A client who is hosting their web site with GoDaddy recently at our request asked them to update the version of PHP the site is running on as well as update some specific plugins that are part of Theme the site is using but for which the client doesn’t have licenses for.
In the past, GoDaddy has performed these tasks with no issues. This time however, they decided to apply their “version of SEO” to a site that has already been optimized and in the process wiping out months and months of work. They did this in just 20 minutes with an AI powered SEO plugin.
My first thought was that the client called GoDaddy and someone “upsold” them GoDaddy SEO services. However, when I asked if they had authorized any site audits or SEO related work to be done by GoDaddy, they said “absolutely not.”
GoDaddy not only totally messed up the site, they failed to update the plugins we requested updates for. The only positive thing they accomplished was to update the version of PHP. The rest, they took upon themselves without any authorization from the client!
Here’s what they did.
After our client requested that GoDaddy update the version of PHP the site is running on as well as several plugins related to the Theme, they proceeded to add themselves as an Administrator to the site under the user name of “siteaudit” and made a bunch of unauthorized changes to the site.
Specifically, they installed a plugin called “SEO Setup” which then proceeded to make changes to all of the Title and Meta Description tags in Pages and several Blog Posts as well.
It also added “Featured Images” to all Pages, most of them relevant but not all. The Pages did not have Featured Images assigned to them prior to GoDaddy touching the site.
They also added Title and Alt Attributes throughout the Media Gallery (images), many of which are irrelevant to the actual images.
We also discovered several Blog Posts where the characters “’” were inserted at the end of words that use a ‘. For example, don’t would look like don’T.
All the changes that were made are obviously AI (artificial intelligence) generated and the IP address of the siteaudit User who implemented these changes originates in India.
They did all of this in just 20 minutes! Unfortunately it took us hours and hours to discover and fix everything.
I want to know why GoDaddy thinks it is okay to run automated SEO software on a site without authorization to do so and without even checking to see if another SEO has already worked on the site. I’m half tempted to send them a bill for the time we spent fixing their mess.
One thing is for sure – GoDaddy still sucks at SEO. I wrote about this years ago and it doesn’t seem as if anything has changed.
So if you are hosting a WordPress site with GoDaddy, do yourself an favor and never give them admin level access. Or do yourself one better – move to a new web host!
