Respectfully, there is another active thread on the forum right now that is dealing with the validity of statistics in a vacuum. I'd strongly discourage basing your opinions on a survey of friends and neighbors. 30 is a really small sample size.
Attribution is tricky for any site that doesn't gate their content. It is really tricky for a site like DealerRater that syndicates content to multiple partners. Your friends may not know the name, but if they researched on KBB, used Autotrader, visited the dealer's website, clicked on a link in SERP1, etc. there is a chance they were looking at DealerRater content with no reason to recall the DealerRater brand, and that is really okay with us as long as it moved them closer to purchase. I can read off the names of 250+ salespeople across the country that are seeing results from their efforts and have gone above and beyond to take additional training to earn individual certifications, several of them have become good friends over the years.
There are over 600 definitions of the 3 letter word "run" in the dictionary. Noses run, so do joggers. Pantyhose run; so do faucets. Eggs are runny; Pepto Bismol is the cure for... You get the point... I think there are just slightly less than 600 meanings for "reputation management" in the automotive vernacular. Let me say this, if you are putting effort into the customer experience with the intent that it will trickle out to the web, you are making a worthwhile investment of your time, energy and resources. If you are just trying to "look good online" I don't know that you'll ever find a long term sustainable model.
Last thought my friend, I really hope that this response came across the way I intended. Yago and I fiercely debated differences of opinion and he is now one of the guys I look for at conferences. We don't always agree about everything, but we can enjoy discussing it over a beer. I want that relationship with every person that posts here, except for kcar 
