Reputation Management Companies for Car Dealers : Best and Worst

[Jeff Kershner]

Good reputation management companies vary in quality, but generally the most effective ones focus on SEO-based suppression and long-term content building rather than quick removals. Results depend heavily on your specific situation, and many people find the process slower than expected. Be cautious of any provider that guarantees instant fixes or removals. A reliable company should be transparent about its strategy, expected timeline, and provide clear case studies before you commit.

If there's ONE good thing about spam bots, every now and again they will reengage with an OLD post that continues to be relevant. Such as this one. Of course I'll need to remove the sneaky link in the quoted comment and proceed to ban the "user," but this a topic I've been meaning to reengage since the landscape has changed since this was originally posted.

So let's RE-ENGAGE!

Dealer Reputation Management Services

What reputation management service are you using for your dealership and WHY or WHY NOT should a dealership consider using them?

What do you like MOST and/or LEAST?
How to they rate in customer service?

We've been using Widewail for several years now and have been mostly happy with the software and services they provide. They track our reviews across all the most important review and social media sites. They provide a mostly hands-off experience as they respond to Negative AND Positive reviews. They actually take some time to formulate a response back to a positive review, responding with something relevant versus a canned templated response. The moment a negative a review is posted, I receive a text and email alert to review the customers review/comment and the crafted response. From there I can approve or edit and approve.

They also provide a pro-active approach to solicit for reviews. This especially works well for Service reviews, keeping a steady stream of customers sharing their latest experience at the dealership. We average around 30 reviews a month between the sales and service department.

Their weekly and end of the month reports are something we take pretty serious and review with the sale and service team individually.

So overall, I would say we do quite well utilizing Widewail and their service. I honestly have not looked into other services since being onboard with them. Prior to WideWail we were using Podium but at the time they didn't offer a response service so we were on our own to respond. That works IF you respond to the negative reviews only but if you want to response to the positive ones as well, it takes a bit more time and work. And prior to Podium, we were using Autorevenue but they had another name for it but I can't currently remember what it was.

What are you using for Dealer Reputation Management?