Websites, SEO, SEM, Display, Social, Marketing

This thread features automotive professionals sharing Google's April Fools' Day jokes from 2010, including fake products like "Blimp Ads" for AdWords, Gmail Motion (composing emails via body language), and Google Autocompleter. The posts are lighthearted reactions to these pranks, with participants laughing at the absurdity of the fictional features. No serious marketing insights emerge—the thread is simply a brief moment of humor among industry peers.

Jeff Kershner from HookLogic hosted a well-attended webinar on improving lead-to-show conversion rates, emphasizing that driving more customers to the showroom floor directly increases vehicle sales. Due to the high attendance, many attendee questions went unanswered during the live event, so Kershner opened this forum thread to address follow-up questions and made the webinar recordings available via YouTube for those who missed it.

Dealership professionals debate whether gamification—applying game mechanics to enhance customer engagement—is a viable marketing strategy for automotive retail. While one faction argues it's already effective (citing examples like Nissan's competitive fuel-efficiency tracking) and could differentiate dealerships in a crowded market, skeptics contend it's more of a branding distraction than a sales tool at the dealer level, especially online where prospects want straightforward information and pricing rather than additional barriers to purchase.

A forum user inquires about the typical pricing structure for pay-per-lead marketing services in automotive dealerships. The thread seeks practical cost information from dealers currently using these lead generation services to help benchmark expenses.

The thread examines the fallout after a New Media Strategies employee accidentally posted a profane tweet from the official @ChryslerAutos account, leading Chrysler to fire the agency. Commenters debate whether outsourcing a brand's social voice is fundamentally flawed, contrasting Chrysler's hands-off approach with Ford and GM's more internally-driven social media leadership. The key consensus is that brands—including dealerships—must maintain direct, high-level ownership of their social media presence rather than delegating it entirely to agencies.

A dealer shares ListHD, a free tool for posting high-quality images of vehicles on Craigslist, which he discovered while searching for solutions to Craigslist's image size limitations. The poster reports that the relatively new service works well for his purposes. The key takeaway is a practical resource recommendation for dealers looking to improve their Craigslist vehicle listings with larger, better-quality photos.

A Buick GMC dealer seeks recommendations for quality new car leads to supplement weak inventory from GM's internal lead program, specifically asking about Edmunds. Respondents confirm Edmunds delivers accurate leads (sometimes through AutoUSA), while cautioning against Autobytel due to mismatched customer intent—leads often convert to used car shoppers rather than new car buyers. The emerging insight is that lead quality varies significantly by provider and that customer intent misalignment is a major pain point worth vetting before committing to a service.

A Walpole Mitsubishi employee discovers their dealership's entire inventory has disappeared from CarGurus and seeks help from the community. The issue is traced to a feed problem with Autobytel, their inventory data provider, rather than a CarGurus-side issue. The key takeaway is that when inventory stops appearing on third-party listing sites, dealers should contact both the listing platform and their inventory feed vendor to pinpoint where the breakdown occurred.

A GM wants to add an auto-playing video spokesperson (an animated character) to the dealership website, prompting the poster to ask the community for opinions on their effectiveness. The overwhelming consensus from experienced marketers is strongly against auto-play spokesperson videos, with multiple participants citing increased bounce rates, poor user experience (especially for office browsers), and the general staleness of this tactic. The key takeaway is that videos can be valuable for dealership websites, but only if they feature custom content, avoid auto-play, and require user action to watch—making the GM's proposed approach counterproductive.

A dealer describes a frustrating experience where all of his company's Google Places listings entered compliance review status after making changes to accommodate a store relocation and duplicate listings for multi-brand locations. After months of unsuccessful troubleshooting and guideline adjustments, a Google sales representative revealed that the account had accumulated too many red flags from revisions, requiring him to delete all old listings and create them fresh in a new Google Places account to resolve the issue. The thread highlights the difficulty of managing Google Places listings for multi-location automotive dealers and the limited accessibility of Google support for resolving complex account issues.

Anirban attempts to explain how off-page SEO and quality backlinks influence Google search rankings, but the thread quickly derails into meta-discussion about his poor writing formatting and community members questioning whether his posts are genuinely original or spam-posted across multiple forums. No substantive conclusion about PageRank links emerges, as the conversation focuses instead on Anirban's posting habits and credibility rather than the technical SEO topic he introduced.

