The most extensive car dealer GBP research ever conducted…
How do you show up better in local map pack search results? It’s the eternal question. There are hundreds of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and conference talks that tell you how to optimize your Google Business Profile and website. Most of the information is consistent, but there are always random bits of advice that don’t match up to common best practices.
So how do car dealerships know what really works?
They’ve always had to trust the source of the information, even though no one has ever proven that the best practices that they’re preaching will actually have a positive effect on visibility.
I’m guilty of this too. I’ve spoken at pretty much every automotive conference in the last decade, and every time I’m on stage, I try to talk as fast as I can so that I can squeeze in as many tactics as possible. I know that what I’m sharing will help because I’ve been living and breathing Local SEO every day for almost 20 years.
Most Local SEOs tend to live by the results of the annual Local Search Ranking Factors study conducted by Darren Shaw at Whitespark. Darren sends out an incredibly in-depth survey to the top minds in Local SEO, aggregates the answers, and shares the results. It’s a solid study, but detractors complain that it’s based on the opinions of the experts.
Other agencies and experts have tried to use data to prove which ranking factors matter the most, but honestly, I think it’s an impossible goal. There are simply too many variables in the system and no way to accurately determine the weight or importance of ranking factors.
Another problem is that Google’s algorithm isn’t consistent – all verticals are not treated equally. So – instead of trying to prove which factors influence ranking, I thought it would be interesting to research Google Business Profiles in several verticals to see if the commonly agreed-upon best practices lined up with the results we see in the real world.
I’m not trying to be Dr. Pete or Mike King – those guys are on an entirely different plane of intelligence. I didn’t want to get bogged down in statistical relevance, mathematical models, ordinal variables, categorical variables, and other stuff that most of us don’t understand. Instead, I thought it would be interesting to pull a ton of data and crunch the numbers to see if what we’re seeing in search results matches up to best practices.
This is the first of our three-part study on Google Business Profile factors. Cue the intro crescendo…
TL:DR – I just want to see the industry AVERAGES
TL:DR – Take me to the RANKING COMPARISONS
OUR METHODOLOGY
To gather the data for this study, we used Places Scout, the best Local SEO toolset in the market, with a little help from ahrefs for the link analysis. We used Places Scout to search the following keywords:
- Ford dealer
- Chevrolet dealer
- Toyota dealer
- Jeep dealer
- Kia dealer
- used car dealer
in each of the following cities:
- Dallas
- Houston
- San Antonio
- Chicago
- Denver
- Miami
- Orlando
- Phoenix
- Los Angeles
- San Francisco
- San Diego
- Philadelphia
- Las Vegas
- Seattle
We pulled data on everything that ranked in the Local Finder from position 1 through 20 (for those of you who don’t know, the Local Finder is the page that looks like Google Maps that appears when you click “more locations” at the bottom of the Map Pack in search results).
Car dealerships are allowed to set up separate Google Business Profiles for their service and parts departments, and since we were pulling everything that ranked in the top 20 positions, some of the results were these department profiles. We didn’t want to include those in the study, so we removed them before we started crunching the numbers. For those of you doing the quick math, pulling positions 1-20 for 7 keywords in 14 cities would result in 1,680 GBPs. After removing the departments, we were left with 1,604 dealership profiles.
COLOR CODING AND CAVEATS
Places Scout enabled us to pull a ridiculous amount of data on each Google Business Profile – but not every data point influences visibility in search results. Sometimes, factors have zero (or negligible) influence on ranking or visibility, but significant influence on conversions. Between the basic averages and the ranking comparisons, there’s a ginormous amount of text to dig through. To make it easier to skim and understand, I’ve listed all ranking factors with a blue icon and all conversion factors with a green icon.
Don’t freak out on me if you don’t agree – again, I’m not trying to use the data to prove which factors influence ranking. The purpose of this study is to see if the data backs up currently agreed-upon best practices. I’m only designating ranking vs. conversion to make it easier for auto dealers who don’t know a lot about SEO to understand what they’re reading.
Also, there’s no specific order to the factors I’ve listed. I tried to group similar factors together to make it easier to use the jump links in the sidebar menu – it doesn’t mean that a factor that’s listed higher in the list is more weighted. In fact, there’s nothing in this study to prove or even infer ranking weight, so if that’s what you’re here for, you’re going to be disappointed.
Final caveat: I’m not listing everything. Between Places Scout and ahrefs, we ended up with 168 data points on each GBP/website. I’m not including factors that can’t be optimized, like hours of operation or Google CID or reservations links. There’s a ridiculous amount of data, so I’m trying to share the bits that are the most helpful to understanding Local SEO, visibility in local searches, and converting users.
