Why Dealers Need a GEO Strategy Now

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how consumers research and shop for vehicles, and dealerships must adapt to a new era of search. On this episode of Inside Automotive, automotive marketing experts April Simmons, Kevin Frye, Brooke Furniss, and Cody Tomczyk explain how Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is changing digital marketing and what dealers need to do to remain visible in AI-powered search results.

The panel explores the differences between traditional SEO and GEO, why brand visibility matters more as zero-click searches increase, and how AI platforms evaluate dealership reputation. They also discuss the challenges of measuring GEO performance, the growing influence of reviews and social media, and why dealers should shift from keyword research to prompt research. As AI continues to transform consumer behavior, the conversation offers practical insights into building content, trust, and digital authority in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Key discussion points:

• How GEO differs from traditional SEO and why it matters now
• The rise of AI-powered vehicle shopping and search behavior
• Why brand awareness is becoming critical in zero-click environments
• The growing influence of reviews, social media, and online reputation
• How prompt research is replacing keyword research
• Practical steps dealers can take to improve AI visibility today

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Transcript

Welcome And Why GEO Matters

0:07

Welcome to Inside Automotive with Jim Fitzpatrick. Dealers and marketers across the country are trying to understand what GEO generative engine optimization could mean for the future of the automotive retail industry. Joining us now for a panel discussion are April Simmons of Horn Auto Group, Kevin Fry of Jeff Weiler Automotive Family, Brooke Furnace of BZ Consultants Group, and Cody Tomchak of Force Marketing. Thank you folks very much for taking the time on your schedule to join us today to talk about what GEO means and uh the impact that it's going to have in retail automotive. So, Cody, if I can, let me start with you. Uh, GEO versus traditional SEO. What's actually changing in search behavior today? Well, in general, uh LLMs, large language models like your perplexities and Gemini's and Chat GPTs, et cetera, have seen you know rapid rise in adoption. Sure. Um it still represents overall a small percentage of overall search volume. Uh I think it's about 5% as of Q1 this year, projected to go to 10% of all search volume by next year. But it's a place where you know people are going more and more to figure out how to answer questions. And one of the things that's really interesting is when you look at the search volume that I just listed relative to automotive shopping behavior, automotive shopping behavior is much higher than that. Okay. Uh the usage for automotive shopping related uh prompts and queries uh on these large language models uh is significantly higher. Closer to 30% of all shoppers use some AI in their uh in their path to purchase. Wow. Right? So when you think about Geo versus SEO, uh SEO search engine optimization is specifically for uh Google, right, uh and Microsoft, things like that. Uh the generative engine optimization is gonna be for those those AI engines, those large language models like the the chat GPTs, perplexities, et cetera. The interesting thing is uh as much as it's different, I also think it's kind of the same. Right? It's about providing the right answer to answer the question in real time in a very trustworthy way. Sure, sure. I see you all shaking your heads, so I'm gonna start with you, April. Do you want to add to that? You know, I think that the key difference between SEO and GEO, in my opinion, is in the content, first of all. So when we build content for SEO, we were building it for Google, which means we were stuffing keywords, we're just making sure the words were there so Google could say yes, they have some authority. With AI, it's not