A Toyota dealer asks whether making phone numbers mandatory on website contact forms would improve lead quality, acknowledging that many leads from Dealer.com lack phone numbers and are harder to contact. Responses vary, with one dealer reporting success by making the field optional (increasing both submissions and phone number capture by 19%), while another found requiring phone numbers actually improved overall lead quality with minimal impact on submission volume. The consensus suggests testing the requirement, as the trade-off between lead quantity and contactability depends on individual dealer circumstances.

Dealers discuss Cars.com's upcoming Dealer Reviews feature launching March 15th and debate whether to attend a 4-hour Reputation Management Online Conference featuring 12 workshops on review management strategies. A Cars.com representative clarifies that attendees can drop in and out of sessions and access recordings on-demand, while another user notes the conference is worthwhile and directs readers to an exclusive DealerRefresh interview about the new product. The overall sentiment suggests cautious interest in Cars.com's review solution as a visibility opportunity, though dealers are weighing it against alternatives like DealerRater.

Ryan Thompson promotes the Auto Remarketing Used Car Conference in Toronto on April 12th, noting it's a rare quality conference option for Canadian automotive professionals with notable speakers like Brian Benstock and Dale Pollak. He invites fellow Canadians interested in attending to connect with him for a meetup and references a blog post he wrote with additional details. The thread addresses a gap in the Canadian market for quality industry conferences and facilitates networking among professionals in the region.

The thread discusses the impact of Google's Farmer algorithm (Panda update) launched in late February and its effects on website rankings, with the original poster asserting that high PageRank backlinks remain a critical ranking factor despite the algorithm changes. The poster argues that quality backlinks are more important than other factors like bounce rate or content quality in maintaining search visibility. The thread appears incomplete, but the key insight is a claim that PageRank backlinks continued to be a dominant SEO ranking signal even after Google's major algorithm update.

Automotive professionals discuss Yelp's effectiveness as a review platform, with particular focus on its aggressive filtering system that hides reviews from new or less-active users, even when they come from legitimate customers. While acknowledging Yelp's popularity and free listing benefits, users highlight frustrations with the inability to moderate content and the platform's opacity around review visibility. A practical workaround emerges: dealers can screenshot filtered reviews and republish them on their own websites and social media to ensure positive customer feedback reaches potential buyers.

The original post criticizes Google's Farmer Algorithm update for disproportionately penalizing legitimate, original content websites while failing to effectively target scrapers and spam sites. The poster argues that Google should have provided advance notice and clearer guidelines before rolling out such a significant algorithm change that negatively impacted major players' search rankings and revenue.

A new Ford dealership ISM seeks recommendations for website providers and asks whether to use the same vendor for both website and CRM/ILM services or separate providers. Responses suggest that website and CRM/ILM providers are increasingly partnering, but dealerships have more options for website selection and should evaluate providers independently based on features like inventory management, SEO performance, and customer service rather than defaulting to an all-in-one solution.

A dealership seeking to replace Facebook's removed "suggest to friends" feature in their salesman bonus structure solicited ideas for alternative marketing activities that would incentivize salespeople to contribute to the store's online presence. The community suggested video-based content (walkarounds and testimonials) as the most viable replacement, with one user recommending a gamified contest approach using third-party apps to maintain engagement and virality. The thread concluded with a broader suggestion to rotate between multiple bonus categories (emails, inventory management, etc.) and implement a ranking system across all metrics to create comprehensive monthly incentives.

A dealer discusses Google's February 2011 algorithm update and its dramatic impact on search rankings, noting that many well-established websites experienced significant drops while the change's actual quality benefits remain unclear. The poster questions whether scraper sites and blogs are unfairly outperforming original content creators and suggests the community monitor Google's future moves. The thread touches on broader implications, including potential job losses in SEO-dependent businesses, but appears incomplete.

Google announced a significant algorithm update affecting 11.8% of queries, designed to penalize low-quality sites with duplicate content and minimal user value. The original poster noticed major SERP changes and shared Google's official confirmation, though discussion about which data centers were affected and the actual ranking impacts remained unclear. The thread provides limited actionable insight beyond awareness of the update itself, with no concrete conclusions about how dealers should respond.

A dealership owner asks whether to expand from Facebook to Twitter, prompting experienced dealers to advise that social media presence is less important than foundational business practices like customer service, Google Places optimization, and online reviews. The consensus is that pursuing social media without first fixing internal operations and reputation will only amplify existing problems to a wider audience. While Twitter can be useful for monitoring mentions and networking, dealers should prioritize getting their customer experience and online reputation right before investing heavily in social channels.