INDUSTRY AVERAGES FOR CAR DEALERS
In this section, I’m going to share the overall averages for car dealer Google Business Profiles. For those of you who might have skipped ahead, you can check out the methodology of the study in the section above. We ended up with 1,604 dealership GBPs in 14 different cities (once we removed the department profiles).
If you’re just here for the data and don’t want any additional context or explanation, you can check the data out in this table. Otherwise, scroll past the table for the full write-up:
U.S. CAR DEALER GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE DATA
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Distance from centroid: 12.3 miles |
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Profiles not claimed: 11.1% |
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Unique primary categories: 33 |
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Have a 2nd category: 66.9% |
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Have 5 categories: 50.6% |
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Have 10 categories: 14.3% |
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Unique categories selected: 143 |
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No website listed: 138 |
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UTM not included on website link: 673 |
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UTM medium not set to organic: 115 |
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Avg. number of photos: 204 |
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Last photo upload (oldest): 11/13/2013 |
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Last photo upload by owner (oldest): 4/24/2014 |
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Avg. age of most recent photo: 283d |
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Avg. age of most recent owner-uploaded photo: 778d |
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Don’t have Vehicles for Sale: 599 |
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Don’t have department GBPs: 61.2% |
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Profiles with Q&A questions: 73.4% |
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Avg. questions in Q&A: 10.2 |
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Questions with answers: 58.2% |
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Questions answered by the dealership: 18.3% |
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Questions with primary owner answers: 16.4% |
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Every question has a primary owner answer: 4.7% |
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Most Q&A questions: 206 |
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Avg. Google Posts in the last 12 months: 2.6 |
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Avg. Google review count: 1,347 |
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Avg. Google rating: 3.9 |
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Avg. new Google reviews/month (if at least 1): 4.5 |
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Avg. new Google reviews last year: 24.6 |
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Google reviews not responded to: 24.5% |
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Avg. Google rating in last 12 months: 4.1 |
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% of positive Google reviews (4-5 star): 77.7% |
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% of negative Google reviews (1-3 star): 22.3% |
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Avg. Google review response time: 2d |
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Website phone matches GBP phone: 36.3% |
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Unclaimed Yelp profiles: 32.7% |
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Website phone matches Yelp phone: 46.9% |
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Avg. Yelp review count: 227.7 |
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Avg. Yelp rating: 2.7 |
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Avg. new Yelp reviews/month: 1.6 |
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Avg. new Yelp reviews last year (if at least 1): 23.2 |
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Yelp reviews not responded to: 56% |
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Avg. Yelp review response time: 9d |
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Avg. page load time: 4.5s |
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Slowest page load time: 219s |
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Fastest page load time: 0.17s |
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Website was not responsive: 24.1% |
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No AutoDealer schema markup: 57.5% |
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Avg. images on GBP landing page: 27 |
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Searched-for keyword on GBP landing page: 42% |
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Avg. non-stop words on GBP landing page: 737.9 |
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Zero words on GBP landing page: 25.6% |
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Avg. number of inbound links to the domain: 13,519 |
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Avg. number of inbound linking domains: 245 |
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Biggest link-to-domain difference: 4,083,052 |
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Avg. ranking keywords: 8,204 |
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Avg. keywords in the top 3: 359 |
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Avg. keywords in the top 10: 838 |
Distance from centroid: 12.3 miles
Best practice assumption: Businesses closer to the centroid will rank better.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #10
The centroid is Google’s calculation of the geographic point of the center of the city, based on the borders of the city (not necessarily “downtown”).
Profiles not claimed: 11.1%
Best practice assumption: Unclaimed profiles will not rank as well as claimed profiles.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #9
You have to claim your profile to be allowed to edit any of the information or respond to reviews.
Unique primary categories: 33 (37.4% of the profiles)
Best practice assumption: Primary category selection has massive influence on which searches you’ll appear in.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #1
We should have only seen 6 primary categories – all matching the search queries we entered. In other words, there were 27 incorrect categories selected as a primary category. To be fair, a few of these chose Chrysler dealer, Dodge dealer, or Ram dealer (36 profiles) – since Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram are always sold as a group, those weren’t necessarily incorrect.
Most importantly, 195 dealers (12.1% of the profiles in the study), chose “Car dealer” – the most generic category possible – and never the correct category to select as the primary category.
