Google’s contribution to the automotive industry

Recently, a possible new Google feature has come to light and it has sparked great speculation and discussions – causing much anticipation within the industry.

Could Google be bringing new opportunities for car dealers in the UK? It’s looking likely…

Many have spotted that Google have been and are currently testing the positioning of used car stock from car dealerships in search results. An innovative step that could be rolled out across the world.

Surely, this is great news for all car dealerships out there because there’s even assumptions that Google will be offering this service for free! – Could this eventually take over from the Automotive marketplace giants? Quite possibly.

As an automotive web provider, for us this is the million-dollar question. Obviously, there is no way of knowing for sure how traffic will be affected, if at all, and until the new feature has been rolled out for a significant amount of time, we believe organic traffic (through search engines, specifically Google) may take a slight hit eventually, mainly because the organic results on Google will be pushed lower down the page. As pictures of the cars, the dealership location and costs could all be displayed directly under the Google search box, right at the top.

On the other hand, website traffic may increase through other channels – specifically referral and direct, due to the boost in stock visibility. If a customer is interested in one your cars that they see on Google they are likely to click a link through to your website to gather further information or go to your website directly. If anything, the websites that are likely to suffer in regard to traffic are aggregator sites.

According to the rumours, when a customer searches for a term such as ‘cars for sale near me’ filters will appear to narrow down the search, including new and used cars and many further specifications to quickly explore and compare available cars. This will result in more qualified leads for dealers. We are thinking this will be similar to Facebook Marketplace.

If this takes off, car dealers could benefit from way more exposure of their stock, but they could also be faced with the challenge of increased competition on one advertising platform. It could almost become compulsory for a car dealer to include their stock within the new Google feature for their stock to be viewed on the same level as their competitors.

Let us know, would you partake in this?