Every day, I speak with people at different dealerships around the country who ask the same question, “How will SEO help me sell more cars?”
The answer is quite complicated in the year 2026, because search has grown quite complicated, too. While a good local SEO strategy for dealerships used to revolve around creating keyword-enriched content and optimizing your Google Business Profile, SEO has evolved from Search Engine Optimization to Search Everywhere Optimization.
Now, dealers are faced with a new challenge, and so the question they’re asking me is different: “How do I sell more cars when people are using both traditional and AI-powered search to find us?”
I want to help dealers meet that challenge head on.
That’s why, when I had the opportunity to attend MozCon 2026 and spend a day learning from SEO and AI professionals about how AI-powered search is changing the way people find and evaluate businesses, I went with the goal of helping explain what these changes actually mean for dealerships. Because while your goal is to sell more cars, my goal is to help you reach customers wherever they’re searching by harnessing the power of SEO.
What did I learn? Well, the good news is that underneath all of the conversation around AI, the goal is actually pretty simple: Be visible.
That's probably not the big, complex secret you were hoping for, but that's the truth. After listening to speakers across MozCon 2026 talk about AI search, local SEO, digital PR, automation and the future of search, that was the theme that kept coming back to me.
Takeaway #1: Earning Visibility Is as Important as Earning Clicks
Tom Capper, Moz’s Director of Search Product Strategy, kicked off the day by speaking about how to win Google's visual real estate. According to Capper, AI Overviews dominate the bulk of real estate above the “fold” of a Search Engines Results Page (SERP), and the position of organic listings vary dramatically by vertical.
The part that stuck out to me, though, was when he said that only 39% of organic #1 results are above a typical laptop fold. So what about the other 61% of the time? What are users seeing first, if not a traditional organic search result?
AI Overviews. Ads. Google Business Profiles. Images. There’s a lot of SERP real estate available before a user even sees a traditional organic listing.
This is where dealers need the biggest mindset shift when thinking about SEO.
Historically, SEO has been heavily focused on the click. Our reporting has been built to answer: How often are people clicking through to your website? More importantly, what are they doing once they get there? Are they converting?
Those are still important questions. But in this new world of SEO, AEO, GEO and LLMs, the click isn't necessarily the only KPI you should care about, because traffic doesn’t tell the whole story.
In today’s environment, impressions are indicative of visibility. We want to make sure that users are seeing references to your dealership, your brand, and of course, your website.
One of the other points Capper made is especially important for those of us in automotive marketing: there are plenty of top-of-funnel marketing strategies that no longer involve a click.
Since AI Overviews rolled out, we’ve been saying that they’re a lot like a billboard for your business right at the top of the SERP. If someone sees a billboard for your dealership and decides to stop in, will you be able to tell if they visited your website first? Not necessarily, but if it raised awareness about your business, the billboard did its job nonetheless. I challenge you to adopt this mindset, and continue thinking of it in regards to AI Overview and LLM placements.
While clicks to your website will always be important, awareness and visibility should be key goals as well.
Later in the day, Josh Blyskal, a founding team member at Profound, reminded the crowd of how important it is to be visible wherever customers are searching.
With all the LLMs available today, Google isn’t the only place people are searching anymore. While there’s some overlap between Google Search and the responses users receive from AI assistants, it’s not 100%. This means that there’s more room for your website to show up, earn a placement and ultimately be visible.
Blyskal shared research showing just how much these SERP environments can differ. According to his study, Claude overlaps with Google SERP results 64% of the time, while ChatGPT only has 37% overlap with Google search results.
That means there are more opportunities for your dealership to show up, be visible, earn a placement and ultimately become part of the customer's research journey.
Takeaway #2: Your Dealership’s Reputation Isn’t Just Made By Your Website
In a time when online visibility matters more than ever before, your reputation precedes you. When a customer uses ChatGPT to find the best car dealership in their area, the LLM isn't simply going to repeat whatever positive claims a dealership makes about itself. It's going to evaluate all the information available to it and try to provide its user with a useful answer.
Think about it this way: if a customer asks ChatGPT to share the positive reviews of a dealership, it can certainly do that. But if their question involves comparing several dealerships, it's going to try to offer a more complete picture of the options available, including whatever pros and cons it can glean from what others say about you online. To do so, it’s going to evaluate many different sources in its training base and on the web.
Put more simply: Your reputation doesn't live exclusively on your website.
At MozCon, Paul Norris and Beth Nunnington, both of Journey Further, spoke about how LLMs are synthesising information about brands from across the web, including press, podcasts, forums, reviews and other third-party sources. For dealerships, this means it’s essential to put your best foot forward everywhere customers might be researching you.