Have a 2nd category: 66.9%
Best practice assumption: Selecting all applicable categories will help you show in more related searches.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #7
There are more than 10 categories related to car sales, so dealerships should always have 9-10 selected. With only 66.9% having at least a second category, that means one third of the dealerships in the study only had a single category selected!
Have 5 categories: 50.6%
Best practice assumption: Selecting all applicable categories will help you show in more related searches.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #7
There are more than 10 categories related to car sales, so dealerships should always have 9-10 selected. Only half of the dealers in the study had at least 5 categories selected.
Have 10 categories: 14.3%
Best practice assumption: Selecting all applicable categories will help you show in more related searches.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #7
There are more than 10 categories related to car sales, so dealerships should always have 9-10 selected. Only 14.3% of dealers in the study had all 10 category slots filled!
Unique categories selected: 143
Best practice assumption: Selecting all applicable categories will help you show in more related searches.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #7
There were 143 unique categories selected across all of the dealership profiles in the study. Even if you include parts and service categories, there are fewer than 40 categories that actually apply to dealerships. So there were easily over 100 random categories selected. At best, these did nothing – but if completely unrelated categories are chosen, it can hinder visibility in search results.
No website listed: 138
Best practice assumption: Including a link to your website in your Google Business Profile helps your profile rank higher (plus, it’s vital for conversions).
Position in 2023 LSRF: #26, #27, #47, #53, #66, #80 (and arguably any website-related signal)
8.6% of the profiles in the study did not have a website listed. You’re trying to drive traffic and conversions for your dealership. That’s hard to do without a website.
UTM not included on website link: 673 (42% of profiles)
Best practice assumption: Including UTM tracking on your website link ensures correct attribution of organic traffic in Google Analytics, allowing you to make more informed decisions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
Without UTM tracking included, a portion of your organic traffic will be misattributed in Google Analytics. Any time referral information isn’t passed to Google Analytics (mobile traffic, pop up blockers, etc), that traffic is attributed as “direct” traffic – but in this case, it should be classified as “organic”.
UTM medium not set to organic: 115
Best practice assumption: Including UTM tracking on your website link assures correct attribution of organic traffic in Google Analytics, allowing you to make more informed decisions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
Of the dealerships who included UTM tracking, 115 had an incorrect medium set – that’s 12.4%. These dealers are actually making things worse by polluting their data in Google Analytics with incorrect attribution… on purpose!
Average number of photos: 204
Best practice assumption: Photos help set customer expectations. High quality, recent photos will result in more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #82, #106
Dealerships in the study averaged 204 photos in their GBP image galleries (both public and owner-uploaded).
Last photo upload date (oldest): 11/13/2013
Best practice assumption: Photos help set customer expectations. High quality, recent photos will result in more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #82, #106
Business owners can upload photos to a Google Business Profile – but so can the general public. One of the profiles in the study hadn’t had a new photo uploaded in over 10 years.
Last photo upload by owner date (oldest): 4/24/2014
Best practice assumption: Photos help set customer expectations. High quality, recent photos will result in more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #82, #106
One of the profiles in the study hadn’t had a new photo uploaded by the dealership in over 10 years.
Average age of most recent photo: 283 days
Best practice assumption: Photos help set customer expectations. High quality, recent photos will result in more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #82, #106
Business owners can upload photos to a Google Business Profile – but so can the general public. Among the dealerships in the study, the average age of the most recent uploaded photo is 283 days. That’s over 9 months!
Average age of most recent owner-uploaded photo: 778 days
Best practice assumption: Photos help set customer expectations. High quality, recent photos will result in more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #82, #106
The average age of the most recent photo uploaded by a GBP owner was 778 days – that’s over 2 years!
Don’t have Vehicles for Sale: 599
Best practice assumption: The Vehicles for Sale widget displays a live feed of a dealership’s inventory, allowing potential customers to browse vehicles before going to the dealership’s website.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
37.3% of the dealerships in the study did not have Vehicles for Sale displayed on their GBP. Google added VFS almost 7 years ago, and research has proven that VFS has a big influence on GBP conversions.
Don’t have department GBPs: 61.2%
Best practice assumption: Setting up separate Google Business Profiles for the Service and Parts departments and having them nested as department profiles will help dealers show up in more searches.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
A whopping 981 of the dealerships in the study didn’t have separate department GBPs set up. Google changed the rules for dealerships back in 2017 to allow separate department GBPs for Service and Parts – even though they typically fail the standard requirements for GBP eligibility. If Google knows that this makes sense for customers and how dealerships run things, it’s a good sign that you should set up these separate department GBPs.
