In my last post here I gave 10 Car Dealer Website Myths and received positive and negative feedback via email.  One email I received was from a dealer who is changing website providers and heard the “indexed inventory” pitch from a potential provider and asked me to expound on the reasons why it is not a good idea to have indexed inventory.  So I am setting up a new category here that will be exclusively about “Automotive Online Marketing Myths”, they are everywhere in car dealer online education and in marketing materials from online providers.

Indexed inventory is a bad idea -

Having individual inventory items show up in the search engine result pages pointing to a dealers website has many negative implications from both a search engine optimization stand point and from a marketing perspective.

From a Search Engine Optimization View:

The search engines are continually changing their algorithms looking for ways to improve the user experience and having pages indexed that no longer exist, or have zero content, could cause your whole website to get dropped from the index. Not notifying the search engines that a page no longer exist after a car is sold can result in hundreds or thousands of pages in the index that provide no value to the search engine user.

Here is what search engine users see if the individual inventory items are not removed from the search engine if they click through to your “indexed inventory”:

^^Indexed Phantom Used Car^^
^^Non Existent New Car^^

^^Where did this one go?^^

What is even worse there is no real branding for the dealership in the top two examples with a clear call to action to see other inventory items.  This is a severe flaw in the inventory platform and provides a poor user experience for the search engine user.  These screen caps were taken after clicking through to actual search engine results for model and geographic area search quires.  Not listed here to not embarrass the web site provider or dealers.  Proclaimed relationships due to being Adwords certified will not save these sites from being placed in the supplemental index or removed all together if Google takes notice.  Then the only effective traffic generation will be dealer search engine marketing.

Having on site inventory search results showing up in the index may be beneficial if you have a large selection of those type vehicles in inventory. However,  Matt Cutts from Google.com has stated:

Proxied copies of websites and search results that don’t add much value already fall under our quality guidelines (e.g. “Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.” and “Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches…”), so Google does take action to reduce the impact of those pages in our index.

Google themselves does not follow these rules.  A recent search for used Rolls Royce Savannah showed AOL Autos in the top placement and after clicking through to see the results displayed there was not a Rolls Royce in Savannah displayed without modifying the search after being taken to the AOL Autos results page.  What was clearly present was Google ads, so removing these search results from the index would negatively affect Google’s revenue model.  Thus increasing the possibility of a click on paid ad as most consumers want the information they requested and may not understand how to redefine their search.

On another search result for Lincoln Continental Virginia Beach Cars.com search results pages wins the top spot with a page that requires further action to see cars within 30 miles of VA Beech while their second entry in the search engine results page showed real cars.  Also easy to identify was the Google powered search found at cars.com absent though was sponsored links from using that search.

Until Google stops profiting from allowing search results to show in their index that may be the best way for dealers to use their inventory to gain entries into the search engine results page.  Still though individual highly dynamic single listings that provide the users with the images above when clicked through to is still pure search engine spam and has zero value to the dealer, potential consumers and pollutes the search engine index.

From a Marketing Perspective -

It may take a while for personalized search to gain any real traction for the everyday search engine user, but when it does if you return results like listed above to a search engine user and they determine your site offers them no value all they have to do is click one X and you will never show up again for them on that search.  This will force you to use paid advertising for them to ever find you again if this comes to fruition:

Image Scarfed from Dealerrefresh.com

This will catapult dealers marketing cost and alienate visitors. It is a well known fact that the majority of search engine users do not click on ads and only a small minority that do account for the majority of clicks, which are typically below the fold consumers.

Car dealers already have a bad reputation for bait and switch advertising and consumers may also view nonexistent inventory items showing up in search results as an extension of this stereotype.  Which may cause them to never want to engage your dealership.

Unless a website provider that touts indexed inventory make the changes to meet Google’s webmaster guidelines and allow the dealership’s web property to Do No Evil and ruin the search engine user experience they should be weary of the claims of the necessity for inventory to be indexed.  It makes framed in inventory appear to be a better alternative for now.

Then again Google.com does not police themselves and skirts acceptable practices, in their eyes, to drive their revenue models.  Which at the end of the day reemphisizes the mantra many practicioners of SEO and affiliate marketing use.  “When a search engine worries about my revenue model I’ll worry about theirs”, because after all Google is putting their revenue model before the user experience as well.

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