What in the Heck is Going On With my Dealer.com sites in Google SRP's?????

[Brian Tucker]

Thanks for the heads up. We still have our Hyundai location on the Dealer.com platform and I noticed the same thing. Im checking GA now to see if traffic increased in these geos.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Hey everyone, Dealer.com Web Products here. As Alex says we are not only aware, but have been digging in for the last couple weeks across our Engineering and SEO teams. This one is definitely proving tricky as so far everything we've investigated indicates we're sending the correct meta data and markup to Google. That said, we have some theories and are meeting as a team tomorrow first thing (several folks have already been digging in deeper this weekend). Please stay tuned as we will report back ASAP. Thank you and please don't hesitate to reach out directly to me.

Bob George
Sr. Director of Products, Dealer.com
[email protected]

We are working to get Bob some time on this Friday's "Refresh Friday" (airs on the DealerRefresh Facebook page) so he can better speak to what's happening. Be sure to drop any questions you have for him here.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Guys, for those of you that are reading this thread and don't understand what a "site:" search is in Google and why it's important.

So of you don't know about search operators in Google. You can visit here to learn more about them and try some of them out for yourself or simply Google "search operator" and you get a bunch of results. Here's a clip from Search Engine Journal about the "site:" operator.

<clip>
Identify How a Site is Indexed
Example use: site:domainname.com

A tiny window into how a site is indexed by Google can tell you so much about how to tailor your SEO efforts accordingly. Using the site: operator is one of the simpler ways to do this, and you can get an idea of the site’s index count as well.

The index result count can help you identify massive technical errors on a large website. Say, for example, a site physically only has 270 pages but Google is indexing 15,000 pages from the site. This could range from incorrectly generated pages from on-site search, to issues arising from an http:// to https:// transition, and redirects not working properly.

</clip>

I hope this helps explain this a little better for you guys who don't quite understand. If you have a website, it's important that you understand how your site is being indexed.


@Bob George, did you guys come up with any solutions from your meeting????

 

[Bob George]

As Alex said I'll be dialing into the Refresh Friday segment tomorrow, but in the meantime wanted to provide an update on what we've learned so far and our next steps here. Obviously really committed to transparency with you guys and you have my and my team's commitment to continue to push here until resolved.

What we've learned so far:

• Not all DDC sites are affected, or all pages for that matter on affected sites. Sporadic in nature, but consistent when it is happening.
• Google only, not happening on Bing or Yahoo
• We're aware of at least one other provider in the dealer website space that this is occurring on too
• Some specific pages seem to be recurring - dealership, financing, sitemap, blog, global incentives, etc.
  
• And the big one: in Google Search Console for the affected sites/pages we're seeing: "Google chose different canonical than user = This URL is marked as canonical for a set of pages, but Google thinks another URL makes a better canonical."

So - long way of saying, for these pages we're telling Google to canonical one page (the real URL), but they're deciding to canonical another.

What we're doing about it:

• After extensive platform and SEO forensics in which nothing in our system indicated we're actually serving Google mixed data, we did uncover a couple places where we can be tighter from a canonical standpoint. These are in progress now and set to release soon (I'll provide another update when I have it):
  • Self-pointing canonicals setup on pages that do not have them
  • Update /sitemap.htm so the canonical & links are static, not relative
• We're also updating a few of the affected sites with more granular schema.org markup and resubmitting to Google manually for re-indexing.
• Finally, we're engaging Google directly as partners. Obviously they won't up the gates to the SEO secret sauce factory, but they have been engaged and are working with us.

Like I said, I'll continue to keep this thread up to date and continue to press on DDC's end. Looking forward to chatting on tomorrow's segment.

Bob

 

[Alexander Lau]

@Bob George this wouldn't have anything to do with a video gallery insertion (same markup, same descriptions, etc.), would it? Curious... thanks!

 

[craigh]

There are some good insights here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en

• Minimize similar content: If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one. For instance, if you have a travel site with separate pages for two cities, but the same information on both pages, you could either merge the pages into one page about both cities or you could expand each page to contain unique content about each city.

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.

I checked a few sites we do marketing for and it appears that Google thinks it's duplicate content.

 

[Alexander Lau]

There are some good insights here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en





I checked a few sites we do marketing for and it appears that Google thinks it's duplicate content.

View attachment 3401

Yeah, truth be told I've seen Chrome Data Showroom pages (http://www.chromedata.com/applications/) for new vehicles have precisely the same content (across hundreds if not thousands of sites) and yet rank really well all over the place. In some instances, in the top five for dealer webpages. Google fibs...

 

[craigh]

I know for sure they don't catch most things, but I've seen them derank entire sites based on this rule.
What's happening here is far more selective, but looking at the pages it is affecting they are very similar.

Dealers should customize these pages, because the default template is essentially identical markup for each site.
Incentives and blogs that re-use content will especially look like syndication to multiple sites.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Dealers should customize these pages, because the default template is essentially identical markup for each site.
Incentives and blogs that re-use content will especially look like syndication to multiple sites.

That was my thoughts as well @craigh. It's rather bothering though when I'm paying additional $$$$ monthly (have been for years )for an SEO pkg. and this shows in the SRP because google thinks it duplicate content! This site has the least of the occurrences in our set of sites but... As you can see, it still has issues!

 

[Ryan Everson]

That was my thoughts as well @craigh. It's rather bothering though when I'm paying additional $$$$ monthly (have been for years )for an SEO pkg. and this shows in the SRP because google thinks it duplicate content! This site has the least of the occurrences in our set of sites but... As you can see, it still has issues!
View attachment 3403

Toyota does allow other website providers like Dealer Inspire