We also know that category selection has incredible influence on which search results you’ll appear in. Since there are more than 10 categories that apply to each of the three areas, you’re drastically increasing your chances of showing as a search result if you use department profiles.
Profiles with Q&A questions: 73.4%
Best practice assumption: Pre-loading and answering common questions in the GBP Q&A section will help you convert more customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #48, #124, #143
Of the 1,604 dealership profiles in the study, 1,177 profiles had at least one question in the GBP Questions and Answers widget.
Average questions in Q&A: 10.2
Best practice assumption: Pre-loading and answering common questions in the GBP Q&A section will help you convert more customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #48, #124, #143
If a similar question has been asked and answered already, as someone types a new question into the Q&A widget, Google will automatically display the answer. They’ll receive that answer faster than if they were talking to an AI chatbot or even a real person, so it’s important to seed common questions in the Q&A section.
Questions with answers: 58.2%
Best practice assumption: Answering questions in the GBP Q&A section will help you convert more customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #48, #124, #143
The Questions and Answers section is a community discussion widget, which means any random person can answer questions for the business. Almost half of the questions asked in the Questions and Answers section on dealership Google Business Profiles were not answered (by either the dealership or the general public).
Questions answered by the dealership: 18.3%
Best practice assumption: Answering questions in the GBP Q&A section will help you convert more customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #48, #124, #143
When a profile that’s used to manage the Google Business Profile answers a question in the Q&A widget, the answer is listed as coming from the business owner. Fewer than 1 out of 5 questions in the study were answered by the dealership – that’s a lot of potential business lost.
Questions with primary owner answers: 16.4%
Best practice assumption: All questions in the Q&A widget should have a primary answer from the business owner.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #48, #124, #143
Because the Q&A section is meant for community discussion, questions can receive multiple answers. Users can upvote the most helpful answers by clicking on a thumbs up icon, and the answer with the most upvotes is displayed as the primary answer to the question.
Every question has a primary owner answer: 4.7%
Best practice assumption: All questions in the Q&A widget should have a primary answer from the business owner.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #48, #124, #143
Only 55 dealerships out of the 1,604 dealers in the study had a primary owner answer from the dealership to every question in the Q&A widget on their Google Business Profiles.
Most Q&A questions: 206
Best practice assumption: Pre-loading and answering common questions in the GBP Q&A section will help you convert more customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #48, #124, #143
This doesn’t mean you need that many questions. But seeding common questions and providing helpful answers can help you convert more customers.
Average Google Posts in the last 12 months: 2.6
Best practice assumption: Google Posts help you stand out from local competitors and convert more potential customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #76, #129, #132, #135, #140
This was a bit surprising. I think most people assume that dealerships are using Google Posts on at least a monthly basis, but the majority of dealerships are only posting a few times a year.
Average Google review count: 1,347
Best practice assumption: Businesses with more reviews will rank higher in the map pack.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #8, #40
This doesn’t mean you need this many reviews. Best practice dictates that you should have more reviews than local competitors, so concentrate more on how many you need to beat competitors in your market.
Average Google rating: 3.9
Best practice assumption: Businesses with higher ratings will rank higher in the map pack.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #6
Studies over the years have shown that the ideal rating is between 4.4 and 4.7 – that’s the sweet spot for both ranking and conversions.
Average new Google reviews per month (if at least 1): 4.5
Best practice assumption: Businesses with a regular pace of new reviews will rank higher than businesses with long periods of inactivity.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #13, #20
If we only look at dealerships that got at least one review in the last 12 months, dealers in the study averaged only about one new review per week.
Average new Google reviews last year: 24.6
Best practice assumption: Businesses with a regular pace of new reviews will rank higher than businesses with long periods of inactivity.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #8, #13, #20
The dealerships in the study received a total of 39,508 new reviews last year, breaking down to an average of only 24.6 new reviews for the year.
Google reviews not responded to: 24.5%
Best practice assumption: Owner responses to customer reviews help drive more conversions (because the business pays attention to customers).
Position in 2023 LSRF: #111
It’s been best practice for years to respond to customer reviews, so it was surprising to see that nearly 1 out of 4 reviews had no owner response.
Average Google rating in last 12 months: 4.1
Best practice assumption: Businesses with higher ratings will rank higher in the map pack.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #6
Looking at the reviews acquired in the last year, the average rating was 4.1. This is higher than the overall average rating of the dealerships in the study, which could signify that dealers are scoring higher on recent reviews than they have in the past.
