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Ed,

Just because you use a feed instead of a scraping technique your site doesn't become validated.

I don't want to discuss Vast's business model, it is not my place to discuss so I'm generally stating the following:

Using dealer's data without a direct agreement for each site should be illegal. The data is used to generate leads via long tail indexing or networks outside the dealer's reach to generate leads than are sold to companies that in turn sell them back to the dealers.

On one hand you can take this as a positive; Vast has a private network with a defined audience, they generate leads with the dealer's inventory, the dealer has the opportunity to buy those.

On the other hand you can take it as a negative; Vast is getting leads out of the market that otherwise would have found me via my advertising and I would have gotten that customer.

Are these networks thinning down my ability to be relevant?

I don't know the answer to that but at least I advocate that the dealer should be the one making the choice.