John Smith From Google - UTM Google Shopper - Creating false abandoned carts

ingramleedy
Visitor
3 0 20

I am using Google Shopper to push our products from Shopify store into Google Shopper.  Google Shopper seems to have a bot that constantly crawls our products, adds an item to a cart, goes to check out and creates an account variant of "John Smith" - johnsmith+1222@gmail.com or some other number.    

 

Shopify doesn't track user-agent or IP address for abandoned orders. So I installed 3rd part apps to discover and found the IP addresses all belong to the Google IP allocation.  

 

It's frustrating as this is creating many abandoned carts which throw off the statistics and analytics for the site, creating accounts, kicks off automation scripts, etc, etc, etc.  

Does anyone else have this issue?   

-Ingram

 

 

Replies 117 (117)
AVL
New Member
7 0 0

Suppressing John Smith in Klaviyo will not block them and you won't get charged for the hundreds of profiles. If you have a Shopify Plus plan just add a Recaptcha at the Cart. You can also just change your settings in Google Merchant Center and unselect allowing Google to crawl your site for price and availability for Google Shopping - see the screenshots at the bottom of the pinned blog post on my blog. I'll pin the post at the top for ease of reference.

EmmanuelFlossie
Shopify Partner
2953 221 710

Recaptcha is essentially stopping people from continuing the checkout. This also blocks the bots from checking. Enabling this will get you disapproved.

 

The bots are not controlled by the unchecking automatic updates. The bots are actually for all merchants. Google does this to check whether the shipping details are correct and if the price in the checkout matches the landing page and data feed.

The automatic updates, only checks the landing page, not the checkout.

Hope this helps.

Get in touch with Emmanuel: a Google Shopping Specialist, Google Ads Diamond Product Expert, and also a a Google Product Expert Education 2021 & Tailwind 2023 Award winner.
Need Google Merchant Center or Google Shopping support?.
AVL
New Member
7 0 0

Ok if you think Recaptcha “blocks” Google then that means that brands can still set their settings to not allow Google to check for price and availability. Not ALL brands are crawled for this and only the ones who sign up for it are subject to the crawling. I have worked with numerous brands across WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento and not all have John Smith. Just because you are signed up for Google Shopping doesn’t mean you are subject to John Smith. I know Shopify’s weaknesses and even Shopify HR was recruiting me last year for the UX Business Director post.

EmmanuelFlossie
Shopify Partner
2953 221 710

I think the reason Google has not built a bot for every eCommerce platform is that each eCommerce platform has different server-side elements that control the ordering of items.

John Smith bot has started just about 2 or 3 months or so ago. As this bot requires to physically click on a button, it needs to know what buttons to click. And this is different for each eCommerce platform.

As Shopify is unified across all merchants, developing a bot for this is very easy, especially as the checkout is all the same. I am expecting this to roll out to all major eCommerce platforms within the next 2 years.

I'm glad Shopify wants to recruit you, that's an amazing opportunity.

Keep safe.

 

 

Get in touch with Emmanuel: a Google Shopping Specialist, Google Ads Diamond Product Expert, and also a a Google Product Expert Education 2021 & Tailwind 2023 Award winner.
Need Google Merchant Center or Google Shopping support?.
AVL
New Member
7 0 0
I just had a call with Google Merchant Center. They confirmed that it is ok
to block John Smith. While they would not disclose what is John Smith, they
did 100% confirm that John Smith is not connected to Google Ads. Blocking
John Smith will not affect the Ads performance including Shopping.
Michele_Carr
Excursionist
23 0 6
That is NOT what I was told by the Google Merchant team. I was told that if
they cannot check out shipping and pricing that is advertised in our Google
Shopping feed for an item, that item will no longer show up in Google
Shopping. This is also what was told to the WSJ writer.

I think Google needs to get their messaging act together.
EmmanuelFlossie
Shopify Partner
2953 221 710

For anyone concerned, please ask your questions at Google's official community. 

And I want to emphasize, that AVL's reply regarding blocking bots or users, is not allowed. Most likely the Google Employee you talked to, did not fully understand your question or was answered out of context. Simply read the policy, here it is again: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/4752265?hl=en

Everyone, please do not listen to blocking checkout users, this is such as serious violation, that you will get suspended.