GEO Vs SEO And AI Adoption

2:40

just about the word, it's you actually have to be able to answer the question. So now we need to go a step further and be writing content to to the customer, right? To answer the actual question versus just stuffing keywords. So if you have a good foundation of SEO, it's really easy then to just go in and fill in some of those blanks. If you don't, though, that is where you need to start, is actually now more than ever making sure you have that foundation. Okay. Kevin? I think the uh the biggest change is where it's pulling the bulk of the data because traditional SEO to me is looking at the individual dealership website and the content you have there. But as we've researched the questions with Google Gemini, you can literally see that it's going to an average of 150 to 250 websites to pull the information to give you the answer, of which we are only one of those sites. So I'm going to keep returning to that point as we look at this from a 30,000-foot view. Yeah. Wow, that's incredible. Brooke, what have you found out there? Yeah, uh Jim, you and I were talking pike a month or so ago of just how there's there's all this AI and SEO, right? And that's great. A lot of people really truly believe in their bones that like AI is going to replace SEO. No, it's not going to. It's exposing who is doing it correctly and who wasn't doing correctly. And when you look at everything of, hey, where are we sitting? There's so many things to unpack on like how are we doing this. It's not just going back to what April was saying, hey, we're word stuffing. Okay, we're not. I am seeing a lot of that, but let's go back to when internet first came about and we're all like, no, we got a fax. This internet thing's gonna go away. Then it was SEO. Okay, we're looking at SEO, and it was really the wild, wild west, and the goalposts keep getting moved. At the end of the day, it's just really, really good SEO. Think of an SEO on steroids. So if you weren't doing it beforehand or you were paying for it and it was a really uh not a quality service being done, it's just exposing it now more than ever. So those that are like trying to catch up, yeah, you might see a little bit of an intick, uh, uptick, which I'd hope so, but there's still a right way and a wrong way. It's not the word stuffing, it it's not doing the things that um it's more or less doing the things you should have been doing 10 years ago, but even more than that. Okay. So, Brooke, let me stay with you for just a second. How how do dealerships measure success in in the GEO world? That's a really good question. I think I believe at this point everyone is trying to battle for that. It's I go back to like 2020 when uh OTT and display OTT and anything free-roll was like going off the charts because everyone's home just watching stuff, right? You're seeing the same thing. Everyone crawling around from a rock saying, Oh man, we're we can do this, we can do this. Here's the problem is that all of these AI generative ranking tools, none of them are consistent. In fact, you can take any of them, and most likely what I've seen so far, you can put your URL, your domain, whatever page it is, you'll get a different score every single time. So there's a lot of a lot of smoke out there of like, oh, we can do this and this. When I go and look to say, is this working? I'm gonna use a couple different tools. One, the schema. The schema validator, that is a huge one just from an SEO perspective, to say, are they actually doing what they say they're gonna do? And we'll get in that later on, but that's one portion. Yes, there are AI tools out there that will say how you rank at the end of the day, if you're not feeding that the not just the schema, but the knowledge graph. And then how how we talk into those uh the LLMs, whether it's perplexity, grok, chat GPT, that's really, really different than how we're gonna type. So same thing going back to 2020 when everyone's trying to optimize for voice search.

Content That Actually Answers Shoppers

6:10

You should be doing the same thing, but on a much uh a much deeper level when it comes to the schema portion of it. So schema app for sure, there are third-party tools. I just don't put a lot of credence in them because they're every single one is really, really different on how they rank. Yeah. Cody, are you uh from a marketing standpoint, are you being asked that question of your of your clients? Well, yeah, and we're asking it of ourselves, right? Yeah. You know, to build on what Brooke is saying, the Wild West is a good way to put it right now, right? Because it's moving so fast. And the companies that are out there saying that they can measure it and measure it accurately and effectively, it's really kind of a land grab based on all of the hype around it, right? All of these tools uh you know cost something to be able to get the measurement. Sure. And because it's imperfect, they get to sort of trade on it's imperfect, but we got it, and you can pay us to do it, right? So we you know we use things like SEM Rush and and whatnot to have some inference of measurement, okay, but we don't treat it as the gospel because it is not the gospel just yet. Okay. You know, GA4 is getting ready to release, supposedly in the next month or so, uh, some AI measurement tools from you know each of these different platforms. But I I still think, you know, I want to come back to a little bit of what Brooke said and and build on what April said. Sure. It's still about doing the blocking and tackling, right? It's it's about answering the question. I think April put it, you know, it's just on steroids are moving much faster now. Right? So we have to answer the questions. Question and answer format for the content and how we structure it on the site is super important. Um, I think the other thing uh that gets overlooked, and and Brooke alluded to it a little bit, is how the content is formatted, right? Beyond question and answer, you know, short paragraphs with appropriate headers, uh, bullet format, things like schematic markup to organize the data so that and the content in a way that these AI engines can find it quickly, right? Because they're moving with speed. Yep. Right. Things like semantic HTML within the you know the content itself to help organize it, right? It's it's doing these things that were always important. It's just been amplified, you know, so significantly, so quickly, that I think again, if you just do the right things that you should have been doing anyway, right, you're gonna come out ahead of everybody else because there is no shortcut here. Right, right. Kevin, do you do you agree with those comments? And how do you think? I'm gonna play the cynic here in many ways because I'm a longtime SEO guy from 20 years back. I used to train on it. But this is gonna be a moving target for a long time. And our websites are only gonna be one small part of the equation of an AI query. And I'll give you an example. We're doing some geo-optimization with some outside agencies, and one of the key sides that AI is favoring right now is Reddit. So we're posting content on Reddit to try and make ourselves pop up into search results. But Google's never gonna make it transparent enough that you know exactly where to optimize so that you can consistently be at the top, and they're gonna keep changing that. They've done that historically over the years. But I'm gonna give you a bigger thing that really has my concern because this is where I believe Google's heading for this. They want to have the most accurate, relevant, and personalized result to every search out there. Here's the problem: you can put in a query into Gemini, the exact same query, for example, between April, myself, and Brooke, who is the best Honda dealer in Cincinnati and get three different answers. Because Google knows that April's profile is that she's always looking at reputation and they're gonna deliver the highest-rated dealer. They're gonna know that Brooke always is looking for the lowest priced dealer, is gonna deliver that resolve response to her. And for me, I always go to the dealership closest to me. How do you optimize for that? So I'm gonna share some ideas which might be a little bit more controversial, but when you talk blocking and tackling, Cody, I'm gonna tell you how we're taking the offense here to address this. Okay. Do you want to jump in on any of that? I can. I can. So here's the