Percentage of positive Google reviews (4-5 star): 77.7%
Best practice assumption: Businesses with higher ratings will rank higher in the map pack.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #6
Just over two thirds of the reviews in the study were 4 or 5 star reviews.
Percentage of negative Google reviews (1-3 star): 22.3%
Best practice assumption: Businesses with higher ratings will rank higher in the map pack.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #6
An average of about 1 out of 5 reviews was negative in sentiment.
Average Google review response time: 2 days
Best practice assumption: Businesses that respond to reviews faster appear to be more engaged and should convert more potential customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #111
Best practice dictates responding to reviews within 24 hours.
Website phone matches GBP phone: 36.3%
Best practice assumption: NAP (name address phone) consistency is important for ranking, and the number listed on the GBP should match the number listed on the website.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
This one’s a bit of a holdover from the old days of strict NAP consistency – it’s actually best practice to use a call tracking number on the Google Business Profile now, so we would expect this to be a low percentage.
Unclaimed Yelp profiles: 32.7%
Best practice assumption: Since the review stars on Apple Maps are powered by Yelp instead of Google, businesses should claim and optimize their Yelp profiles.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
You can’t respond to Yelp reviews (or update your information) if you haven’t claimed your profile – make sure oyu get those profiles claimed so you don’t lose business if someone sees a bad rating on Apple Maps.
Website phone matches Yelp phone: 46.9%
Best practice assumption: NAP (name address phone) consistency is important for ranking, and the number listed on the Yelp profile should match the number listed on the website.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
This one’s a bit of a holdover from the old days of strict NAP consistency, but it’s unlikely that many dealerships are using call tracking numbers on their Yelp profiles. This high percentage of mismatched numbers is more likely because of call tracking numbers on the website side.
Average Yelp review count: 227.7
Best practice assumption: Reviews on third party review sites are also evaluated by Google’s local algorithm.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #46, #86, #87, #97
Google’s local algorithm evaluates third party review sites as well. Also, in the United States, the review stars on Apple Maps are sourced from Yelp, so it’s important to pay attention to your Yelp reviews.
Average Yelp rating: 2.7
Best practice assumption: Reviews on third party review sites are also evaluated by Google’s local algorithm.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #46, #67, #86, #94
Google’s local algorithm evaluates third party review sites as well. Also, in the United States, the review stars on Apple Maps are sourced from Yelp, so it’s important to pay attention to your Yelp reviews.
Average new Yelp reviews per month: 1.6
Best practice assumption: Reviews on third party review sites are also evaluated by Google’s local algorithm.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #87
It’s not surprising that the review acquisition pace is lower on Yelp. Besides nearly a third of Yelp profiles being unclaimed, Yelp is notorious for its aggressive review filter.
Average new Yelp reviews last year (if at least 1): 23.2
Best practice assumption: Reviews on third party review sites are also evaluated by Google’s local algorithm.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
If we only look at dealerships that got at least one review in the last 12 months, dealers in the study averaged only about two new review per month.
Yelp reviews not responded to: 56%
Best practice assumption: Owner responses to customer reviews help drive more conversions (because the business pays attention to customers).
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
Over half of the new Yelp reviews left for dealerships did not receive a response from the dealership.
Average Yelp review response time: 9 days
Best practice assumption: Businesses that respond to reviews faster appear to be more engaged and should convert more potential customers.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
Best practice dictates responding to reviews within 24 hours.
Average page load time: 4.5 seconds
Best practice assumption: A faster-loading page will result in better ranking and more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #53, #79
Google only penalizes you for a slow page load speed if you’re in the bottom 20% (ish) for your vertical. Due to the large images necessary on a dealership website, sites tend to take a few seconds longer to load.
Slowest page load time: 219 seconds
Best practice assumption: A faster-loading page will result in better ranking and more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #53, #79
The slowest site in the study took 219 seconds to load – that’s over 3 1/2 minutes! That dealership is definitely losing customers and conversions.
Fastest page load time: 0.17 seconds
Best practice assumption: A faster-loading page will result in better ranking and more conversions.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #53, #79
The fastest site was lightning-fast – while it might be a better user experience, shaving off time to get the page to load this quickly likely had zero effect on improving the site’s visibility in search results.
Website was not responsive: 24.1%
Best practice assumption: After Google’s Page Experience Update in 2022, Google will penalize websites that are not responsive.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #41
Nearly 1 out of 4 dealership websites in the study wasn’t responsive. The high percentage is due to the fact that Dealer.com still doesn’t have responsive websites.