@Michele_Carr thanks for your reply. And making the public aware of the policy.

@AVL, sorry but your comment can not be verified and is a policy violation as per: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/4752265?hl=en

You can filter out your analytics data, that is absolutely fine, just not block checkout users or bots.

Get in touch with Emmanuel: a Google Shopping Specialist, Google Ads Diamond Product Expert, and also a a Google Product Expert Education 2021 & Tailwind 2023 Award winner.
Need Google Merchant Center or Google Shopping support?.
AVL
New Member
7 0 0
I reached out to GMC again for a final confirmation on their previous
statement. Looks like they backtracked. The final resolution was to remove
the data created by John Smith versus blocking. I have updated my blog post
to reflect their updated statement.

>From Klaviyo, deleting John Smith will just allow the bot to come back and
they recommended suppression. It boggles the mind that Google would skew
their own Analytics data. After updating the settings for Google to not
automatically update the price and availability (I use Feedonomics for the
product feeds), there has been no sign of the bot but I'll keep monitoring
it.
Suzanne88
Visitor
2 0 0
I have not tried any of the suggested methods… and yes, I do notice a drop in sales while “john Smith” is on the site.
AlwaysAmazing
Visitor
2 0 0

Hey this just happened to my store too! Same physical address and everything. The email given was Johnsmithus.1801@gmail.com. I hope they fix this soon!

Pabloinkosi
Tourist
7 0 7

@AlwaysAmazing welcome to the new normal, where John Smith will become your most annoying customer. I’ve had him visiting my store probably 20 time’s a week (rough guess) since Feb 2020. (Makes me wonder is his middle name is Rona 🤣🤣)

LucyKMD
Visitor
2 0 0

I'm having the same problem... started in November 2019 as well. Has ramped up dramatically in the last week. 

Kyle_Russell1
Tourist
5 0 9

Our 'John Smiths' seems to come and go in waves. We won't have anything for a few days and then we'll get hit like this, this was all on Monday:

 

John_Smith.jpg

 

So apparently Google has denied that this is their Shopping bots causing this?

Garry46
Tourist
8 0 7

I think it's our competitors monitoring our pricing.

Here's a service they might be using to do it:
https://www.pricingbot.co/

Garry46
Tourist
8 0 7

Found a great resource for our bot issue!
We could be looking at OAT-021 Denial of Inventory or OAT-011 Scraping

Found a bunch of articles like this that give little dummy guides to these kinds of issues because they are selling a solution. but i like this one because of this part:

"Threat actors try their best to disguise their bad scraping bots as good ones, such as the ubiquitous Googlebots. DataDome identifies over 1 million hits per day from fake Googlebots on all customer websites."

guy12
Shopify Expert
10 0 4

Hey just wondering if you found any evidence that it was actually pricingbot causing this. That's super sketchy if so, because they also have a Shopify app. Really annoying and Shopify support wasn't much help.

Garry46
Tourist
8 0 7

I don't have much evidence for any specific bot that's doing it. I have a feeling its not pricingbot speicifically, but something less legitimate.

you should also know that from doing some searching around I've noticed that this is not a shopify-specific issue:

https://support.bigcommerce.com/s/question/0D54O00006F86egSAB/false-abandoned-carts-from-bot
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/spam-carts/



Garry46
Tourist
8 0 7

https://benbernardblog.com/web-scraping-and-crawling-are-perfectly-legal-right/

great article

Also a nice little facty image (important to make note that it was made by a company promoting their services):
eCommerce-Cart-Abandonment-by-bots.png

 

 

 

here's a screenshot from freelancer.com looking for someone to make a program like this:

frreee (1).jpg

 

ORi2
Visitor
1 0 0

sHi Guys 

Any solution for this "John Smith" ?????

Suzanne88
Visitor
2 0 0

Have hundreds upon hundred of these. Goes to mail chimp as well. Happening right now as I can see on live view someone in Mountainview CA on site. Anything I can do to stop this?

Michele_Carr
Excursionist
23 0 6
We have not been able to find a way to stop it...
Ecomedge1
Visitor
1 0 0
I found this shopify app I believe it could help : https://apps.shopify.com/ellipsis-human-presence-technology
Picasette
Visitor
3 0 0

Have you tried? Did it work?

