CarGurus Stealing Leads?

[RayReggie]

I watched the video.

I'm gonna be brutally honest here.

If you put that button or let CarGurus convince you to put that button on your website, shame on you.

The functionality literally just opens up the VDP on Cargurus .com - WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT OR ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN ON THEIR SITE?

Yes, the issue and answer is education, but sometimes it's also just common sense.

This is a common sense issue here.

DEALERS: You invest thousands of dollars every month - sometimes tens of thousands - in getting people to your website. Why would you then send them right through your shop and out the back door?

Anyone operating a business should know this.

Shame on CarGurus, yes, but also shame on any dealer that allows this to happen on their site.

Will, I agree with you. Dealers need to evaluate EVERY widget, shiny object, and script that is added to their website. So many do more harm than any possible benefit!

 

[Patrick O]

The contact form in the CarGurus pop-up can be disabled by adding this line to the script embedded on the dealership website: "showContactForm": false,

Example:
<script>
var CarGurus = window.CarGurus || {}; window.CarGurus = CarGurus;
CarGurus.DealRatingBadge = window.CarGurus.DealRatingBadge || {};
CarGurus.DealRatingBadge.options = {
"style": "STYLE1",
"minRating": "GOOD_PRICE",
"showContactForm": false,
"debug": false,
"live": true,
"liveIntervalMS": "500",
"defaultHeight": "6"
};

(function() {
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.src = "https://static.cargurus.com/js/api/en_US/1.0/dealratingbadge.js";
script.async = true;
var entry = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
entry.parentNode.insertBefore(script, entry);
})();
</script>

 

[elmagito]

We are in the process of signing up with them when I encountered this thread a few days ago. I emailed our sale rep and here is Cargurus explanation or excuse to this problem. This message is directly from the sales director verbatim.

"Great question. It is completely optional for dealers to have our badging on their sites. The primary benefit is to reaffirm from a third party the value they have on a specific vehicle. We in no way share leads, give leads, or mis lead either the dealer or car shopper. I can assure you whomever is posting these items must be misinterpreting the objective".

I welcome any comments regarding their answer. Seems how long can Pinocchio's nose grow?

 

[Auto_NC]

We are in the process of signing up with them when I encountered this thread a few days ago. I emailed our sale rep and here is Cargurus explanation or excuse to this problem. This message is directly from the sales director verbatim.

"Great question. It is completely optional for dealers to have our badging on their sites. The primary benefit is to reaffirm from a third party the value they have on a specific vehicle. We in no way share leads, give leads, or mis lead either the dealer or car shopper. I can assure you whomever is posting these items must be misinterpreting the objective".

I welcome any comments regarding their answer. Seems how long can Pinocchio's nose grow?

I mean that just seems completely false given that a shopper receives an email from CG with the option to view additional vehicles from other stores. What should be a website lead for the dealer, now turns into a CG lead, and also becomes an opportunity for CG to show the shopper all the inventory available from their site.

 

[Tallcool1]

We are in the process of signing up with them when I encountered this thread a few days ago. I emailed our sale rep and here is Cargurus explanation or excuse to this problem. This message is directly from the sales director verbatim.

"Great question. It is completely optional for dealers to have our badging on their sites. The primary benefit is to reaffirm from a third party the value they have on a specific vehicle. We in no way share leads, give leads, or mis lead either the dealer or car shopper. I can assure you whomever is posting these items must be misinterpreting the objective".

I welcome any comments regarding their answer. Seems how long can Pinocchio's nose grow?

Ya, I call bullshit. Sorry, but that's not a very complicated objective to interpret.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

We are in the process of signing up with them when I encountered this thread a few days ago. I emailed our sale rep and here is Cargurus explanation or excuse to this problem. This message is directly from the sales director verbatim.

"Great question. It is completely optional for dealers to have our badging on their sites. The primary benefit is to reaffirm from a third party the value they have on a specific vehicle. We in no way share leads, give leads, or mis lead either the dealer or car shopper. I can assure you whomever is posting these items must be misinterpreting the objective".

