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CarGurus - significant drop in traffic?

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#21
11dealerships said:
Thanks Alex. Re; CG fixing it, I don't take a view, but from what I've read it is the upper vs. lower funnel issue, and that's not really fixable for Cargurus. However, you or another poster mentioned Google changes their algorithm every few months, so who knows what the next one does, could reverse right back. And you are 100% correct that Langley and co. deserve the benefit of the doubt with what they've done. The key distinction though is they bought the traffic which is SEM, not SEO. They spent >70% of their revenue on Sales and Marketing, much of which is just buying their way to the top. In any case, I'm curious in David's response on reconciling Carfax's presentation and Cars.com and Cargurus. Also, Alex you brought up an interesting related point when you mentioned the former EBAY GM - where is EBAY here? They have a huge lead gen business in Europe and a small one here. There were rumors they were exiting the market but those turned out to be false and now are expanding. At NADA folks thought it was because FB was launching marketplace and partnering with lead-gen and others, so EBAY had to step back in and compete. But just curious where they sit as we haven't heard form them other than their hiring of employees.
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Exactly, I predict the next algo update (which happens all of the time) things will resettle for them. They're too bright and pockets too deep to allow incorrectly placed or used reviews, rich data, content, etc. to compromise them long term. I just don't see them going down like that, contrary to the wishful thinking of Carfax, Cars.com, Edmunds, Autotrader (who are they), etc. If I were a dealer, I wouldn't pull my money away from them. Albeit maybe too small of a sample size and imperfect system, while working in automotive attribution (generally speaking) I saw great cost per acquisition (against goals) and ultimately fantastic cost per sale out of CG.

As for eBayMotors, yeah... I dunno'. Again, I saw some dealer demographics appreciate it (do well in terms of cost per sale) and others not. I guess that is one reason to test over time and figure things out as you do.
 
#22
Alexander Lau said:
Exactly, I predict the next algo update (which happens all of the time) things will resettle for them. They're too bright and pockets too deep to allow incorrectly placed or used reviews, rich data, content, etc. to compromise them long term. I just don't see them going down like that, contrary to the wishful thinking of Carfax, Cars.com, Edmunds, Autotrader (who are they), etc. If I were a dealer, I wouldn't pull my money away from them. Albeit maybe too small of a sample size and imperfect system, while working in automotive attribution (generally speaking) I saw great cost per acquisition (against goals) and ultimately fantastic cost per sale out of CG.

As for eBayMotors, yeah... I dunno'. Again, I saw some dealer demographics appreciate it (do well in terms of cost per sale) and others not. I guess that is one reason to test over time and figure things out as you do.
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No argument here :). But still am curious (1) why the cars.com chart of 4k words is better or worse than the carfax chart of 20k words or cargurus millions of words and that google interview that said post algorithm cars was actually -1% on traffic; (2) As Alex just noted, clearly based on cargurus rapid expansion they are showing ROI to dealers - why aren't the other players doing this, especially if this traffic chart is correct and sustainable vs. CG putting in a fix or google making a change and it's just a blip. I'm frankly surprised with the well-respected dealer inspire team on board for over a year now and their facebook partnership which gives them proprietary data blended with their own, that we dealers aren't seeing superior results from cars.com vs. CG. Based on tech/data like they describe here: https://adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/cars-com-helps-auto-manufacturers-fuel-up-on-quality-data/ , I would expect to them to be showing us very high and targeted ROI versus this arbitrarily chosen traffic chart which could just be a temporary three week shift, especially with CG doing so well for so long. We are all eating their price increases because they continuously prove our their value proposition. Re: EBAY, yep who knows. Just odd that they have a marketplace and a lead-gen operation; Facebook is launching a marketplace and finds it necessary to partner with lead-gen to grow it, and EBAY would stand idly by. But who knows.
 
