Dealership Marketing

The not so near close distant future of Google paid search expandable ads for your dealers inventory

Jeff Kershner
Posted onDec 8, 2008 at 12:18 AM
Updated onUpdated on Oct 25, 2019 at 7:14 AM

Could we be looking at the new Google AdWords expandable product listings?

Google has been testing this new expandable product listing for sponsored ads across the board  with other vertical markets. Have you seen it?

Some worry that these new expandable ads will push the natural ads too far down the page but I think this could be a great win for dealers. Imagine a long tail keyword search resulting in the exact (or close to) vehicle you’re looking for right on the first page of your Google search. Imagine being able to serve up your inventory in this fashion!

This is taking Google base to the next level. Who said Google base was dead?

Jeff Kershner
Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
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I can't show you anything without it popping up on DR. Maybe I should just start my own blog.... Hmmm....that is a good idea. I wonder what I should name it?
J
ahhhh nothing like having a boss taking credit for your shit.
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I just don't think this will happen, atleast not in the interface displayed here. Just too cumbersome for the user.
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    CS
  • December 8, 2008
"great win for dealers"

but it used to be free to have your link there!
this looks awfully-a-lot like sending a data feed to google and paying to play for leads, which sounds a lot like..
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Since we are on the topic of Google another item that can help you that I use all the time is www.google.com/trends which give you advanced insight into what keywords people are searching. Just thought I would share. :)
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    Richard
  • December 9, 2008
If Google starts putting too much emphasis on sponsored results, they will lose market share.
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    Garry
  • December 10, 2008
Richard, you're right. Historically, I believe, they've been wary of putting too much emphasis on sponsored results to retain market share but I also think they're slowing moving the market. Instead of making sweeping changes that would alienate users, I think they're aiming to add more sponsored results (and functionality for those results) so slowly that the market will not respond negatively.
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This is semi-off topic.

My question..
How many consumers actually search Google for a specific vehicle? I feel like it has to be an overwhelming minority.. but maybe I'm wrong?

My point..
I purchased a new Acura a year ago. I used google to get to manufacturer sites to do my homework on the vehicles; build my own using their configurators, etc. When I was ready to purchase a vehicle I headed to google and looked up local Acura dealerships or maybe I used the manufacturer site "find a dealer" function, I don't remember anymore. Regardless, I knew what I wanted and just needed to find the closest Acura dealership. I didn't type "2007 Black Acura TSX" into google and expect to get a live listing.

If I had been shopping a used vehicle I would have headed to KBB or Edmunds to do my research and gone directly to Autotrader.com when I was ready to find MY vehicle.

Let's equate this to shopping the internet for tickets to a football game.. I'm not going to google and typing "NY Giants Dec 29 tickets" - I'm going to well known sites designed specifically to assist me in purchasing event tickets like stubhub or ebay to check out whats available.

I hear so much of "indexable inventory" these days and I wonder how much value this really yields?

Is anyone aware of any tangible market research to support the frenzy over displaying live listings on google.com?

Thanks! :)
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    Richard
  • December 10, 2008
Gary,

You make a good point. I guess we won't know until they finish testing. Either way, I would have to agree with Casey on this for now.
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    David
  • December 10, 2008
We track our source for traffic by using https://www.google.com/analytics/

We have never seen Google Base bring significant traffic to us.

I remember, couple of years ago, when you type '2007 ford F150' in Google, they will show a simple search section right below their logo, from there, it tie to the Google Base search engine. It is a great tool, but they took it away, I will never understand why they took it away.

Let face it, not everyone know they have to go to http://base.google.com to find a car.

I hope they bring that feature back for dealer...

Google base has about 2,964,457, vehicles (as of Dec 10 2009), Autotrader.com claim they have about 3M cars. You can tell there are lots of dealer feed their inventory to Google Base.
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I would love to see something like this come to be a standard in Google's search engine. I think they could do better by listing smaller thumbnails of the vehicle and listing more, yes I said MORE! Keep the text about the car smaller and make the customers click on the vehicle to read everything about it. Google could display 10-20 cars in the space they are currently using to show those 3. We automatically distribute all of our dealers' inventory to Google Base and I think this would help drive more traffic to their site.
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