Measuring GEO Schema And Tool Noise

10:20

one thing I know, and we have played and played and played with this. If we search Jeff Weiler, man, it comes up all Jeff Weiler results. The number one inbound search result for any dealer in the country is the dealership's name. Yeah. We have ramped up our spending on branding and quadrupled our impressions this year. Because we would rather control what we can control and take the offense, and that is raise our name recognition to the highest level it's ever been, so that when somebody hits that search engine thinking about shopping for or servicing a car, the first thing that's going to come to mind is Jeff Weiler, and we know in that stage we can dominate the results. Yeah. Yeah. I think to build on that too, to build on Kevin's point of why that's so important is the continued increase in zero-click searches. Right. So that brand authority and that brand visibility, that brand transparency is going to continue to matter more and more. If you go back pre-COVID on Google, zero-click searches, which is a search where somebody never takes a click action, meaning they get the answer that they wanted, was 50%. Okay. Fast forward to today, it's about 65%. Wow. If you go into the uh the AI tools, Chat GPT, I think is around 82%. And uh other platforms like Perplexity are as high as 93%. Wow. Meaning you have to have that brand visibility, that brand awareness that Kevin's talking about at the point of the query or the prompt, because there aren't going to be as many clicks to to get to the website. Right, right. I see you shaking your head, April. Jump in here. You know, so a couple of things. It's it's interesting. Even us having this this conversation, you know, that will end up ultimately getting posted. The citations just from us mentioning Jeff Weiler and Hornado Group actually helps our our AI. So Kevin's absolutely right about the branding, you know, going out there and just making sure your name is absolutely everywhere it can be. Right. But also reputation is one of the biggest ones. And Kevin mentioned Reddit, but I'm seeing, you know, all of a sudden Better Business Bureau is popping up, Yelp's coming back into the equation. So if you're not everywhere, um, my SEO guy who happens to also be an AI genius, he is building me our own uh tools just for the visibility of it. Because to Kevin's point about us all getting a different response, that's why those tools are not accurate. They're not accurate because it can't take into account the fact that it is fully personalized and customized. So there's not a lot you can do from there. What you can do though is make sure that you're writing content for the customers. And I think one of the big key things we have to think about with content is that personalization. Right. So instead of looking at dealer near me content, you got to look at what people are typing in an AI. They're having full-on conversations in the search. We're typing a paragraph to say, I'm interested in buying a mid-sized sedan, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I want this kind of color, I gas my leg. Like you're not talking about a long tail Google search that's like maybe a sentence. You're talking a paragraph. Right. So now if you're not looking at what customers are actually typing in and then creating content to speak to that, that I think is really, really powerful. And that's one of the things we've uh here at Horn Auto Group really focused on is taking that SEM rush data, right? We know what customers are searching for and making sure that we have full content to speak to that. And then the other thing is the reputation. It can't just be boom, I clicked the five stars. Five stars means nothing to AI. It's looking for the words that the customer types about the experience. It's also looking for the salesperson. There's a huge value now of not just you as a brand, but the humans who work for you creating a brand. It will go so far as to say, do you want me to recommend which salesperson to talk to? Yeah. Those are the things that we can focus on, the controllables. So much of it's moving too fast and we can't control. Those are two things we can control. Really great content to speak to what customers are searching for and controlling that reputation, including Reddit, including Yelp, including Better Business Bureau,