No AutoDealer schema markup: 57.5%
Best practice assumption: Schema markup helps search engines understand your site content, and the LocalBusiness schema markup helps outline important information about your business.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #98
It’s pretty shocking that over half the dealership sites in the study didn’t have LocalBusiness schema markup. As AI Overviews and AI-powered search become more prevalent, schema markup will be even more important.
Average images on GBP landing page: 27
Best practice assumption: A page should include at least one embedded image. Images make site pages more appealing and informative.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #102, #126 (loosely)
Dealership websites are image-heavy by nature, since photos of the vehicles are necessary to convert site visitors.
Have the searched-for keyword on GBP landing page: 42%
Best practice assumption: A page about a particular concept should be optimized for the keywords related to that concept.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #15, #17, #31, #33, #54, #58
It’s basic SEO to write a page of content to target specific keywords, and since the GBP landing page for dealerships is always the home page of the website, it stands to reason that the home page should be optimized for “[brand] dealer” and variations of that phrase. More than half of the websites didn’t do this.
Average non-stop words on GBP landing page: 737.9
Best practice assumption: Google will display the best content at the top of search results. It’s hard to write quality content that answers customers’ questions and talks about the value of the dealership in only a few hundred words.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #71
Word count has been an SEO debate since SEO was invented. We didn’t count “stop words” (such as “a”, “an”, “the”, etc.) since they aren’t used to convey meaning.
Zero words on GBP landing page: 25.6%
Best practice assumption: If you have no text content on the page, there is nothing for Google to rank.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #71
A quarter of the sites in the study had no text on the home page, only images.
Average number of inbound links to the domain: 13,519
Best practice assumption: Inbound links are used by Google to help determine ranking order (more links results in higher ranking).
Position in 2023 LSRF: #19, #21, #27, #32, #47, #50, #66
This doesn’t mean you need this many links – there was a high number of sites in the study with horrible link profiles and spammy links. you should concentrate on getting links from businesses and websites in the same local area if you want the links to matter to Google’s algorithm.
Average number of inbound linking domains: 245
Best practice assumption: Acquiring inbound links from a variety of sites is better than acquiring multiple links from the same few sites.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #19, #21, #27, #32, #47, #50, #66
Too many people get hung up on the total number of inbound links. But there’s diminishing return in getting more links from a site that has already linked to you. When evaluating your inbound links, it’s much more important to monitor the number of unique linking domains than it is to monitor the total number of links pointed to your site.
Biggest link-to-domain difference: 4,083,052
Best practice assumption: Acquiring inbound links from a variety of sites is better than acquiring multiple links from the same few sites.
Position in 2023 LSRF: #19, #21, #27, #32, #47, #50, #66
We subtracted the number of unique linking domains from the total number of inbound links to get the link-to-domain difference for each site. The biggest difference was for a Toyota site with 4,083,694 links from only 642 unique websites.
Average ranking keywords: 8,204
Best practice assumption: Optimizing your GBP and creating helpful content on your site will help you rank for more keywords.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
Ideally the more keywords you rank for, the more traffic and conversions you’ll get. It’s important to note that according to Google, 20% of the search queries entered daily have never been searched before, so it’s incredibly difficult to track every keyword you’ll rank for. According to ahrefs data, the average site in the study ranked for over 8,000 keyword phrases.
Average keywords in the top 3: 359
Best practice assumption: Optimizing your GBP and creating helpful content on your site will help you rank for more keywords.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
While the average number of ranking keywords exceeded 8,000, dealerships in the study only averaged 359 keyword phrases ranking in the top 3 positions in search results.
Average keywords in the top 10: 838
Best practice assumption: Optimizing your GBP and creating helpful content on your site will help you rank for more keywords.
Position in 2023 LSRF: (not listed)
While the average number of ranking keywords exceeded 8,000, dealerships in the study only averaged 838 keyword phrases ranking on the first page of Google search results.
RANKING COMPARISONS: Position 1 vs. position 10
Since we pulled the top 20 businesses from each search, we were able to filter the data and look at how things looked at different ranking positions. I wanted to see if best practices actually led to improved performance or not. In other words, if we assume that doing something “better” according to best practices resulted in higher ranking in the map pack and local finder results.
So for the following data, we compared the averages of dealerships ranking at position 1 in the map pack with dealerships ranking at position 10. There were 84 dealerships at position 1 and 82 at position 10.
In most cases, the data backed up our assumptions – but in a few cases, our assumptions were wrong. To help keep everything straight, I’m introducing a third color. If reality didn’t match our expectations for one of the datapoints, the icon will be red (instead of blue or green). I also tried to explain the reasons the results didn’t show as expected, if I was able to find any supporting data to explain the misalignment.
