In this Local Search Tuesdays episode, I dive into the recent shake-ups hitting Google Business Profiles for car dealerships. I break down why Google killed off the "Vehicles for Sale" widget in November 2025 (spoiler: it's all about the Benjamins and those VLA clicks!). I also tackle the mystery of the disappearing department profile links, which has dealers freaking out, and explain why I think it's just a bug and you shouldn't be too worried, but I'll have more info on that next week.
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m sharing a few updates that have happened to Google Business Profiles for car dealerships.
Welcome to the first episode of 2026! A few things have changed on car dealership Google Business Profiles recently, so for this week’s video, I wanted to explain what’s going on and hopefully clear up some of the confusion.
In November, Google deprecated the “Vehicles for Sale” widget, which displayed a list of the vehicles for sale on a dealership’s Google Business Profile. It was originally called “Cars for Sale” and was rolled out to all U.S. dealerships in 2021. At the beginning of 2023, Google expanded the program to include motorcycles, RVs, boats, and powersports.
As always, Google giveth, and Google taketh away. The feature has been killed and no longer displays on any Google Business Profiles. Honestly, I think this happened because of a few factors. First of all, I don’t think it ever really caught on - customers don’t expect to view inventory on a GBP, they expect to go to a website. I also think Google is thinking about the Benjamins. While Vehicles for Sale wasn’t clicked on all that often, any clicks were cannibalizing traffic that could have gone to VLAs. Makes sense to kill VFS so more clicks go the VLAs, which means Google makes more money.
The other big change is likely a bug. Last month, dealership profiles lost the explicit link to their department profiles. Google changed the rules for car dealers and allows them to set up separate department Google Business Profiles for the service and parts departments. These department profiles then get “nested” under the primary sales profile. The main GBP used to have an explicit list of departments like this:
As of a few weeks ago, that list of departments is no longer displayed. Tons of dealers are freaking out about this, but shouldn’t be. All of the department functionality is still present. The primary profile still shows separate hours for all departments. Department profiles still show that they’re located inside of the main dealership.
Customers rarely, if ever, clicked on the department profile list anyway - so don’t lose any sleep over this. Since I’m a Platinum level Product Expert on the GBP Community Forum, I’ve got some inside connections to the GBP team. They’re working internal channels to try to figure out what’s going on. Currently, my best guess is that this is a bug, not a planned update. As soon as I get a definitive answer, I’ll let all of you know!
There’s another big update on dealership GBPs that just happened a week before Christmas, but I’m not talking about it today. We’re still running tests and I’m trying to get a recording to share with you when I explain the new change. Tune in next week, I’ll be sharing all the details then!
For now, that’s all the time we have left for this week’s episode, so you know what that means. Put your hand on the screen right here: We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.
