CDK Websites See Significant Organic Traffic Increases

[Dane Saville]

At the beginning of August, we know that a few publications reported that the automotive industry was likely affected by Google's "Medic" update. We noted a remarkable increase in organic traffic for just CDK websites that directly coincides with the newer algorithm.

While conducting regular audits, we discovered a pattern of significant increase in organic website traffic throughout the month of August compared to July. These numbers prompted us to perform an internal audit across our entire dealer network to substantiate it.

91.7% of our network was affected. These CDK sites saw an average month-over-month increase of 45% in organic traffic. Mobile and tablet devices experienced a more significant share, with the top 20% of dealers achieving 209% and 145% increases respectively.


This all happened on the heels of Google’s “broad core algorithm update” that occurred on August 1, 2018. According to an official statement, Google intended for the update to reward previously undervalued sites, focusing on medical organizations.


CDK was not the only platform to experience a jump in traffic. Others like Dealer.com and DealerOn also had several dealerships with increases ranging from 10-50%; however, the volume of dealerships affected on these other platforms was not as high a percentage and not outside the range of typical results month over month.

We did not see any CMS suffer an overall loss in traffic.

Has anyone else noticed or found similar results?

Thanks!

 

[cberner]

Our organic is up around 36% in August.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Historically, this has happened during algorithmic changes and it's highly probable that they will return to earth and normalize. They aren't doing anything special.

 

[Dane Saville]

We have definitely seen increases like this with algorithm changes; however, this was across so many of our sites and only a single CMS that we thought it was worth sharing with the community. We will continue monitoring the organic traffic of these sites. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Alexander Lau]

From https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/thr...-dealer-com-sites-in-google-srps.5623/page-19

It's also impossible to do your best SEO work for more than one dealer, with the same make, in the same DMA. All that does is drive up the PPC costs for shared terms.

I believe a major problem is hands off dealer owners who delegate their business operations to GMs, GSMs, ISMs, eCommerce Directors, or others and these people are not "in the weeds" business builders. They rely on companies like DealerTrack/DDC, most whom never sold a car, let alone online, to do all the work for them.

They generate mediocre (relative to what could be achieved) sales results and everyone is happy.

One question dealers need to be asking vendors is "How are you going to help me dominate, not just compete, in my DMA?"

Don't look to enterprise vendors to drive innovation, all you can ask them is "please don't suck"
-Geoffrey Moore
Author, Crossing the Chasm

That's an excellent point and that has been brought up about DDC and CDKs digital marketing wares. If they are supporting dealerships in the same demographic or nearby how are they conquesting anything (they aren't), what competitive advantages are being executed? Could be said of SEO, SEM / PPC, Brand Management, etc. It's kind of a big fat f*cking joke, if you ask me.

 

[Gayle Rogers]

Spot checking a few sites, we are seeing similar results. Also look at your direct traffic though. Are you seeing a similar percentage decrease? CDK sites have long over-reported direct traffic in analytics. I've been told through a company source that it was CDK bots that were creating the abnormally high direct traffic numbers. Not sure if this is related or coincidence...

 

[Gayle Rogers]

Example

 

[Dane Saville]

Thanks for the feedback. To be honest, we've not seen any decreases, which is part of what was so intriguing -- as well as the conversion increases that subsequently occurred throughout August. We'll continue to monitor these metrics, and I'll be certain to report back to this community if we're seeing sustained increases or if our data tells us, as Alex said, it turns out to be another routine increase from an algorithm change.

 

[Mid-Grade Ford]

Yep, comparing July to August our organic google traffic is up 35% and our direct traffic is down 47%.

CDK's site map is so f'd. I'm surprised the new google algorithm liked it. Our organic google traffic dropped 40% when we switched to a CDK website. I guess now we're finally getting back to where we were before?

Super weird about the direct traffic correlation too. I'm just noticing now that our direct traffic went up like 300% when we switched to a CDK website.

 

[Jason]

Could it be that it wasn't the algorithm update, but something else that coincidentally occurred around the same time? The past month or so, we've had a number of clients report that organic traffic to their CDK site increased, while organic traffic to their DI website decreased. When investigating, we found that the website link in their GMB magically changed from their DI site (which the clients considered their primary website) to their CDK website.

Not saying this IS the case here, Dave. However I would be curious to know if the clients you observed with the organic increases to their CDK site also have a website with another provider.