I welcome any comments regarding their answer. Seems how long can Pinocchio's nose grow?

...and I know more than what 90% of my reps know, about their own product.

 

[cscott144]

The contact form in the CarGurus pop-up can be disabled by adding this line to the script embedded on the dealership website: "showContactForm": false,

Example:
<script>
var CarGurus = window.CarGurus || {}; window.CarGurus = CarGurus;
CarGurus.DealRatingBadge = window.CarGurus.DealRatingBadge || {};
CarGurus.DealRatingBadge.options = {
"style": "STYLE1",
"minRating": "GOOD_PRICE",
"showContactForm": false,
"debug": false,
"live": true,
"liveIntervalMS": "500",
"defaultHeight": "6"
};

(function() {
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.src = "https://static.cargurus.com/js/api/en_US/1.0/dealratingbadge.js";
script.async = true;
var entry = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
entry.parentNode.insertBefore(script, entry);
})();
</script>

It looks like you added 4 lines of code here, correct?

 

[Patrick O]

It looks like you added 4 lines of code here, correct?

No, just: "showContactForm": false,

If you see additional lines compared to yours, those may be different parameters you are not currently using. The showContactForm flag is the only one used to enable/disable the form on the pop-up.

 

[Jeremy Sacco]

Hi all - chiming in from CarGurus. I just put up a post with some information on this, but it's pretty straightforward:

• We removed the contact forms from the Deal Rating Badges today. The feedback here is correct - those shoppers should not have been getting our marketing emails and this was the fastest way to stop that. We apologize for the oversight.
• Fortunately, those badges are much more important for perception than actually driving user activity. First, they only appear on desktop (not mobile) and only caused this problem if they were set up to include a link to a contact form. Second, they only get about a 0.5% click rate and even less conversion. Across thousands of dealers using the badges, there were 63 leads submitted on those forms last week -- so whatever impact there was would have been very, very small.

Here's the post, for reference.

Regarding some of the other topics in this thread -- I'm well aware of the conversations that are going on about CarGurus right now, since I just got back from NADA. The cash offer test with Carvana was part of our efforts to build a trade-in product that would support many dealers, and has been taken off of VDPs. Details on that here.

And yes, @Patrick O , thanks for sharing the javascript details. The configurator here also makes it easy for anyone to adjust the code, then paste it into their site.

 

[Retail My Ride]

Dealers - ITS TIME TO LOCK DOWN YOUR WEBSITE!

Across the automotive industry, many dealers are utilizing a CarGurus third-party endorsement badge on their dealership’s website. According to CarGurus’ website, third party endorsement badges help dealers, “close more sales by showing customers your best deals.” What dealers don’t know, is an endorsement badge is actually a lead form that CarGurus is using to “capture”, “steal”, and re-market YOUR leads, FROM YOUR website to YOUR competitors.

As shown in the linked video, minutes after submitting an inquiry through the endorsement badge the customer receives an automated email prompting them to view “similar cars.” Clicking “similar cars” takes the prospect to cargurus.com where your competitor’s vehicles are listed. For the next two weeks, the customer will also be aggressively retargeted by CarGurus.

(CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO: VIDEO PROOF )

Additionally, when the initial prospect’s lead is delivered to your dealership’s CRM, the leads are sourced as a CarGurus lead when in fact the prospect originated on YOUR website.

Not only are 3rd party scripts and widgets diluting your website’s attributions, but they are also negatively impacting site speed. I encourage dealers to evaluate every 3rd party scrip on their website and remove old or unnecessary scripts. Many scripts and widgets do more harm than good. As it’s been said many times before… Less is more.

View attachment 4598

Christopher. Thanks for exposing this! It has all the negatives (and down right dirty play) that you mentioned, plus CG is generating multiple leads from same shopper and taking credit for being a lead gen master. I'll take quality over quantity any day. Every dealer using the badge should immediately take it down from their site. Has anyone at CG responded to your post yet? They should!