We are approaching a fork in the road for organic search.  Search engines are either going to become more powerful, or they’re going to shed enough leaves to make us ask whether sustaining our current investment is sound.

Google released Realtime search, Yahoo and Bing are merging, and facebook is jumping into the search game.  Those are big things, but what do they really mean?  Let’s take a few steps back for a minute.

Search engines, traditionally, look for a few things when deciding which website to serve-up in the results:

These are things that are technically done and can be quite complex depending on who you speak with.  There is a big problem with this model though:  it is highly corruptible.  Not pointing any fingers, but as an example of the corruption, SEO “experts” and “gurus” make their livings by taking advantage of this model.  For the pure fact that this model is corruptible, it will never be the true long-term ruler.  Corruption is one simple and logical reason why we’re approaching this fork.

But let’s jump down the rabbit hole a little further and talk about social media. 

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Cars.com And Contact At Once! Launches New Mobile Chat Application

ATLANTA, GA – August 27, 2010 – Contact At Once!, a leading provider of live chat software for car dealerships, today announced that Cars.com has extended their license of the ContactAtOnce! live chat software including a mobile chat application. ContactAtOnce! has been powering the dealers chat service available to all franchise and independent dealers advertising on Cars.com since

January 2009. The new mobile chat application will make it possible for dealers to answer chat leads from “smart phone” mobile devices, helping to convert more prospects into sales.

“Mobile chat allows salespeople to be more responsive to shoppers’ inquiries, even if they’ve stepped away from their desk,” said Michael Page, Cars.com vice president of advertising products. “Dealers can respond at shoppers’ convenience, giving them the information they need to take the next step toward a purchase. With the popularity of smartphones in the store, dealers can use this capability to enhance their customer service and sell more cars.”

Data collected by Cars.com has shown that online car shoppers are more likely to contact a car dealership from advertisements that include presence-aware chat. As well, in its 2009 Dealer Chat Consumer Survey, Cars.com found that 67% of online shoppers who initiated a chat conversation with a dealer planned to purchase a vehicle within 30 days.

“Dealers appreciate the benefits of live chat because it magnifies the value they receive from their advertising dollars,” said John Hanger, CEO of Contact At Once!. “Consumers like live chat too because it is a convenient and immediate means of contacting a dealership to ask questions and set appointments. Cars.com was quick to appreciate these dynamics and we’re honored that they’ve chosen to extend and expand our partnership.”

Cars.com dealers interested in adding live chat software to their listings or taking advantage of the new mobile chat for car dealers application should contact their Cars.com sales representative.

About Cars.com

Cars.com is the leading destination for online car shoppers, offering credible, easy-to-understand information from consumers and experts to help buyers formulate opinions on what to buy, where to buy and how much to pay for a car. With comprehensive pricing information, side-by-side comparison tools, photo galleries, videos, unbiased editorial content and a large selection of new- and used-car inventory,

Cars.com puts millions of car buyers in control of their shopping process with the information they need to make confident buying decisions. Launched in June 1998, Cars.com is a division of Classified Ventures, LLC, which is owned by leading media companies, including Belo (NYSE: BLC), Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO).

About Live Chat Software for Car Dealerships Provider Contact At Once!, LLC:

Contact At Once! is the leading provider of industry-specific live chat software and presence-aware networks for the automotive, apartment, and real estate industries with over 10,000 active users. Adding ContactAtOnce! live chat software to a website typically improves the conversion of website lookers into conversations and appointments by at least 25%. The presence-aware networks powered by ContactAtOnce! connect businesses to the media websites on which they advertise, increasing the effectiveness of online ads while providing consumers with a better online experience. ContactAt Once! is headquartered in Atlanta and more information can be found at www.contactatonce.com.

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Since Google began testing “Realtime Search,” we have seen several incarnations including a scrolling area on the main search page. With the announcement last week of the new “Realtime Search,” I found a renewed interest in the possibilities of another strong source of SEO. What I discovered left me scratching my head and consequently consumed a larger part of my morning than I had to spare. My SEO and content was being hijacked!