DaveBC
New Member
4 0 0

I don't really care about the abandoned cart statistics, but we are getting a flood of bounced abandoned cart emails every day.  

ProQSmokers
Visitor
1 0 0

Still having issues with this - any solution yet?

Picasette
Visitor
3 0 0
Nop not on my side and I suspect it’s been messing up messing up my google shopping campaign. I have way less clicks on my ads and sales since It. It’s the second time It happens too. Couple months ago It did the same.
Everest
Visitor
2 0 0

Spoke with Shopify customer support and they "verified" with the Google Merchant Center team that the "John Smith" customer is Google. 


"Madison here with the Guru team at Shopify. Just following up on the chat we had earlier today! I just wanted to let you know that I was able to confirm that those abandoned checkouts are from Google. These are not a security concern, and appear to be Google running tests on your checkout."

 

I'm still not 100% on this...seems like Google would have a less intrusive way of testing checkout, but I'm not an expert on that subject.

 

Hope this helps further the discussion.

James_Boston
Visitor
2 0 8

It is absolutely inexcusable that Shopify hasn't done more to bring transparency to this issue.

ingramleedy
Visitor
3 0 20

If anything -- It seems that Shopify could at least provide a way to "filter" (this user or other users like this).  I dont mind Google crawling the site and submitting forms if it needs to, but I DO NOT WANT THIS BOGUS DATA TO BE PART OF MY ANALYTICS and kick off processes, abandonment carts, CRM contact creation, etc, etc.  

We have Hubspot integration, so we have thousands of John Smith that have to be manually deleted.  We also have several workflows that kick off assigning contacts to sales reps and recovering shopping carts.   

If at least we could filter this before it hits these systems.   But starting with Shopify seems appropriate.  

I called Shopify and I called Google, neither think its a problem or their fault (or admit it, or well know its happening, I am sure someone knows)

iwona
Visitor
1 0 0

I recently had John Smith creating 15 abandoned carts on my e-commerce website over 2 days, all with same name but different email addresses. Funny enough the second day someone placed an order, which shopify flagged as high fraud risk and with all the good reasons when I looked into the details of the transaction. Smells like fraud for sure! I'd recommend everyone having a closer look at their incoming orders once John Smith starts spamming you.

 

On a positive note, after cancelling and not fulfilling the fraudulent order John Smith seems to have disappeared 🙂

Pabloinkosi
Tourist
7 0 7

Just found this thread - we've had John visiting our store for 2 or so months now. Think we are up to 168 abandonded carts. Comes a couple of days a week and does 10-20 orders.

I've tried blocking 5 IP addresses now but it doesn't stop.

Would love to know how to stop this.

Katie_Eaton
Tourist
9 0 1

Yes I have the exact same issue - it only started recently (since I increased the Google Smart shopping campaign budget coincidentally) and I get the same waves of abandoned carts, each with a different product in.

 

It takes time to clear them out of your customer email collections, mucks up your conversions rates and your abandoned cart recovery rates and it also sends me a warning to my email account that the abandoned cart email was 'not deliverable' as the email address is wrong so they all need clearing out of the inbox too.

 

Any advice gratefully received!

Screenshot 2020-06-16 at 13.09.22.png

samadhimarketin
Shopify Partner
5 0 3

Hey guys, I run an email marketing agency and have found a sort of band-aid for this, but it requires that you use Klaviyo.

You can create a flow filter in your abandoned cart flows using: "properties about someone" --> email --> doesn't contain --> "johnsmith.us" AND "properties about someone" --> email --> doesn't contain --> "john.smithus" AND "properties about someone" --> email --> doesn't contain --> "johnsmithus" AND "properties about someone" --> email --> doesn't contain --> "john.smith.us"

This prevents your abandoned cart flow from sending to this bot.

 

To completely remove these profiles from your Klaviyo account, you'll have to create a segment of:

Properties about someone --> First Name --> Equals --> John AND Properties about someone --> Last Name --> Equals --> Smith

Export this segment as a CSV & import into the suppressed profiles section. You'll have to do this a few times a week, but it's worth it.

 

You can also exclude this segment from receiving campaigns to get more accurate campaign KPIs.

 

Until there's a more permanent solution, I've found this is the best way to maintain your deliverability & get more accurate abandoned cart KPIs. Cheers!

