AutoTrader.com Pricing??? Post from DealerRefresh.com
I posted the below message on DealerRefresh.com today. I’ll never understand why dealers are paying to have their inventory leverage leads for themselves AND other dealerships in their market. Crazy!!!
The most unfortunate part of this lengthly thread is that a majority of dealerships don’t understand what they are doing by participating in AutoTrader.com.
Without YOUR inventory, the 3rd party lead generating, portal business model doesn’t work!! If every dealership shut off their inventory feeds to Autotrader.com tonight, where would Autotrader.com’s website be tomorrow?
Here’s an exercise…
1. Pick a vehicle from your website and copy it’s VIN number
2. Paste the VIN number into Google, Yahoo!, or MSN
What do you see?????
Does the vehicle show online shoppers that the VIN number is parked at your dealership’s URL (your virtual lot)? Or is your vehicle only visible on the 3rd party sites that you subscribe to?
Web Design 101 isn’t being practiced by a majority of website providers in the Automotive Internet industry when it comes to your most valuable (and expensive) asset, your inventory.
Too many dealerships are 100% reliant on 3rd party lead providers because their inventory has been framed in using another 3rd party solution on their website due to their ‘website’ company not having an inventory module!! If your inventory is framed into a ‘New Inventory’ or ‘Pre-Owned Inventory’ section of your site, the ONLY chance an online consumer will find it is if they manage to stumble and fumble through your pieced together clunky website (very unlikely) or through an online automotive portal.
Here is Google’s take on frames:
‘Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don’t correspond to the conceptual model of the web.’
Until customers in your market are able to discover YOUR inventory on YOUR website through the search engines, sit back and enjoy the price hikes from each of your 3rd Party Lead sources…or do something about it!!!
Make sure your dealership isn’t cruising down the Information Superhighway in a 1972 Ford Pinto! The results are explosive. 
I did the exercise with a VIN from my inventory. There were only 2 results. Autotrader was number 1 and my site was number 2 (my site is homemade using wordpress and inventory software).
The thing is, I don’t see alot of people putting VINs in Google.
So, I went back and tried another exercise. I put in “2004 Ford Ford F150″ and got nowhere except third party venders.
What I want to know is how I can get on top, when people are that general.
First, NO ONE will ever search for your inventory by VIN number. The reason this is a good exercise is because searching by a VIN number in your inventory let’s you know EXACTLY where your vehicles are online.
Do you have a 2004 Ford F-150 in inventory? Pick a vehicle that you do have and search for it. I checked out your site and you’re doing a great job of having your inventory indexed with clear titles.
You can do the same thing by searching the below term in ANY search engine:
site:YourURLGoesHere.com
This will show you how many pages each search engine has in their index from your URL.
I hope this was somewhat helpful…
Yes. It was very helpful. It is refreshing to know I have alot in common with you and the car business.