Tieing in your Dealers Inventory into Google Base.

[Jeff Kershner]

The Internet Sales Manager at our Toyota dealer had pointed out to me that my Mercedes dealer website was indexing in the top 5 positions on Google for "Hagerstown Toyota Camry". She was astounded and upset at the same time (I thought it was funny). She kept trying to get out of me how I could get just one of my used Toyota's to index just as high as her Toyota website, but that's another posting.

While I was on Google, replicating what the Toyota ISM had seen, I found something interesting. A small 3 form search box showed up with Location, Make and Model. This is the first I had seen this search form. It's obvious that Google it testing different ways of tying google base into their search. Take a look;



Once you submit your search criteria you are taken a more advance google vehicle search with result listings and a corresponding map for the location of the vehicle.



Getting your vehicle inventory into Google base is something you should seriously look into if you're not already doing so. Cars.com, Automotive.com, ebizauto.com and a few others out there have some direct feeds to google base. If you have the knowledge, you could set up your own feed as well..it's free! Consumers can also subscribe to the RSS feed, letting know when new listings appear!

 

[Leroy Brown]

Jeff, do you think you might be able to point me in the right direction as far as setting up my own feed? We don't use Cars.com anymore due to poor performance, so that option is out.
TIA

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Tia, you would need to find an FTP program and somehow tie it into your inventory. I used www.desklot.com back in the day to build my own FTP feeds. I have not used this product for sometime now but it's still around and is something you should check into if this is something you want to do in house. Otherwise, I would check out eBizauto's inventory solution for a quick way of getting your inventory into google base. There are also a few (very few) website providers providing this service, like BluSolutions and AAN's services. If your are using Autobytels used car program, they also send your inventory to sites like motorzoo and others that also feed to Google base. -Jeff

 

[Brian Pasch]

For car dealers that don't have the time or resources to use the Google Base API or to customize a XML feed, we have released a new service to load car dealer inventory automatically into Google Base.

Our GB Feeder platform can take existing car feeds from a variety of automotive vendors and translates them into Google Base. We have also optimized the Google Base listings to maximize the SEO benefit of using Google Base.

for more information on the services, dealer can go to: http://www.dealer-seo.com/gb-feeder-service