Most website themes ship with fake content so the demo looks full. A stock photo, a paragraph of lorem ipsum, an address in New York City, a phone number in the 555 range that doesn’t exist anywhere.
You’re meant to replace all of it. Almost nobody replaces all of it.
Going through the sites we host, we found a business publishing a phone number with an area code from a state it has never operated in. It had been there since the site was built. Anyone who dialled it got somebody else entirely.
On another, the footer still carried the theme’s demo contact block — a street address in New York, a 1-800 number that belonged to the theme company, and an email address at a domain the business doesn’t own. That business is in Mississippi.
Elsewhere we found published product pages full of lorem ipsum, testimonials from invented customers, and the “Hello world!” post WordPress creates on day one still sitting there years later.
None of this is dramatic. All of it is the kind of thing a customer notices, and a competitor points at.
Here’s how to check yours. Use your site’s search box, or Google with site:yourbusiness.com, and look for: example.com, lorem ipsum, Insert Tagline Here, Your Company, 555, North Main Street, Sample Page, Hello world. Then actually read your own footer, which is the part of a website nobody ever re-reads after launch.
If you find something, it’s usually a five-minute fix. The hard part is knowing to look — which is why we now check for it on every site we host, as a standing item rather than a favour.