Personalized Results Make Branding Crucial

14:40

all of the areas that we don't typically look at and make sure you're there. Yeah. So, Kevin, let me ask you this. If if Russ Flips Whips works for you and he's pumping out all of these videos, and I know he doesn't do that anymore, he trains now, but if you've got, let's say, 10, 15 salespeople, you're a big group, let's say you've got a hundred salespeople, and they are now all building their own brand, and all roads lead back to the you know, to Jeff Weiler family of uh stores. Uh, how does that play into all of this when a consumer goes on and hits the search and wants are are all of those videos gonna come up? Are they gonna I I mean, is that a factor now? It is. Now I can I guarantee his are gonna pop up, I'm not sure. I mean, I was just doing some searches yesterday, and it'll pop up a YouTube video that it's pulling, and it's probably because you're a subject matter expert. Right. If you literally do a Google search for how to GEO optimize your website, Google is gonna point you right back to the traditional SEO uh attributes of EEAT, uh, experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that expertise part there, Jim, is what you're talking about in that case. If if they recognize that person as an expert in that subject matter area, then yes, it is a strong factor in the AI search results. Yeah, and the real quick, the other thing about that, with Kevin bringing up the EEAT acronym, is the human is more important there, right? Because these LLMs are also getting really good at spotting AI generated content and ranking them lower as a result. So the human element of what Kevin is talking about there actually matters for that expertise. Yeah. He's a hundred percent right, because that's the first thing Google emphasizes, Cody. So well said. Which is and if a vendor is trying to sell you something and it's really, really inexpensive, there's a reason it probably is AI generated, and you need to be careful of that. Well, it's there's there's no substitute or shortcuts, right? You have to do the work. Yeah, right. That's by the way, that's been the case forever. Yeah, right? Dealers forever from an SEO perspective. If they're quote unquote doing SEO, nine times out of ten, it's a box checking strategy. Yeah. I'm opted into it with my website provider, right? You know, or it's a part of my OEM certified program, right? There are no shortcuts here. You have to do the work, right? You have to get out of doing what was once keyword research, as April mentioned, and now it's prompt research. Right, right? It's just doing the work. Yeah, for sure. You brought up OEM and websites. Let's kind of go there for a second, Cody. How are OEM website programs and compliant restrictions, how does that help or hurt in the GEO environment? It's a tough question to answer, right? Because some of it is newer and it's all moving so fast, right? So the two website providers or the two OEMs that have gone that route the furthest so far are going to be Audi and Porsche, okay, uh, with the OADD websites and the Porsche websites. Um I think the jury's still out, right? Because they're also figuring it out in real time. I mean, we're talking to these teams at the OEMs and you know on a weekly and monthly basis, and it's it's continuing to evolve. Okay. I think there's pros to it because there's a consistent experience, right? And that's good, but also you have to make sure that you can differentiate yourself locally. Right. And the web platform may present some limitations, but some of these other things that Kevin and April are bringing up are going to be these spaces that you can win, right? Video content, socially, YouTube, et cetera. Sure. Um, the review platforms, April's a hundred percent right that reviews are gonna play a massive factor and continue to play a massive factor into this. So I think it's just about augmenting, you know, strategies. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, talk to us, uh folks, if you would. I'll start with you, April, about um about reviews and and the the role that it's gonna play in AI generated recommendations. You know, it's interesting

