Why are there daily visits from Council Bluffs on my site?

[pixidaisy]

Hi all

on a daily basis we are getting 3 visits from this city in the US and this  has been happening over a couple of months.  I have tried to figure out what organisation is out there with no success and wondered whether anyone else has witnessed the same ?

[TheDigitalYeti · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I have been doing some research and found out the cause, the Shopify Speed Report. You can find the topic here; https://community.shopify.com/c/Online-Store-Speed/Online-Store-Speed-Report/m-p/908894#M390

Shopify runs the speed report using a Google Developer tool (the Google data centre is based in Council Bluffs, USA) which tests 3 pages, Homepage, a popular collection page and a popular product page. Shopify then compares this result to other similar Shopify sites. This test is run daily!

For some sites this is not a problem, but for some smaller sites this can screw with your analytics and conversion rate metrics. If you get 3000 hits a day, 3 extra visits is not an issue - it's only 0.1%. Not every site is as big as that. My site is small and got tested twice today (15th Nov) for some reason. If you use Google Analytics you can exclude these visits from the report. I do not trust Google with my data as I have caught them doing things with my data before, and these visits are messing with the analytics in Shopify.

So if this feature is negatively affecting you, make sure to reach out to Shopify and ask them to turn it off.

Better yet ask them to give you, the store owner, the choice of when or if your site is tested. Manually, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Annually.

[TheDigitalYeti]

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@Tedricksplace wrote:

I also am receiving 3 visits a day from council bluffs Iowa. I found online that there is a Google data center located in that city and state I believe since 2007. So I'm wondering if it is Google that is visiting all of the Shopify sites maybe web crawling our pages in order to rank us on search results just a thought.

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Nope! Its definitely the Shopify Speed Test. They use Google's data centre in Council Bluffs to run the speed test.

If you read further up the post you will see it all explained that the 3 pages visited from Council Bluffs are the same 3 pages used by the Speed Test.

[GUAJA81]

I have the same situation, by 3 to 6 visitors every day! Did anyone get any answer already?

[GUAJA81]

I just had a chat with Shopify, about this situation, and they tell me that they can’t do anything about it, because it’s only a visit, it doesn’t involve any order! Sorry, I try it 

[Joechsle]

A visit from who? Why?

[Keke227]

>From what I read, it’s Google. There is a data center in Council Bluffs,
Iowa.

[xMapax]

I´m in Lima Peru, small busines owner as well, my website is also full of views from this place!! so far away! it´s crazy how agressive they´re with small business

[Deniz97]

Yesterday I got 146 visits from Councill Bluffs in just one day!

[NiteNite]

I have gotten 106 clicks from this city today. A lot yesterday as well.

[EastRuin]

Just during Jan 2023 I've already had 147 visits from Council Bluff. I'm a micro art business, I just launched Dec 1. This is absolutely absurd! @Shopify can you please help small businesses manage their operations and prevent this from continuing? 

[GabrielaRocha]

I get council bluffs visits everyday, around 40 a day. So annoying

[krojat]

I got about a dozen in the last couple of hours  ... have been tweaking little bits of code during this time ...could it be somehow related to that ? When you save your changes maybe it alerts some kind of bot to recheck your site ? Extremely annoying as cant use Statcounter data properly 😞

[depeperwinkel]

It's annoying to say at the least. I agree with you it disturbs your insights. I wonder why no Shopify insider ever responded on this item, solving it. Can these visits - if essential - take place in the background. Are they needed, and in these quantities, every couple of hours a series ? I wonder.

[depeperwinkel]

As you can see, there is no solution offered yet. Dozens of Council Bluff visits a day, still.

[Linden · Accepted solution]

Same issue as the rest of you. My store has 524 visits from Council Bluffs in the last month. Ridiculous. I'm a first time Spotify user and am really disappointed with this aspect of their service. My analytics are more difficult to use with this, having to constantly account for these useless visits. 

There needs to be a way to exclude Google's IPs (especially those from Council Bluffs) to prevent their bot visits from skewing our data. Time to start hitting Spotify's feedback about this.

[NewUser05]

I am having the same issue, My store has 527 visits from Council Bluff very similar to yours and I am a new store, I wonder if Shopify is aware of this issue, hoping its just a bug 

[sdcroth]

Hi all - has Council Bluffs now been changed to Forest City?  Seeing lots of users from Forest City - WTF?

[gyozo]

Hi, This problem also exists for me, when I look at the speed test afterwards, this "user" usually visits my previous website content, I'm afraid it's a robot, but I can't get rid of it.

[Gustavo2021]

Hello, I have a similar issue, since it is not just the visits, even my administrator (my account) appears logged in that city (Council Bluffs). When that happens we start to have problems in the metrics and as a result sales decrease.

Has anyone else reviewed this on account security and activity?

[Nourandeyab]

Quick question, are you guys only getting council bluff. I just started using Shopify, it’s been about 2 weeks but I’m still working on the website and don’t have it locked… but I literally haven’t given anyone a url or posted about it or anything, but I keep getting visits from all over the world… it’s really weird because I don’t know how they could have possibly found my website… and when I had all these visits I hadn’t yet posted any products.. so there wasn’t any keyword usage even.