What I found on the “Realtime Search” updates page was a list of threads all from Twitter. Some I recognized, but some were a bit disturbing. We use a lot of video at our dealerships and I have known for a long time that our online video content was being scraped for use on other non-related sites. It never really bothered me because even though the sites using it had their own agenda, they were generally rogue video sites that appeared to be harmless. Besides, the video was there and the headline was the same, so it added to our SERP.

What I discovered after drilling down into the “Realtime Search” results was

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Salt Lake City, Utah – August 18, 2010 – DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com), the automotive industry’s largest car dealer social network, today announced that renowned social media analyst, blogger and web strategist Jeremiah Owyang will keynote the second annual DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) presented with WardsAuto.com scheduled for October 18th through 20th, 2010 at the Encore Wynn Las Vegas.

“Jeremiah is renowned for his passion for helping companies communicate with the web and for his innovative and trail-blazing approach to social media – and the web in general,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “He knows how to make new media relevant and actionable for businesses. His focus on integrating customer/community needs, business objectives, and technology is particularly relevant to the goal of the summit, which is to leverage innovative practices and technology to enhance dealership profit centers.”

Owyang is currently a partner at Altimeter Group, which provides thought leadership, research, and consulting on digital strategies. He is author of the popular blog Web Strategy, whichfocuses on how corporations connect with their customers using web technologies. Web Strategy is read by 70,000 unique visitors monthly, ranked 27th in Ad Age’s “Power 150” top blogs, and is one of the top 1,000 globally, according to Technorati. A former industry analyst who is sought after for his commentary, Owyang writes a regular column for the Forbes CMO network, has appeared on Bloomberg TV and is quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Associated Press and other technology and business related publications. He was featured in the 2009 “Who’s Who” in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. As a speaker he has keynoted the Internet Strategy Forum, Web 2.0 Expo, SXSW, among others.

The DrivingSales Executive Summit presented with WardsAuto.com is a uniquely

collaborative event modeled after the best practices sharing among dealership professionals on DrivingSales.com.  The event brings together the most successful and innovative dealers in the country, along with world-renowned speakers, all to focus on dealership innovations and profitability. Unlike other automotive industry events, the DrivingSales Executive Summit is 100% dealer driven and designed specifically for the most progressive dealer principals and dealership executives in the industry.

The DrivingSales Executive Summit will be held at the Encore Ballroom, in the Encore Wynn Las Vegas October 18th – October 20th, 2010.  For more information about the conference, visit: DrivingSalesExecutiveSummit.com or contact dses@drivingsales.com.  Follow conference news as it develops on www.twitter.com/ drivingsales using #DSES and on facebook.com/drivingsales.

About DrivingSales.com

DrivingSales.com (www.drivingsales.com) is the largest car dealer social network where thousands of dealership professionals collaborate and share best practices in a 20-group style setting. The site is the industry’s largest source of free dealership best practices information.

At DrivingSales, members create profiles, network with each other and share best practices. Dealership managers are allowed to rate and review their dealership vendors in a verified setting. DrivingSales hosts the largest retail focused community of automotive blogs, videos, interviews, social automotive news feeds and more.

DrivingSales was created and built from the ground up in 2003 by Jared Hamilton, a third generation auto dealer, as a private automotive business community to network his NADA Dealer Candidate Academy class.  The site opened nationally in 2008 and is the industry’s leading automotive social media custom platform.  DrivingSales was named one of ten social media gambits for 2009 by Automotive News and one of the Top 10 Companies to Watch by Auto Success Magazine.

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Finding Sales People to work 60 Hours a Week?

A Sales Manager asked me the other day, “why am I having such a hard time finding salespeople who want to work 60 hours a week?” For those of us who have lived much of our lives in and around a dealership, 50-60 hours a week may seem like a common work environment. But I started asking myself a serious question like “why should anyone have to work that many hours?”

Many dealerships haven’t changed much over the years. We still pay salespeople strictly on a commission basis, we still feel like by hiring them we own their lives, we still have trouble hiring professional people, and we still expect the ones we do hire to be successful on their own. I know there are a lot of reasons we haven’t changed our philosophy for how we run our sales department, some of them even logical. But you would think after all the years the auto dealership has been around we could have come up with a better way of hiring and handling our employees.

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