Reviews Reputation And Human EEAT

18:40

that it was actually where I very first first started, you know, like like we all do, we just we start playing with it ourselves. Yeah. And what I realized was no matter what I typed in, it was always in in the little box that said where it was getting its data. The majority of it was mentioning either Bird's Eye, which was the first time I've heard of Bird's Eye, which is just an aggregator of reviews, right? It was calling out the third-party review sites, it was calling out Yelp, it was calling out Reddit, it was calling out Better Business Bureau, it was calling all these things out. And it was it was mentioning exact experiences in a review, and in some cases from three years ago. Wow. But the thing we have to remember about AI that's slightly different, it is it doesn't answer the question, and that's the end. So when you Google search something, you ask it a question, it pulls up the stuff, and you then decide what website you're gonna go to from there to continue your research. Right. AI will end it and then say, would you like me to? Yep. Would you like this? Can I help you with that? So when it does that, it actually leads that conversation even deeper, which means it's going to talk about the salespeople. It's going to talk about, you know, hey, do you want to look at what happens with service after you buy a car? Like it goes so deep that if you are not making sure that you have conversation in the review, not just the five-star, but everywhere. So, an example yesterday, we were looking at car gurus with one of our stores. They don't really try to get reviews there, right? Everyone's just cared about Google forever. Sure. But all these other third parties have resurfaced, and we need to make sure we're getting consistent reviews, consistent good reviews, but not just a click of a five-star. Right, right. Brooke, you work with a number of dealerships uh and dealer groups on this very topic. Are they getting it right? Are they completely lost? How far away are how how long before dealers are getting their hands around this? You know, d I I will tell you from a dealer standpoint, and and you guys will back me up on this, Kevin, and April. We just want to sell cars and service cars. Now we got to become, you know, Bill Gates and and uh all the others out there and to try to figure all of this out. So either they've got somebody in-house that's doing this, which is a daunting task, especially for Kevin in April, has got multiple rooftops and different website providers, as you were mentioning earlier, April. But Brooke, how many dealer groups must be calling you going, what the hell is going on out there? You know, and what how do we know if we're doing a good job? Or if our providers are doing a good job. Yeah, and I always joke that I'm gonna change my company to BZ Consultants Group, AI, CDP, because apparently everybody has one and every one is one. I don't know how that happens, but as I listen to the whole thing, I everyone talk here, whether it's Kevin, it doesn't it doesn't matter who it is at this point. A couple of recurring things that I've seen, and I actually was just going through this with a client of mine where from a review standpoint, reputation management, they are they're on point. They're phenomenal at their requesting the reviews, they're answering, they're service, their parts, everything looks great. However, they suck at social media. Well, if you know enough about how the AI tools work, well, most are they're definitely gonna pull on reputation. That is like a no brainer. If you're not answering reviews, you should have been doing that before with local SEO, and now it's even more so you should be doing it. However, if you're on the social media and you're not doing that, I believe it's perplexity. That looks more at social media, it's not a grok that looks more at social media before it looks at reputation. Wow. So you can do everything correctly, but if you suck there, you're you're done for. As for when I don't have that answer on that, what I would love to say, like, hey, all I know is that I take more phone calls about someone said this and now we're ranking here. How do we overnight? Well, sure. To Cody's point, this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. No, no. You can't just flip a switch and all of a sudden, oh, I'm gonna show up number one and chat GPT. No, that's gonna take time. Additionally, all those prompts, we can all do one thing, like we said, we can all type the exact same thing, get three different responses. It's the same thing if you're Googling something. What your history, what your browser is, what all that experience is going to give you something different. Right, right. That being said, and on top of that, is that if you change it just a little, I was doing something for a dealer and they were claiming that on Gemini they're great, but ChatGPT, they suck. I go, well, give me the prompt. So I give the prompt, I give something different, obviously. I go, let's just tailor it. So I started asking ChatGPT all these, you know, why did you do this? And they're the it in it, they he, I don't

OEM Website Limits And Local Wins

23:05

know, I AI is whatever, however, AI identifies, but that it was saying, like, oh, the reason we gave this is because you had this one little word that was the word between. And because I added between, I got a completely different answer. Wow. Now that's not what I intended, yeah, but knowing what your people what your clients are typing in there, that's how you go back, and then you're going to you know optimize for that, change those, look at the prompts when people are doing this. So everything that everyone has said, I I agree wholeheartedly with. And and to think that if someone tells you, as a dealer, I I still I I empathize with you all because I get pitched, we can do this overnight every single day. It it you can't stop lying to people. Are your clients calling you going, you you guys at force do this, right? You've got us protected, you're on top of it all. And meanwhile, it's like quicksand, it's ever changing. Yeah, but it's uh and again, it's the the part I come back to is that you were always supposed to be doing these things. Good point. And you know, building on on Brooke's point there, it's like the gym, right? Like the best time to start working out was 10 years ago. The next best time is today. It is today, right? So you you have to start or tomorrow in my case. So you have to start you have to start doing the work, right? And and there's no there's no shortcut around it. Yeah, in no question. Yeah. The thing that I think is gonna be really interesting to see that we're keeping an eye on is the ads monetization of the platforms. Yeah, yeah. I I think you know, chat has taken the lead out here for the non-Google side of things. Um and you know, I think it's there's a couple things that I think are interesting. One, people are going there because it is a trusted place to get an answer, right? They trust what they are getting when they're putting a prompt in. They can have a conversation, especially about hard, you know, potentially stressful topics like buying a car, right? It's an expensive purchase. But there's a gap, right? There was a survey uh done by a company a few months ago where they identified 63% of adults will not trust the AI search results as much if there are ads present. Okay. Now, chat you know started putting ads out uh or making ads available via a beta back at the end of February. Okay. Um it's only showing to 5% of users right now, but it's there's just a it's contradictory, right? I'm coming here for trust, but now you're advertising to me. I find it interesting to watch and see what's gonna happen there. Yeah, and also with the amount of zero-click search behavior, specifically on these AI engines, it amounts to more programmatic display than it does search. Sure. So I think that's another area where I think dealers, you know, like to put the you know, Brooke and I in the same category here, dealers are gonna be coming to us more and more. We got to be advertising on Chat GPT.