If the numbers were basically the same, I didn’t include that datapoint, since there’s nothing insightful to share about those datapoints. I aso left out the single number datapoints, since those don’t matter for ranking comparison.
Distance from centroid:
Position 1: 4.7 miles
Position 10: 12.7 miles
Distance to centroid has always been part of the local algorithm, so no surprises here.
Unique primary categories:
Position 1: 8
Position 10: 14
According to the most recent Local Search Ranking Factors study, the primary GBP cateogry is the most influential factor for map pack visibility – so it makes sense that dealers choosing incorrect categories won’t rank as well.
Have a 2nd category:
Position 1: 81%
Position 10: 56.1%
Category choice has long been known to influence visibility in the map pack, so it makes sense that the dealerships who select more related categories will rank better in search results.
Have 5 categories:
Position 1: 65.5%
Position 10: 40.2%
Category choice has long been known to influence visibility in the map pack, so it makes sense that the dealerships who select more related categories will rank better in search results.
Have 10 categories:
Position 1: 16.7%
Position 10: 13.4%
Most dealerships (and most automotive marketing agencies) don’t select 10 categories, so these percentages are smaller – but we still see the dealers who average more categories ranking higher.
Unique categories selected:
Position 1: 42
Position 10: 48
These numbers are higher than they should be, but we still expected to see more categories at lower visibility levels. As dealerships try to add categoreis that don’t really match what they do, it reduces their visibility.
Average number of photos:
Position 1: 297
Position 10: 200
Photos don’t affect ranking, but it isn’t surprising that the dealers who rank higher have more photos. The dealers who rank higher tend to be more proactive with optimization, so we’d expect to see the higher-ranked dealers with more photos.
Average age of most recent photo:
Position 1: 170 days
Position 10: 223 days
Again, it’s not surprising that dealers who are more actively optimizing have uploaded photos to their GPB more recently.
Don’t have Vehicles for Sale:
Position 1: 13.1%
Position 10: 46.3%
While Google doesn’t use the presence of Vehicles for Sale in the GBP as a ranking factor, it stands to reason that the dealerships who are more aggressively optimizing their GBPs have VFS – and the dealerships not paying attention are less likely to have it.
Don’t have department GBPs:
Position 1: 41.7%
Position 10: 70.7%
Once again, dealers who are more active with SEO would be expected to have department GBPs set up – and the results backed up the expectation.
Average questions in Q&A:
Position 1: 16
Position 10: 5.8
While you’re allowed to upload your own questions, the vast majority of dealers and marketing agencies don’t upload anything. So fewer questions on the position 10 dealers is more of a function of visibility. The dealerships at number 1 are more visible, so they receive more questions from the public.
Questions answered by the dealership:
Position 1: 12.5%
Position 10: 17.9%
I assumed that the dealerships who are more actively optimizing would answer more of the GBP Q&A questions. but there was a higher percentage of answers for the position 10 dealers. My suspicion is that this is an area where lower-ranked dealers are trying shortcuts to “up their game”, so they’re trying to answer more questions – no realizing that it won’t affect ranking visibility.
Questions with primary owner answers:
Position 1: 10.2%
Position 10: 15.8%
I assumed that the dealerships who are more actively optimizing would be sure that their owner answers were upvoted to be displayed as primary answers. but there was a higher percentage of primary owner answers for the position 10 dealers. My suspicion is that this is an area where lower-ranked dealers are trying shortcuts to “up their game”, so they’re trying to upvote more of their answers – no realizing that it won’t affect ranking visibility.
Average Google Posts in the last 12 months:
Position 1: 7.5
Position 10: 1.8
It’s not at all surprising that the dealerships ranking higher are publishing Google Posts more often – likely because they’re paying more active attention to optimization.
Average Google review count:
Position 1: 2,381
Position 10: 1,100
We’ve known for years that Google’s local algorithm evaluates Google reviews, so seeing a higher average review count for the number 1 ranked dealers was expected.
Average Google rating:
Position 1: 4.1
Position 10: 3.7
Most people in Local SEO assume that the aggregate review score influences ranking, so we expected to see a lower average score for the lower-ranked dealerships.
Average new Google reviews last year:
Position 1: 38.8
Position 10: 16.9
We expected higher-ranking dealerships to acquire more reviews than lower-ranked dealers – it’s likely that the higher-ranked dealers are more proactive with reputation management, and higher-ranked dealers should win more customers due to better visibility, which would also result in more reviews.
