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CarGurus - significant drop in traffic?

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#31
csabatka1 said:
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.
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Then maybe they used to and I mispoke or this report was run across keywords alone and not an analyzed (specific) website, either way they aren't crawling everything in existence. There's no way Google allows for it and the bandwidth issue.

I hope more than just SEMRush was used in this endeavor, as it's been known to underestimate organic traffic. Traffic estimator tools have limited indexes and only track a certain amount of keywords, so can’t possibly expect to completely accurately estimate traffic. Most don’t handle the long tail well as they simply don’t have the keyword bandwidth to do so. Furthermore, the tools, much like standard forecasting CTR modelling, also assume visit numbers by ranking position of keyword volume – they *don’t* consider keyword intent, brand vs non-brand, Google answer boxes, 9-pack & 7-pack results, the Knowledge Graph etc.
 
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Dominion DMS
#32
So... I heard it through the grapevine that Cars.com put together a very thorough report (sent out to dealers) where they went into great detail openly using terms like "gaming," and "blackhat," regarding CarGurus' SEO efforts. They even detailed instances of their (CG) efforts visually with screencaps and posted excerpts from Google's TOU. A highly scrutinized report.

It's hilarious that Cars.com is trying to make this all appear to be random and play the passive educator role in forums like this. This was not as random as they're saying. Did Cars.com "report" CG's practices to Google? Look at Carfax jumping in on it. I'm sure somebody shared this report with them too. Was there a time we had heard about "SEO" from Carfax? Hmmm...

What say you @David Greene, representative of Cars.com and Carfax employees?
 
#33
kevinfrye said:
Had a visit with CarFax and they shared this graphic below, which indicates that recent changes to the Google algorithm has created a huge drop in traffic with CarGurus (competitor A) down to the level of AutoTrader and Cars.com. Source is SEMrush. Not sure how accurate this is - curious as to everyone's thoughts - especially in light of the 30% rate hike that CarGurus has been hitting dealers with in the first quarter of this year.

View attachment 4104
Click to expand...

Just checked 4 dealers I’ve pulled March data for, 2 from SW Ohio, 2 from out west, not seeing decline yet. Flat to growing overall. Have 16 more I’ll pull in next few days and let you know.

I am seeing jump in Cars.com emails, but hearing dealers complain about change in quality. When dealership reaches out, consumer says never submitted a lead, multiple dealers contact them on same day. This doesn’t happen for all leads, just an increased proportion.
 
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#34
I just don't understand the need for large companies to use SEMrush to validate their own growth and question a competitor. Show your GA data for growth and talk about what you can do for the customer instead of always trying to focus on the competitor. Sell your value not someone else's non-value.
 
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#35
Geeee... I wonder who that might have been!?

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6520103218729484288/
Michael Annable
Google Analytics | Tag Manager | Data Studio Consultant
So I've been watching this whole saga of what happened to CarGurus' ranking recently. After looking at some of their backlinks, I can't help to think someone was behind a negative SEO Campaign against them. I really don't think they would be this naive to get backlinks from these types of websites. I feel for the team that has to disavow the links. #cardealers #seo

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#36
Goddamn boys... this thread went so very quiet. Are we all ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room (thread)? I'm on my way to get that fair and balanced description that was sent out to dealers. Screenshots to come. Let's see if we can uncover the sinister, diabolical and unethical behavior.
 
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Dominion DMS
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