changes as long as your A record @ points to your IP address.

If your domain is hosted by GoDaddy, your site will load with or without www. You don't have to do anything.

Google Panda & Penguin Updates Simply Explained [Infographic]

This simple infographic illustrates the Google Panda and Penguin updates. Has your web site experienced a recent reduction in traffic from Google? Learn 10 ways to ensure your site is not effected or how to recover from the effects of the Google Panda and Penguin updates.

 

Wordtracker Unauthorized Credit Card Charges

This blog entry is to spread the word about a bad experience I'm having with Wordtracker.com  As a result of Wordtracker's poor customer service and unwillingness to communicate with customers by phone to resolve issues as quickly as possible, I do not recommend this service.  Here's why...

Wordtracker.com is a web service used to perform research on the frequency of keywords used in search engines. I haven't used Wordtracker in several years since I started using a competitor's service - KeywordDiscovery.com by Trellian.

I recently discovered that Wordtracker charged me the monthly fee in January and February of $59 per month. I found some old account login information, but there is no way to manage your billing within your account. The only way to cancel your account is to send email to Wordtracker. I don't have active account billing setup!  I immediately called my credit card company to dispute the charges. They suggested that I contact Wordtracker first as it will be faster if they will just credit me the unauthorized charges.

Wordtracker will not communicate with anyone by phone. There is no physical address information on their web site. The copyright indicates Rivergold Associates Ltd, but you can't find any phone number for this company online. You can only communicate with Wordtracker via email. Makes you wonder why they don't want to be contacted. This is the email response I received from Wordtracker:

It is regrettable but under the terms of our agreement with the credit card companies and also United Kingdom data protection legislation we are not permitted to assist with this.

You must report this activity to your credit card company as fraudulent. They will contact us and we can then provide them with all relevant information. We will of course do this promptly.
I am sorry we cannot help further at this time.

Kind Regards
Anne Curtis
Customer Service Manager
Wordtracker

I have now filed a dispute for these charges with my credit card company. This will take some time, but it's worth the effort.  I'm concerned about a company that does its best to prevent from being contacted and is not concerned about customer satisfaction - especially when it's related to unauthorized credit card charges.

The one good thing is that I had to cancel my credit card on February 23 and issue a new number because of suspected fraud.  Wordtracker will be unable to charge me any further as the number they have on file will be declined!!

I highly recommend Keyword Discovery by Trellian.  Not only is their tool for keyword research better, but they offer live support on the web site as well as many local phone numbers worldwide and a physical address.