Rising Gas Prices Are Reshaping What Shoppers Want: Is Your Inventory and Marketing Ready?
The Shift Is Already Showing Up in Search Behavior Gas prices climbing again in late 2026 are doing something predictable but important: pushing buyers away from heavy-duty trucks and toward hybrids and midsize vehicles, with Asian OEMs picking up a disproportionate share of that shifting demand. This is not a dramatic, headline-grabbing collapse in truck […]
AI Overviews Don’t Care How Big Your Domain Is: What Two New Studies Mean for Dealership SEO
Domain authority just lost its favorite excuse Two new studies published this week found that Google’s AI Overviews reward the shape of a search query and how directly a page answers it, not the size or authority of the domain publishing it (Search Engine Journal, September 9 2026). For years, smaller dealership websites competing against […]
Your Dealership’s Website Isn’t Losing Traffic, It’s Losing Buyers at Checkout
The leak isn’t where most dealerships are looking A recent industry analysis found that dealership online checkout and lead funnels lose the overwhelming majority of shoppers between the moment they start an inquiry and the moment they finish it, not because traffic dried up, but because the process between click and completion breaks down. For […]
94% of Car Shoppers Don’t Just Click the Top Result: What That Means for Your Dealership’s Google Business Profile
Your dealership just spent real money on SEO. You are ranking near the top of Google for your key terms. But new research from BrightLocal shows that only 6% of local searchers click the first result and move on. The other 94% stop and evaluate: they read your reviews, scroll your photos, check your hours, […]
One Press Mention Boosted a Local Business’s AI Search Visibility by 400%. Here Is What Dealers Can Learn From It.
One press placement in Business Insider. One week later, a local business’s tracked mentions in ChatGPT and Perplexity responses jumped 400%. That is not a hypothetical or a case study from a content marketing vendor. That is a documented result shared by agency practitioners Joy Hawkins, Andrew Shotland, Paula French, and Matt McGee in a […]
Before a Buyer Calls Your Dealership, They Check Five Different Places. Are You in All of Them?
Reflect Digital’s SearchPulse research documented something that many dealership marketers have intuited but not yet acted on: by 2026, the typical car buyer is not making a decision based on a single search. They are moving through a sequence of platforms, each satisfying a different psychological need, before they pick up the phone or fill […]
Hybrid Sales Are Up 108%: Is Your Dealership’s Digital Marketing Keeping Up?
Kia posted an all-time July sales record in 2026, and hybrid models were the story behind the headline. Hybrid sales were up 108% year-over-year. At Hyundai, electrified vehicles, including hybrids and plug-in hybrids, accounted for one-third of all July retail sales. These are not niche numbers. These are mainstream market signals. Now ask yourself: does […]
Google AI Ad Disclosures Are Live: What Auto Dealers Need to Know This Week
Five stories hit the wires this week that have direct implications for how dealerships advertise, get discovered online, and manage their digital presence. Here is a breakdown of what matters and what to do about it. Google Now Labels AI-Generated Ads Starting this week, Google is requiring advertisers to disclose when generative AI was used […]
A 2021 Automotive Online Marketing Briefing
Marketing | 14min Read Don’t forget to share this post! Share on facebook Share on google Share on twitter Share on linkedin With 2020 finally over, we can’t say we’ll miss it. But we learned a lot. And if anything, it taught us that there’s no way to forever “future proof.” We’re always going to […]
The 10TH DEGREE Dealership Advertising Advice Column: Connected TV Is Where You Wanna Be
Marketing | 14min Read Don’t forget to share this post! Share on facebook Share on google Share on twitter Share on linkedin This article is brought to you by the experts at 10TH DEGREE. We’ve all been watching streaming services and smart TVs grow in popularity rapidly in the last few years, but there’s no […]