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#23
11dealerships said:
No argument here :). But still am curious (1) why the cars.com chart of 4k words is better or worse than the carfax chart of 20k words or cargurus millions of words and that google interview that said post algorithm cars was actually -1% on traffic; (2) As Alex just noted, clearly based on cargurus rapid expansion they are showing ROI to dealers - why aren't the other players doing this, especially if this traffic chart is correct and sustainable vs. CG putting in a fix or google making a change and it's just a blip. I'm frankly surprised with the well-respected dealer inspire team on board for over a year now and their facebook partnership which gives them proprietary data blended with their own, that we dealers aren't seeing superior results from cars.com vs. CG. Based on tech/data like they describe here: https://adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/cars-com-helps-auto-manufacturers-fuel-up-on-quality-data/ , I would expect to them to be showing us very high and targeted ROI versus this arbitrarily chosen traffic chart which could just be a temporary three week shift, especially with CG doing so well for so long. We are all eating their price increases because they continuously prove our their value proposition. Re: EBAY, yep who knows. Just odd that they have a marketplace and a lead-gen operation; Facebook is launching a marketplace and finds it necessary to partner with lead-gen to grow it, and EBAY would stand idly by. But who knows.
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I couldn't agree more, let's get down to the nitty-gritty, where is the report showing "high and targeted ROI?" What specific keywords are being converted into sales? The data chosen is completely arbitrary.
 
#25
Jeff Kershner said:
Any ideas on what CG is/was doing specifically that Google didn't like that caused such a swing in their organic traffic traffic?
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It's hard saying what they were doing specifically that hurt their ranking, but a few things that jumped at while looking at their keyword position changes in SEMRush:
1. Biggest decline and lost position changes were year, make, model and make, model searches. ex "2015 ford explorer", "2014 chevy cruze", "jeep wrangler". Almost all of these they dropped out of positions 1-3, and some even out of top 10 and top 20. All high volume, low converting keywords.

2. They lost a lot of positioning in their Dealer landing pages (ie https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/m-Lagers-of-Mankato-sp338559). Most going from top 10 (some top 3) to out of top 20.
 

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#26
csabatka1 said:
It's hard saying what they were doing specifically that hurt their ranking, but a few things that jumped at while looking at their keyword position changes in SEMRush:
1. Biggest decline and lost position changes were year, make, model and make, model searches. ex "2015 ford explorer", "2014 chevy cruze", "jeep wrangler". Almost all of these they dropped out of positions 1-3, and some even out of top 10 and top 20. All high volume, low converting keywords.

2. They lost a lot of positioning in their Dealer landing pages (ie https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/m-Lagers-of-Mankato-sp338559). Most going from top 10 (some top 3) to out of top 20.
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Very interesting observation. The drop in sending to our website is not good since that's what we all prefer, though maybe fixable. Regarding the high volume, low converting keywords - that might make this less significant if its low quality volume they are losing (except for the dealer landing pages). It may be too early, but the real test will be see if dealers start to see results one way or the other.
 
#28
11dealerships said:
Very interesting observation. The drop in sending to our website is not good since that's what we all prefer, though maybe fixable. Regarding the high volume, low converting keywords - that might make this less significant if its low quality volume they are losing (except for the dealer landing pages). It may be too early, but the real test will be see if dealers start to see results one way or the other.
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It's not a drop in sending to your website, it's a drop in a shopper's query containing your dealership name in which the CarGurus listing page is appearing. A search containing your dealer name should have your website(s) exclusive on first page, not a 3rd party website.

With the make, model keywords it appears Google sees the user's intention of this query as a "research" search. KBB, Edmunds, Carfax are all top of page now with their "Pricing, Ratings, and Review" type of pages, listing pages are not in the 3-10 range. I'm also getting a few cars.com "Expert Reviews, Specs and Photos" pages in my SERPs.
 
#29
Alexander Lau said:
In which geo(s) were these reports generated? International (National), Local or Mobile?

Again, SEMRush (and similar "SEO" tools) and their scraping techniques ain't cutting it dudes. They cannot crawl everything that counts.
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It gives us enough to start forming theories or what's going on.

Next, SEMRush's Position changes report do not crawl individual sites, they crawl Google SERPs (non-local) and take snapshots of the results for both mobile and desktop. Most snapshots and best data is from desktop.
 
#30
I wouldn't worry about keyword positions as much as this barking report shows, I'd be more worried about which keywords convert for your dealership and why. Just because a 3rd party listing is ranked ahead (on a local and mobile level) for whichever page doesn't mean that listing converts better. There are many variables there (obvious to those in SEO) the right enticing title, description, corresponding landing page, etc. Now, if you start seeing organic traffic that previously converted for you via CG start to die, that's a different story. Again, I wouldn't dump CG (at least initially) over this.

I'd be interested to know if all the naysayers are going to come back and boast about the rapid climb of CG in a month or two.
 
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