This is good, but extremely dangerous data, especially the attribution of a store visit to SEO and SEM channels. I see those vendors miss representing this data and stores misusing this store visit data with dealer brand campaigns or searches.
Random thoughts on data's reliability.
1. Mobile traffic is around 55% of a site's traffic. We will only seeing store visits for just over half of a site's traffic. Multi-device customers really screw this up as usual with GA.
2. Service, parts, bodyshop, car wash, etc customers getting counted. Most dealerships will try and use this store visit data for sales attribution.
3. Service customers will get counted twice - drop off and pickup.
4. Be-backs are duplicate store visits
5. Husband/wife who are both on site getting counted twice
6. What is the reset time of a store visit? If it's short enough, test drives can be multiple visits
About the only thing these store visits can be used for:
1. Proper UTM parameters on advertising (AdWords by Campaign/AdGroup, Email Campaigns, Facebook Ads)
2. Referral traffic from 3rd party listing sites
