Your website might be invisible to ChatGPT and nobody at your store would ever know - AEO / GEO Megathread

[carguyfiles]

We all keep debating whether artificial intelligence, umm I mean super intelligence (sorry Mr. President), is coming for the BDC.

Meanwhile a buyer in your town is asking ChatGPT where to get a deal on a used Tahoe, and your website might not even be letting it in the door.

Everybody's pitching AEO and GEO right now, aka getting your store to show up in ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity answers. None of it matters if the bots can't read your site. And when they can't, nothing on your end tells you.

Two quick checks:

1) Go to yourstore.com/robots.txt and ctrl+F for OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. If any of them have Disallow: / under them, or you see User-agent: * followed by Disallow: /, you're locking them out. (GPTBot is the training bot, different conversation.)

2) Pull up a used VDP, view the source (ctrl+U) and ctrl+F the price. Try it with and without the comma. If it's not in there, it's probably getting loaded by javascript, and ChatGPT might be looking at a car with photos and no price.

I wrote up the full 15 minute check, including the firewall piece (that's the sneaky one):

Can ChatGPT and Claude Read Your Dealership Website?

A 15-minute check of whether ChatGPT, Claude and other AI tools can read your dealership website: robots.txt, firewalls, JavaScript and VDP text.

autolander.ai

Who's brave enough to try it? Post what you find, even if you pass. And the website and SEO people on here, am I overblowing this or are you seeing it too? This thread is for everyone to discuss their positions on it as well as methods on how to rank.

 

[joe.pistell]

Great write-up, Michael. Thank you. Any thoughts about dealer inspire sites being behind the Cloudflare wall?

Dealer Inspire dealers should be very mad.

Example, a car shopper writes:

"I like this car, can you find me one like this at a better price? My zip is 13029.
https://www.maguirecars.com/invento...-base-fwd-4d-sport-utility-5xyzt3lb0jg526346/"

Grok:
That listing is a 2018 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport 2.4 Base, front-wheel drive, VIN 5XYZT3LB0JG526346. Maguire’s own page is blocked, but Autotrader has:

Grok Output:

Car shopping at better price | Shared Grok Conversation

I like this car, can you find me one like this at a better price? My zip is 13029. https://www.magu

grok.com

 

[carguyfiles]

Any thoughts about dealer inspire sites being behind the Cloudflare wall?

Great example Joe. I ran Maguire through the checks and it passes 3 of the 4. The robots.txt doesn't name a single AI bot, and that Santa Fe page has the price, mileage and VIN right in the raw HTML. But the site runs through Cloudflare, so that's where Grok hit the wall and sent your shopper to Autotrader instead. It's the one door nobody at the store ever sees.

To be fair to DI, their own page says they let verified crawlers from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic through Cloudflare. Grok and Perplexity aren't on that list, which matches your test.

Good news is the fix is a setting on their end. Cloudflare lists Grok's agent (GrokAgent) as verified, and AI Crawl Control lets whoever runs the account allow crawlers one by one.

If you're on DI or anything behind Cloudflare:

1) Paste a VDP link into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Grok and ask for the price and VIN. Note which ones can't open it.

2) Send your rep: "Please allow xAI's GrokAgent and Perplexity's PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User for our domain in Cloudflare, and confirm ChatGPT and Claude are allowed too. Training bots can stay blocked. Please confirm in writing with the date it's live."

3) Rerun step 1.

Any DI store that gets it flipped, post your before and after.

 

[JimmyBrown]

I know I need this stuff but I don’t even know where to begin. I’m old skool built my dealer from the ground up now there’s all this technology and I don’t know where to start.