That includes your website, but it also means paying attention to your Google Business Profile, reviews, social media, video, local publications and other third-party sources that can help shape how your dealership is perceived.
And there's another important piece to ensuring you appear how you want to appear in the AI Search era: consistency.
Your website should make it incredibly clear who you are, what you do and what makes your dealership different. That same messaging should carry through to your other online properties.
Google Business Profile is a particularly important example. If AI Overviews are covering a significant portion of the top of a search results page, what do you think is competing for attention alongside those results? And when a user is scrolling on mobile for a local query, what information are they likely to encounter before they ever visit your website?
In both cases, the answer is: your Google Business Profile. It’s always been important, but it matters now more than ever.
Amanda Jordan, Senior SEO Specialist at Owner.com, raised an interesting point when she spoke about tips for optimizing Google Business Profiles. Look at your categories and how they present your business. The information being shared on your GBP should support and enhance the intent of your website. If your categories and services don’t align with what’s on your website, then that’s an area that can be updated relatively easily.
Jordan also stated that your primary category should align with your homepage intent. If your GBP suggests that you’re primarily a service center, but your homepage makes it clear that you’re a used car dealership with a service center, you’ve created conflicting signals. And if we’re confused, then a customer is likely to be confused, too. Just as importantly, search engines and AI assistants may be confused about how to understand and present your dealership.
In short, it’s not enough to just be visible. You also need to ensure your business’ messaging is consistent, and your intent is clear.
Takeaway #3: The Dealers That Offer Differentiation Will Win
In my opinion, this was the biggest takeaway from MozCon 2026:
Capper pointed out that brand is a stronger predictor of rankings than Domain Authority. If you’re unfamiliar, Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search results. And while Domain Authority is still a helpful metric when comparing your website to close competitors, your brand is what ultimately distinguishes you in today’s search environment.
Having a positive brand sentiment has always mattered, but the wider variety of platforms available to today’s searchers has made a brand’s general sentiment more prominent to average customers. Understanding how your business is perceived in the public eye can help you better understand why it may or may not be recommended by AI Assistants, too. Whether your customer is searching on Google, asking ChatGPT or creating an agent to compare the best deals across all the local dealerships in their area, you want to ensure your dealership is presenting a consistent and positive message to its customers.
That starts with offering human searchers, search engines and LLMs alike a brand worth remembering.
Every dealership sells cars. Every dealership has a service department. Every dealership wants to provide great customer service. So what makes your dealership different?
Maybe it's your history in the community. Maybe it's the master techs with 200 years of combined experience in your service department. Maybe it's your lifelong truck experts and their inventory expertise. Maybe it's the experience your customers have when they walk through your doors.
Those differentiators shouldn't live exclusively in a marketing deck or in the head of your sales manager. They should be part of your online presence. They’re what sets your brand apart and gives you a positive sentiment across different search platforms.
If your brand has a strong reputation, you're more likely to earn visibility. And whether that visibility manifests on a traditional SERP, in an AI Overview, inside an AI assistant or somewhere else entirely, your business is more likely to be recommended when there is a clear reason to recommend you.
In order to build a memorable brand, you can’t just say you’re the best. You have to give your customers, and the rest of the internet, a reason to choose your dealership over all the others.
Final Thoughts on Why Visibility Is More Important than Ever for Auto Dealers
As the world of SEO continues to evolve and auto dealerships continue to embrace the era of AI, I implore you to remember one thing:
Visibility matters.
For many years, we’ve focused our attention on how many clicks are coming through to your website and whether or not those customers are converting. Those metrics still matter. But the difference is that a customer’s journey doesn’t necessarily start with a click anymore.
It starts with a customer getting a preview of who you are as a business before they ever arrive on your website. Maybe your dealership is highlighted in an AI Overview. Maybe ChatGPT recommends you. Maybe they read a review on a third-party site.
That first interaction is part of the customer journey, too. And that’s why we need to think beyond simply getting customers to your website. We need to make sure your dealership is visible, clearly understood, and worth remembering wherever customers are searching.
Not only is it key for you to be visible, but you need to embrace strategies that help you maintain your visibility on a wide variety of platforms. Customers are still searching on Google. But they’re also asking ChatGPT which dealer it recommends, and building agents to compare their options.You want to give those customers, and the AI assistants helping them make decisions, a reason to choose you.
The more unique differentiators you have, and the better your brand is perceived, the higher your chances are of earning that coveted recommendation.
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