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If you use Dealer.com - you now sell Mercedes...

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Sharko

Sharko

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Jun 25, 2012
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#1
NOTE: If you want the punchline, just click the 3 links below. The rest of this post just explains how to get there. (This is a dealer website I picked at random from a Google search. It works the same for any DDC website as far as I can see.)

A. FINE: Detail page

B. NOT SO MUCH: Same page minus the variable string

C. URR.... WHAT? "Is this page really on my store's website?"

(I've run this test on a bunch of DDC (Dealer.com) sites and haven't found an exception yet. If you find one, make a comment.)

The test:

1) Just navigate to the detail page of ANY new vehicle of any dealership's website using DDC and in the address box, remove any part of the URL after /new/ (you gotta at least keep "/new/") and click enter. What is that? lol

2) To see the Mercedes, click the link that reads "START" - and there it is.

Trippy, huh?

I asked a DDC rep. the implications of this on a dealer's SEO and I was told they are negligible. Hmmmm... perhaps not - that - small.

Actually, before I was told that they were negligible, I was told, "Well, how would any person ever find that page?" That seemed slightly beyond the point. It actually speaks to the engineering of the system. This is a major bug - and no amount of lipstick changes that.

We might still choose DDC, but further evaluation is necessary.
 
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#2
sam99 said:
NOTE: If you want the punchline, just click the 3 links below. The rest of this post just explains how I got there.


A. FINE: Detail page

B. NOT SO MUCH: Same page minus the variable string

C. URR.... WHAT? "Is this page really on my store's website?"


(I've run this test a bunch of DDC (Dealer.com) sites and haven't found an exception. If you find one, make a comment.)

The test:

1) Just navigate to the detail page of ANY new vehicle and in the address box, remove any part of the URL after /new/ and click enter. What is that? lol

2) To see the Mercedes, click the link that reads "START" - and there it is.

Trippy, huh?

I asked a DDC rep. the implications of this on a dealer's SEO and I was told they are negligible. Hmmmm... perhaps not - that - small.
Click to expand...

It's on one of my factory mandated Dealer.com sites too, I wonder how the factory OEM brand will feel about this! Will have zero effect on SEO, other than being a duplicate page.. It's not even indexed in Google since nothing links to it.

Research and Build in Style Pulls up that page too.

But it makes me wonder if this is on my site, what else is there!.. Time to do a full search of all the pages and see what comes up.
 
#3
kcar said:
...I wonder how the factory OEM brand will feel about this! ...
Click to expand...

At the very least, if I was an OEM rep., I would need an explanation as to why, in any event, does my Toyota / Honda/ Ford / Chevy etc, etc. dealers' website link up to a Mercedes with a European license plate! lol

I don't know, maybe it's not a big deal, I would need to dig further. But it's like finding a hair in your soup at a restaurant. Sure, you can pick the hair out, but how do you feel about eating it now?
 
#7
Alex Snyder said:
What made you decide to change URL strings around? Obviously, not something we usually hear about, but thanks for pointing it out. Fortunately this was a quick fix and has been taken care of.
Click to expand...

You're welcome. "Tinkering" was the culprit.

And the URL string wasn't changed, it was just reduced segment by segment; even taking away just the ".htm" had the same effect.

BTW, when I brought this up to the DDC rep. we've been talking to, he (after a couple of days) came back with, "Oh, I told our engineers about this and they said they've known about it for quite some time and have been busy working on a solution."

And here you go and see to it that one of your code monkeys (that's an affectionate term in my world, seriously - lol) drops in a simple line of code and a universal redirect is put in place within minutes of reading this post. (Either that or the page was generating dynamically by default, I think.)

Which makes the story my rep. gave me somewhat.... stinky? lol

Good on you Alex, way to look out for your company.

---Since I brought this to your company's attention, could you tell me what it took to fix it - specifically? You can say, "I can't do that," and nobody would blame you. But I brought it to your attention knowing that you guys would want to know. So... what was causing something that odd and what was the cure?
 
#8
sam99 said:
BTW, when I brought this up to the DDC rep. we've been talking to, he (after a couple of days) came back with, "Oh, I told our engineers about this and they said they've known about it for quite some time and have been busy working on a solution."
Click to expand...

That's the part we're looking into. I'm not trying to make excuses, but sometimes people say different things or don't fully understand what's going on, or might not have direct access to the code monkeys (I call them that too ;) ). I call this a usual mistake of simply being human and bet it won't be the last time this ever happens in the history of man.

No harm no foul at the end of the day. All is well again. Thanks for pointing this out Sam :thumbup:
 
#10
sam99 said:
Hey yago - I'm not sure what you mean? This is neither "conspiracy" nor "theory" nor a combination of the two.

It's a factual observation with no near or far-flung conclusions drawn from those observations.

Like Joe Friday said, "Just the facts, ma'am."
Click to expand...


If you have been around the car biz long enough you know that for some reason dealers like to make conspiracy theories even when a sales guy goes from one dealer to another but in the end, I was just making a joke about it because following Snyder's thoughts: "so what you can change a code/link/name whatever and find some random photo with no advertisement/SEO value of any kind???!!!"
 
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