In this week’s episode, I share the details about a study that was released last week by Whitespark, a Local SEO tool company, about how auto dealers use GMB and its various features. Check out the video – you’ll be shocked at how many dealers aren’t fully utilizing Google My Business!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays! I was supposed to continue my little series on reviews and reputation management, but a really interesting study was released last week, and I had to share the results with you…

Whitespark is a Local SEO tool company – full disclosure, we use Whitespark here at SearchLab, and the owner Darren Shaw is a good friend of mine. They used their toolset and SEO nerd brains to do a study on how auto dealers use Google My Business.

It’s not really surprising that the results weren’t good. In fact, the study was titled “Auto dealer Google Listings are a Wreck”. You can see the study at bit.ly/dealer-gmb-study.

We know that COVID has drastically changed buyer behavior, and nearly every sale starts with a Google search. And you’ve probably heard me or someone else say that your Google My Business listing is your dealership’s new home page. So why aren’t more dealers taking advantage of Google My Business?

Whitespark looked at all the dealerships in the top 100 cities in the US and the top 100 cities in Canada – that totaled 15,303 dealers. The study includes the full breakdown of dealership types.

And here are some of the crazy results:

  • 63% of dealers have never published a single Google Post
  • 88% of dealers aren’t using the Products feature. Sure, it’s been in beta and is just now getting released to every dealer, but that’s still a ridiculously low number.
  • 32% of dealers still haven’t claimed their GMB listings!
  • 24% of dealers don’t have a link to their website on their listing. That’s 1 out of every 4 dealers not linking to their own website.
  • 93% of dealers haven’t added an appointment link.
  • 91% of dealers haven’t added product and service links.
  • 51% of dealers have Q&A questions that haven’t been answered.
  • 13% of dealers don’t have any hours listed.

To most of you, this probably sounds absolutely insane. But for those of you who are wondering if your GMB listing is as optimized as it should be, here’s what to do:

Fill out every field in your GMB dashboard. If there’s a field available, make sure there’s something there (except for categories – check out my video on categories to make sure you’re only using the right ones).

Update your content on a regular basis – even weekly. Publish a Google Post. Upload images and videos. Answer reviews and Q&A questions. Even upload new questions to Q&A.
Make sure you have a solid review strategy in place so you’re getting new reviews on a consistent basis.

Definitely check out the full study – it’s got more in-depth information and suggestions for what to do to optimize each section of your listing. You should also check out past episodes of Local Search Tuesdays, I’ve done a lot of videos about Google My Business and the various features.

Most importantly – make sure your dealership’s listing is stellar – you need to make a killer first impression with potential customers when you show up in search results.

That’s all the time we’ve got for this week, 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.