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

[ingramleedy]

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

[Picasette]

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]

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.

[Live-by-skin]

Oh my gosh this just happened to me for the first time! Same address. I’m creeped out!

[CD27]

Ok so I have a solution. You can find his IP address by installing Lucky Orange and viewing a hit on your site. Then install Traffic Guard And you can block the IP address

[James_Boston]

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

[steve012]

Do you happen to have an IP address for him, he has hit me twice and I would like to use your method and block him. BTW for some reason sales drop for 3 days after he does his cart abandonment crap.

Steve

[CD27]

There are actually quite a few you need to check which ones he is using for
you. I can have a range of 200 numbers. I suggest you use a tool to track
otherwise it has no impact. You can download a free trial of Lucky Orange
for 7 days and that will give you enough info

[DaveBC]

It's not a person who's doing it.  It's a generic placeholder email that Google shopping is putting through.  It's an annoyance but it's not affecting your sales.  

[Michele_Carr]

No, but it does skew our analytics and it does affect those of us who have
apps that charge by visitor metrics. It is not all about sales and it is
not something to just be shrugged off.

[Michele_Carr]

It is a random IP within an array. It is not consistent

[Michele_Carr]

If you list things in Google Shopping you DO NOT want to block these IP addresses. If that is the way Google is validating your items...and if they are blocked from doing so...I suspect you won't show up in Google Shopping any longer and may actually get banned.

[DaveBC]

Nobody is shrugging it off.  Just stating facts that it's not affecting your actual sales as someone has eluded to. 

[Michele_Carr]

BTW...has anyone else on this forum been contacted by Wall Street Journal about this situation? It is not just a Shopify store problem. It is pervasive enough that it came to the attention of a WSJ reporter who is doing an investigative piece about it...

[ingramleedy]

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)

[Suzanne88]

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.

[steve012]

It is Dave, I have 3 shopify stores and my friends own 8, everyone of them have seen a drop in sales after he visits the sites, this is not just a pipe dream I'm making up. Also I don't believe it's google doing this.

[iwona]

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]

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]

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!

[samadhimarketin]

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!