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Drop in Referral traffic from Ford.com to DDC Websites?

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George Nenni

George Nenni

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Apr 13, 2012
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#1
Has anyone seen a sharp decrease in referral traffic from Ford.com to Dealer.com websites? I have a Ford dealer I'm working with who was averaging 78 referrals from Ford.com. In November this sharply dropped to 5 referrals, and in December they only received 2. I'm not seeing any corresponding increase in Direct traffic, and on Ford.com the links and functionality look intact. A potential cause could be that their Dealer.com website is not secure (meaning it doesn't start with https://). Sometimes referral traffic doesn't get counted in Google Analytics if the referral goes from a secure site to a non-secure site. That being said, they get referral traffic from CarGurus.com and others who are secure sites. Any Ford dealers out there who also have a Dealer.com site, who are seeing the drop off in referral traffic?

Thanks for the help!
 
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#2
georgenenni said:
Has anyone seen a sharp decrease in referral traffic from Ford.com to Dealer.com websites? I have a Ford dealer I'm working with who was averaging 78 referrals from Ford.com. In November this sharply dropped to 5 referrals, and in December they only received 2. I'm not seeing any corresponding increase in Direct traffic, and on Ford.com the links and functionality look intact. A potential cause could be that their Dealer.com website is not secure (meaning it doesn't start with https://). Sometimes referral traffic doesn't get counted in Google Analytics if the referral goes from a secure site to a non-secure site. That being said, they get referral traffic from CarGurus.com and others who are secure sites. Any Ford dealers out there who also have a Dealer.com site, who are seeing the drop off in referral traffic?

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...
Hey George yes we've seen the exact same thing, we're still getting the traffic but it's lumped into "Direct" traffic now.

The reason other secure sites like CarGurus are still showing up is because they properly use UTM tags to pass referral data.
 
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#3
reverson said:
Hey George yes we've seen the exact same thing, we're still getting the traffic but it's lumped into "Direct" traffic now.

The reason other secure sites like CarGurus are still showing up is because they properly use UTM tags to pass referral data.
Click to expand...

Thanks Ryan! Heard from Ford this morning that they recognize they may have created an issue, have heard from many dealers, and are working to fix it. Appreciate the help. -George
 
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#4
georgenenni said:
Thanks Ryan! Heard from Ford this morning that they recognize they may have created an issue, have heard from many dealers, and are working to fix it. Appreciate the help. -George
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No problem!

I'm still reeling in disappoint of FordDirect's recent website vendor selection. In my opinion, there were so many other better options (like Dealer Inspire) out there than Jazel and CDK.
 
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#10
Alexander Lau said:
Precisely, I had remarked on those same choices. Something seems off there.
Click to expand...

In Canada they picked 1 vendor and made it optional to use the site, but not optional to pay for it.
Every Ford dealer in Canada had to pay into the new Digital Marketing program, which had a 2-3 year contract with the vendor.
Before the first year was up it fell apart and they had to rescind the mandatory payment requirement because it wasn't working.

Be thankful you have more than 1 choice.
 
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