Pabloinkosi
Tourist
7 0 7

That is brilliant @samadhimarketin 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway" rather than all the different versions of John Smith.

Let's see if that works.

Unboxllc1
Shopify Partner
2 0 0

Can you show the steps to do this in Klaviyo?

Pabloinkosi
Tourist
7 0 7

Klaviyo have a help article on how to create a segment. See https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005237908-Guide-to-Creating-Segments

You can use this to supress profiles in Klaviyo.

Otherwise in your flows, add a 'flow filter' to exclude this address https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002779051-Flow-Triggers-and-Filters

CSSpuns
Visitor
1 0 0

This John Smith is a google bot 

https://tldrmarketing.com/seo/apparently-googlebot-can-add-products-to-shopping-carts/

A Google spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it built systems to ensure the pricing seen on the product pages is reflected when a user adds a product to the cart.

Sellers that upload their product feeds to Google Merchant Center may not realize it, but they agree to having Google’s bots crawl their sites for price verifications when the agree to the Terms of Service. The bot is designed to ensure the price in the feed matches the price on the product page and when the product is added to the cart.

The automated system will disapprove items that don’t pass pricing verifications.

rseabrook
Shopify Partner
18 0 14

Here are the steps I took to suppress the Googlebot in Klaviyo.

Note: It is important to SUPPRESS the profiles, not DELETE them. Klaviyo does allow you to delete all traces of a profile, but if you do that, the integration with Shopify will re-sync the profiles eventually. Suppressing the profiles keeps them in your Klaviyo account, but prevents you from emailing them.

Step 1: Create a segment of googlebots

The easiest way to segment these in one shot is by targeting the Google phone number.

Screen Shot 2020-07-02 at 11.29.49 AM.png

Alternatively, you could create a segment based on email address. The format for the email address is fairly consistent but it requires more rules to catch every variation.

Screen Shot 2020-07-02 at 11.33.11 AM.png

Step 2: Export segment to CSV

Use the "Manage Segment" dropdown to export the CSV. The only property you need to export is "Email".

Screen Shot 2020-07-02 at 11.34.07 AM.png

Step 3: Upload the Googlebot CSV to your suppressed profiles list

Navigate to Profiles > Suppressed Profiles (direct link is https://www.klaviyo.com/people/suppressed).

Upload the segment export using the  "Upload File" button in the top-right corner.

Klaviyo's own help docs have an article about bulk suppressing profiles if you need any extra detail.

rseabrook
Shopify Partner
18 0 14

UPDATE: A better way to exclude all John Smith Google shoppers from Klaviyo

I did some digging on which email addresses have been used by Google in the past.

Our store has seen 331 unique Googlebot email addresses since Nov 30th, 2019 (that is the oldest profile I can find in Klaviyo).

All of the Googlebot email address have followed the pattern of {base}{number}@gmail.com. We have seen four different values for the base (john.smith.us, johnsmithus, john.smithus, johnsmith.us) and every number from 0 to 98. We have NEVER seen a number with 3 or more digits. We have also never seen a 99 which is interesting.

This implies that Google is pulling from a list of 396 possible email addresses (or 400 if 99 is included).

I created a CSV that includes all 400 possible email addresses which can be uploaded directly to your Klaviyo suppressed profiles list. Suppressing all of these email addresses will prevent sending abandoned cart emails from Klaviyo caused by the Googlebot. This will NOT prevent abandoned cart notifications from being sent by Shopify.

You can follow the directions in Klaviyo's help docs to upload this file to the suppression list in your account.

 

JustJanus
Visitor
1 0 0

I don't have a solution but will note that our store accepts Purchase Orders and Google's John Smith successfully completed an order... which we paid for shipping on only to have it returned. We are a small business on the east coast with a heavy product so it wasn't cheap. Very upset with Google and reached out to their merchant support team. No response yet, not confident they'll make it right, just mad that their bot damaged small businesses.

samadhimarketin
Shopify Partner
5 0 3

Ah yes that's a sold option, too. Thanks for the insight!

samadhimarketin
Shopify Partner
5 0 3

Hey guys, glad to see this thread gaining traction! Great to know that John Smith is just Google.

