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Automotive Search
By Julie | October 23, 2007
Autobytel, one of the big auto sites, did a study that suggests consumers have a sense of search engine fatigue. Obviously, since this was released by an auto portal, some of the info and findings in the press release were self-serving.
I’ve worked in automotive. Auto search is really a challenge for a lot of reasons. First, you have the parent ‘brand’ sites. Then you have dealer sites. Depending on the badge/maker, a lot of dealer sites are basically templated sites, often based on bad code structures. (I seem to recall Dodge being an especial offender against good code standards.)
Then you have the issue of new vs. used. When someone wants a new car and has narrowed things down to the ballpark of make-model, it starts to limit their dealership choices, and in many cases, their negotiation room. (Hint: You want a hybrid? You’re paying what the dealer SAYS you’re paying. Supply and demand’s a brute.)
But used cars are a battlefield. So what if you’re a Toyota dealer? You have used cars from many makers on the lot. So you have to compete on the basis of your inventory and/or ability to get a piece of inventory. But most of the aggregation web sites, like Autobytel, don’t have a good way to have inventory crawled. They’re up-to-date, so long as a dealer keeps their feeds hot, but the site has to drive the traffic to see the inventory, and then the site has to have non-stinky options to search local inventories.
Because of the competition in the aggregator space, most dealerships have to play ball on multiple sites. Depending on the dealer and the inventory size, this gets pricey quickly.
Thus, aggregators have to be able to compete in local spaces, and have to be able to compete on a wide variety of terms that go from hyper-generic (’used car’) to specific (’2003 toyota camry’). Organically, the space is a dogfight. While many do ok organically, these sites end up using a ton of PPC.
All this is before you even consider the notion of ‘research.’ I remember a study from a few years ago that said that used car dealers are the least trusted professionals in the US (followed by advertising execs). People tend to spend a lot on, and rely on, their autos. So they want research on reliability, gas mileage, recalls, you name it. But the ‘brand names’ of research that are well-known or trusted are limited. Sites either all carry info from the same 3-4 providers, or have information that may be less trusted. Duplicate content is a likely end result — as it is for lots of product spec information as well.
One of the things I will say is great in the automotive space is that the dealers themselves do a terrific job of lead tracking, on the whole. This is naturally better for the larger dealerships, not the corner used car lot, but even those smaller outfits often do a good job of identifying lead sources. There are a lot of programs in the automotive space to do lead tracking and follow-up, assign trackable phone numbers to different campaigns (badge site, dealer site, aggregtor sites), and measure lead conversion. A lot of other locally-converting industries could learn a lot from the average automotive lead-gen program.
Topics: SEO, advertising, automotive, commerce, dynamic urls, lead generation, marketing, online branding, search results, the road to hell, usability, zrong |
