There have been some rumors floating around about this purchase for a little while now, but as of today DealerElite.net is saying it is true.  Is it?

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

I often remark why it will be difficult to publish a traditional book on SEO for car dealers when the rules pertaining to Google search results continue to change. On Friday August 20th, Google announced another change in how organic search results will be displayed in SERP’s. The 10 organic listings shown on any search is called a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

According to a post on Google’s Webmaster blog, large websites that have strong consumer interest (this could include your dealership website), can now have more than two organic search results. This is a big change because if your dealership website can get four organic listings, you will dominate the top places where consumers click above the fold.

In the example on the Google blog, a museum can have four organic listings at the top of a SERP:

Toiling in the trenches, way under the radar, a feisty little automotive internet startup is making all the right moves with its cross-hairs fixed on you, on me and all of us in our industry… the automotive internet/retail industry.

First, a little background…

I am constantly tinkering and improving our site, trying to improve our Google Search Results. 2-3 times a month, I’ll do long tail keyword analysis on Google for phrases like “used Ford Taurus near Syracuse NY”. I keep seeing this lil-start-up site popping up on Google everywhere and I mean everywhere! “So what!” I murmured to myself… “I see car classified-site wannabes scraping and puking out millions of pages of junk all the time. They appear… then disappear a week later.

But this lil’ start-up looked different. This Classified ad site was amazingly thorough in its search results and its pages had depth and effort. Curious, I looked into it’s About-Us Page where I found an eye-popping list of 21st century Internet Kingdom builders including the founders of eBay Motors and TripAdvisor! Woa! To say I was impressed was an understatement. From the Board of Directors on down, its pedigree drips with MBA’s and Computer Science engineers from Harvard, MIT, and on.

Then I looked in cities all over the USA and I saw their master plan…

ADP Dealer Services Group is planning to buy Cobalt Group Inc.

According to Dealer Communications – Friday July 9 will be the announcement of ADP Dealer Services plan to purchase Cobalt Group Inc.

Apparently discussions have been ongoing for nearly two years between ADP and Cobalt’s primary investor Warbug Pincus. The acquisition is expected to close sometime in the third quarter.

As of right now, there is no word on the sale price, though Cobalt is generating an estimated $250 – $270 million in revenue. According to Dealer Communications ADP could be paying in the neighborhood of $350 – $400 million.

This will be the second major dealer website provider purchase since 2006, when ADP bought BZ Results. The article also go on to say…

ADP plans to keep both brands separate with Cobalt maintaining its Tier One and Tier Two relationships and BZ Results selling directly to the Tier Three/ dealership level.

Here is a link to the entire article on Dealer Communications website  – Nice Job Cliff Banks on this breaking news!

What do you think of this purchase?

Does it make sense for ADP to make such a purchase and what exactly do you think they will get from this?