To help out other Klaviyo users, here are some solid filters to ensure that your abandoned cart flows are not sending to past, current, and/or future John Smiths. I also implement all these flow filters beneath for the "Added to Cart Trigger" & "Browse Abandonment" Klaviyo flows just to be safe. (Along with their respective additional filters.) Enjoy!

78d22e2a9ff6e46a584e74610b8e4e5d3ad366e644e6839d780d264cb1cce4c3c4fd67e42851bd855b3fd55434bc7bcf

Angela_Hardiman
Excursionist
42 0 53

Shopify says it is not harmful yet they want to help us increase out Abandoned Cart Recovery Rate.  This pushes down our recovery rate as when Google does this it dramatically decreases our recovery rate as of course John Smith is never going to come back and buy anything.  

I want to block anyone who is using the following combination of entries into our ordering process.  This is ridiculous.  We have enough work here to do to grow our brand.  

John Smith
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
mountain view CA 94043
United States
(650) 253-0000

pfg
Visitor
1 0 0

Its not really harmful to your store, its just a BOT from google to check if you have same price in your google ads and on your website! 
It hits your website after each 90 days and remains active for next 15 days, if there is nothing wrong it feeds positive to google ads system and your ads starts performing better than before! 

 

Best Regards

demiloca
Visitor
1 0 0

I received this as a "new customer" account. Phone number goes to "Google Plex / Google"... How is this allowed?

Jonty Smith
4021 Vernon Avenue South
St. Louis Park Minnesota 55416
United States
1 (650) 253-0000
EmmanuelFlossie
Shopify Partner
2953 221 710

You will notice as explained in the previous replies, that Google checks your website for accuracy. IE making sure that the price, shipping price, and tax if applicable are correct and matching to the data you submit.

Get in touch with Emmanuel: a Google Shopping Specialist, Google Ads Diamond Product Expert, and also a a Google Product Expert Education 2021 & Tailwind 2023 Award winner.
Need Google Merchant Center or Google Shopping support?.
AVL
New Member
7 0 0

Why this happens:

A store may designate to auto check the email at Checkout

Google has changed names and addresses to bypass the spam filters. He can be Jack Black, Emily, Boyd, John Smith, Richard Millers, Mark Mustermann, and more. Shopify has tried to cover up this. We used to be able to see the activity in the abandoned checkout but Shopify has filtered out the view. However, you can still see it under Customers. Google is trying to compete with Amazon and was testing out organic shopping results but they also needed to check shipping rates. Don't expect Shopify to regulate Google.

Shopify has NOT been able to correct the data. So your data for abandoned checkout is incorrect as well as your conversion rate is incorrect. Shopify has scrubbed the data in abandoned checkout but can not adjust the CVR. I have screenshots with proof of this happening as Stores were in uproar of this.

You can filter out known bots in GA under your Google Analytics settings but that means your KPIs in Shopify are inaccurate.

I have some stores that have a difference of up to 2% difference in CVR in GA versus Shopify because of this issue and I oversee over 30 stores. I have noticed however, with the privacy updates in IOS, GA data is under reporting data in a couple of my high volume stores. I normally accept 3% in Revenue but these variances are must higher.

I do a sweep every quarter to suppress the fake emails and use GA for my KPIs versus Shopify since they will be inaccurate if you have a lot of bot activity.

 

T_johnson
Visitor
1 0 0

I am having the same issue. I use Klaviyo as an ESP and was seeing a very high bounce rate in my Abandon Cart Flow and tracked it back to the 'John Smith' accounts. The high bounce rate in my Abandon Cart Flow was also causing my regular campaign emails to have a lower open rate. 

What I did was in Klaviyo, I found all the 'John Smith' accounts (about 250 accounts) and deleted the profiles. its been two days and I am already seeing a drop in bounce. 

Hope this helps. 

AVL
New Member
7 0 0

Klaviyo recommended to suppress the emails so that the triggered emails or other emails will not be sending and you won't be charged for the suppressed profiles. This does not block the emails from the site but from sending emails to fake profiles. You can of course delete them but they will be recreated once they are back on the site. Don't forget to filter out the bot activity on your Google Analytics in the admin. There is a big difference in conversion rates between Shopify and GA with filtering out the bot traffic from GA.

PhilZen
Tourist
3 0 0

the email changes all the time