Google reviews not responded to:
Position 1: 19.4%
Position 10: 23.4%
Once again, dealers who rank higher tend to be more proactive with reputation management, so these results were expected.
Website phone matches GBP phone:
Position 1: 65.5%
Position 10: 30.5%
I know, it’s getting boring to see everything match expectations. but once again, we expected that dealers that ranked higher would be paying more attention to NAP consistency.
Unclaimed Yelp profiles:
Position 1: 25%
Position 10: 43.9%
Most dealers aren’t paying attention to Yelp profiles anyway (although they definitely should) – but it once again stands to reason that dealers who are more actively doing SEO would also claim and optimize their Yelp profiles.
Average Yelp review count:
Position 1: 292.7
Position 10: 224.3
Again, dealers actively doing SEO are more likely to be paying attention to reputation management, and review count is evaluated by the algorithm, so it’s expected that the higher-ranked dealers would have more reviews.
Average new Yelp reviews last year:
Position 1: 23.4
Position 10: 18.9
Again, dealers actively doing SEO are more likely to be paying attention to reputation management, and review count is evaluated by the algorithm, so it’s expected that the higher-ranked dealers would receive more reviews.
Average Yelp reviews not responded to:
Position 1: 48.5%
Position 10: 63.4%
Again, dealers actively doing SEO are more likely to be paying attention to reputation management, so we’d expect to see more review responses for dealers at higher ranking positions.
Average page load time:
Position 1: 2.6 seconds
Position 10: 4.5 seconds
Google has emphasized the importance of page load speed for years, so we expected to see the sites at number 1 load faster than the sites at number 10.
Website was not responsive:
Position 1: 17%
Position 10: 29.3%
As I mentioned in the first section, this is basically because of Dealer.com – but we also expected to see fewer non-responsive sites in the top positions, so there wasn’t anything surprising here.
No AutoDealer schema markup:
Position 1: 48.8%
Position 10: 59.8%
While it’s still shocking that so many dealers don’t have AutoDealer schema markup, it’s expected that more dealers at position 1 would have the correct markup on their home page.
Have the searched-for keyword on GBP landing page:
Position 1: 59.5%
Position 10: 32.9%
So… you’re telling me that the dealers who follow SEO best practice rank higher than dealers who don’t? Shocking, right?
Average non-stop words on GBP landing page:
Position 1: 870.5
Position 10: 783.3
Nothing shocking here – we expected to see a higher word count for the dealers at position 1.
Zero words on GBP landing page:
Position 1: 17.9%
Position 10: 26.8%
The only thing surprising here is that sites can rank without content. But it’s expected that there were fewer no-content sites at position 1.
Average number of inbound links to the domain:
Position 1: 3,654
Position 10: 5,084
IMPORTANT NOTE: At position 10, there were a few sites that screwed up the average. A Toyota dealer in Washington had over 375,000 links and a few multi-location independent chains had over 35,000 links and over 11,000 links. If we remove those three and take the average of what’s left, the average is only 2,401 – which means the results would match our expectations.
However, that would be unfairly manipulating data to make it say what we want it to say, so I still marked this datapoint as not matching expectations.
Admittedly, I didn’t take the time to go through the hundreds of thousands of links to check each one – but a quick spot check showed an obvious pattern that I wanted to point out. The sites at position 10 had a significantly higher percentage of garbage links, while the sites at position 1 had more topically-relevant and locally-relevant links – which would again match expectations.
Average number of inbound linking domains:
Position 1: 257
Position 10: 309
IMPORTANT NOTE: The same two independent chains screwed up the average again, with almost 2,500 and just over 1,200 referring domains. If we remove them and re-calculate, the average is only 129.5 unique domains – which means the data clearly supports the assumption that more unique linking sites results in better ranking.
But again, that would be unfairly manipulating data to make it say what we want it to say, so I still marked this datapoint as not matching expectations.
Average ranking keywords:
Position 1: 9,541
Position 10: 7,084
Once again, the data backs up current best practice assumptions. The sites that rank higher are most likely actively optimizing their websites, which should result in the website showing up for more keyword phrases.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE DATA IN 2025
We’re going to make this an annual data study, and we’re working with Places Scout and ahrefs to set the new parameters for the 2025 version of this study. We’ll likely pull the data in late December or early January, and then it will take us a few months to analyze the data and write up the results. So hopefully by the end of March, we’ll be releasing the updated version of this study, where I’ll also add a new section that discusses any major changes in datapoints from this year to next.