Prompt Research Social Signals No Shortcuts

25:45

And it's like, let's pause for just a second and let's think about what we're trying to accomplish here and and you know what we want to get out of it. I would imagine too, and and this is for Kevin and April, I would imagine that this is opening up the doors, uh the floodgates, I should say, for companies to and vendors to be hitting dealers. Are you getting contact all the time? They go, we can fix that. We just checked out, we did an audit of your site, we did an audit on on uh chat, and uh you're not coming up, and we've got a remedy for that. How the hell do you decipher what is going on there? And I'll let you April April start with that. There's the door. Uh hang up the phone. Right. There's the door and hang up the phone. Because generally, like it and it's been painful. Kevin's probably dealing with this too. We try to be proactive on these things. So I've been having geo conversations for three years, right? And now all the vendors are coming in talking to the GMs, and the GMs are sending me these reports going, we look like crap, we look like crap. And I look through the report, and it takes me five seconds to identify seven things that are 100% inaccurate. Like this, that much time. Right. And I'm like, stop listening to these people because nobody's an expert. I'm not an expert, no one on this call is really an expert. There's no such thing as an expert right now. We're all working through this together. It's never changing. So never buy something, you know, don't buy the snake oil, right? Until until it's been validated. Let's validate it. And I think, you know, what Cody's saying about monetizing, I think it's gonna end up being more of a data play than it's gonna be an ads play. Because if you're siphoning to me, hey, there's a lot of people, can I start to retarget those people? I don't know, because I feel the same thing. I think you lose that trust factor, you start to lose. And because it's so different, how do you even make sure you're in front of the people? And then here's the other crazy thing. How the heck are we gonna measure it? We've become so addicted as digital marketing that I won't do anything if I can't prove it worked. How are we gonna prove that zero clicks work? We're already having difficult conversations with leads going down because how are we gonna transition that as marketers as we're having conversations with general managers who maybe don't understand how this stuff works? Oh, there's no doubt. There's no all here's what they understand that the guy coming in is an expert, and and April, you're not. And shame on you. You should know this stuff. And how come they're hanging out of my office? Did you see the audit they did, April? I mean, imagine being a dealer that doesn't have an April or a Kevin. I know. Right? Exactly. Exactly. It's crazy. Hey, for for a second, let's talk a little bit about third mark uh the third party marketplace and their positioning in all of this, whether or not they win or lose in the AI search. What what role do they play? And and is there even as much of a need for third party in light of all this? I don't I don't know the answer to that, but but what what's your take on that? I'm gonna defer to the dealer side first before jumping. Go right ahead in my opinion. Kevin, jump in there. But give me the controversial question because there's a lot of claims being thrown out there. Uh I would say the reality is, just by common sense, in my opinion, the third party should have a significant advantage, and here's the reasons why. They already have significant domain rank authority with traditional SEO. Yeah, good point. They have an immense amount of vehicles in one location. They also have reviews in the same location as well, and just that structure

