I was driven to a website called Car Dealer Check (CarDealerCheck.com) by a Twitter comment on an unrelated topic and when I landed on the page for a Nissan Dealer in Florida, I was taken back by how many paid ads were running on this dealership listing page.  Take a look at the page that I found for Sutherlin Nissan of Fort Meyers below:

The page is organically optimized for the dealership name, as shown be the META tags for this page:

And I highlighted the paid ad sections (in pink) that lead consumers away from this dealer’s review page to provide leads for related automotive services and their local competitors.  There is nothing illegal about what Car Dealer Check is doing since they are not using the dealers name in the main URL and only in the page tagging.

This however, is just another confirmation that companies are using the guise of consumer reviews to produce Page One organic results that leak brand equity away from car dealers.  If someone was looking for information about this dealer, you can see by the pink box how many “land-mines” are in key areas to generate revenue for the website owner.

CarDealerCheck Triggers Negative POD Score Points

If you are paying CarDealerCheck.com for their service, they may be willing to take off the paid ads from your listing page.  If you are not using CarDealerCheck.com I would request that your dealership name be removed from their database.  There is no law that says that they have to comply but I would ask out of professional coutesy.

Attacks on a dealer’s brand name is the reason why POD Score™ was introduced.  Dealer’s need to understand that their brand name is under attack and that they need a Page One Defense (POD). Dealers need to make sure that sites like this do not easily divert their in-market customers to their competitors.

Advice to dealers: This website, if it is running Google Adsense on your review page, should not be on Page One for a search on your dealership name.

One of the most innovative dealer review platforms is provided by PrestoReviews.com and this is the platform PCG includes in our Automotive Internet Reputation Management (IRM) package and training for car dealers.

The platform allows your customers to post reviews on your custom review site while they are in the dealership. Strong advocates of the PrestoReviews platform get over 90% participation rates from their customers.

The reviews on the dealers custom local website are rolled up into the national PrestoReviews website similar how DealerRater.com displays reviews for all dealers on one website. The advantages of the PrestoReviews platform are many but a two main points are the program helps to increase your POD Score and also makes it easier for your customers (service and sales) to post reviews when inside the dealership.

Car Dealer Reviews

This week, Google Maps started to include PrestoReviews dealer websites on Google Places. I have a screen shot below which shows the inclusion of the custom site built for Infiniti of Lisle. Right now the star counts are not being rolled-up but it won’t be long until that integration takes place.

This turn of events further reinforces the need to have a multi-platform IRM strategy that can include more than one review site as your primary focus. All car dealers should have a process that includes encouraging customers to post on ANY review website that is rolled up on your Google Places listing.

For most car dealers I would recommend that they invest in both DealerRater and PrestoReviews since both have their advantages that will deliver a strong ROI for the dealership.

I’m not sure what changes are happening behind the scenes at Google, but I received two frantic emails today from clients that saw their review counts practically disappear.  Honda Cars of Bellevue had a total of 42 reviews showing on Google Places last week, and this is how things look today:

Acton Toyota last week had over 1,000 reviews last week and this is what their Google Places listing looks like today, November 8, 2010:

Is anyone else seeing their Google Places review counts dropping?  It looks like there is a bug in their system that is going to be hurting many businesses.