Ads Coming To AI And Zero Click

29:20

itself is going to give them a significant advantage over an individual dealership website. Yeah. So that would be my short and simple answer on that. From here, I agree with what April and Brooke are saying. Nobody is an expert right now. We're watching this develop literally every day. But my gut feeling is I don't think they're going away. Like I've heard some word on the street. I think they are going to continue to bring value to dealers like ourselves. Yeah, yeah. Would you agree with that, April? Yeah, and I think I think we have to also recognize all those things. Plus, they have, you know, lots and lots of staff to be able to really dig into what is going to optimize their sites in ways that we don't even have control, right? When you talk OEM restrictions, you talk about our ability on our sites restrictions, they don't have those restrictions. Um, so they'll be able to, if they start building content and they take that to the next level, they will have the ability to have, you know, citations, schema, uh content on levels that that Kevin and I individually just don't have that capability to do. Right, right. Yeah. Let me ask you that. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but but Kevin and April, how big is your marketing team for the group? Like, uh are we talking about two people, one person, five people? Like it would seem to me you need a whole staff now to manage and operate this stuff versus just having a marketing manager or a CMO of the company. We have uh 10 people right now, and we are continuing to expand. Uh, and it's not just geo, compliance continues to grow. Yeah. Every year, I feel like I need an attorney on my staff. Yeah, that's next. That's gonna be next. It's crazy. Yeah. What about you, April? What what do what is the marketing? You've got me, and then um I've got an SEO guy, and and we comprise the but of course you have chats. So typical dealership, April. That's what I'm hearing. Typical dealership. Typical dealership. That's right. Exactly. You know, at the end of the day, it's it's it's just prioritizing, right? And I think that, you know, to Kevin's point, right now, unfortunately, like marketing is is kind of over here, and I'm just telling other people do these things because compliance now is taken front and side. So until I get through, you know, it's triage. It's just triage, right? So you're playing you're playing whack-a-mole every morning, right? Every day, this one comes up and this one, and and yeah, exactly. And that's FTC's breathing down our back through all of this as well, and there's huge fines being

Third Parties Staff Limits And FTC Pressure

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levied on dealers. And so that puts having said that, uh, in a situation like April's got, um, because I think to Brooke's point, that is a very typical situation. Well, we've got a marketing manager, and they do everything or they're supposed to for the whole team. Uh Kevin's a little bit uh bet uh more in a better situation with 10 people. But that puts even more of an onus on aligning with the right marketing team, right? Where now it's on your shoulders as a as an outsourced marketing company, because you know they're calling you going, you got this, right? You you're covering this, right? Yeah. I mean, like, in general, yes, with the FTC thing, right? I think we're in the same we're in the same boat as April, right? Where we're spending a ton of time with a ton of people. That's right. And we just want to make sure everybody's doing the right thing. Yeah. You know, like uh Senator Moreno said, Yep, right. It's generally a good thing to just be transparent to the potential customers. Sure. This is just some growing pain period that all of us right now are just not having a ton of fun in. Right. But I think the outcome on the other end, I think, will be a good thing. Yeah, yeah, I I do too. I do too. I I I think everybody does agree with that, um, without a doubt. And uh this is this is gonna be that that is a whole nother show. Um so that you know, in terms of the screen. Stay tuned, stay tuned, because that that that's a real concern that every every dealer's got right now. And they're screaming at their managers, their marketing managers. I'm sure you guys have had those conversations. Uh, you know, but all it takes is, as you guys know, one rogue sales manager or GM that goes, screw that, we want to be the lowest in the marketplace. We'll pay the fine when it comes. I used to work for a dealer. This is going back a few years, but they we would factor in the advertising budget for the weekend, the fine that the state would levy on us. It was $10,000 here in Atlanta. So instead of the full page ed being $19,000, we just go. I know. No, no, I don't know. I'm actually having PTSD right now, Jim, about this play. Same thing. I dealership, and that's like we all we all like until we get slapped on the wrist. I'm like, you understand the DOT has already come after us once? You want to do this again? Like, what are we doing? But you factor it in. And the first slap on the wrist could be a million-dollar fine. So they're not they're not messing around, right? So uh, and it hurts the reputation. I've spoken to MA companies about this, and they're like, it's it goes beyond the fine when it hits the papers that this particular autogroup has been slapped with a million-dollar fine for deceptive practices. You just killed the whole reputation of that dealer group. You know, so it affects. How long is GEO gonna be talking about that, Jim? Yeah, I was

Wrap Up Key Takeaways

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just gonna say, then you go back to AI, where that's now a public record, and good luck. Very good point. Very good point. God, I could talk to you guys all day about this because there's so many different things. But uh April Simmons, Kevin Fry, Brooke Furnace, and of course Cody Tomchek right here in our studio. Guys, thank you so much for giving me so much time on this. Uh, I know that the dealers that are watching are gonna get a lot out of it. So thank you so much. Appreciate it. Appreciate you, Jen. Thank you. Good to see you, friends. Thanks for watching Inside Automotive with Jim Fitzpatrick.