Google's New Automobile Search Features Upset The Automobile Retail Industry

Sep 20, 2021 - 7:31 am 1 by
Filed Under Google

Google Car

Google seems to have rolled out new automobile search features that show more details specifications without sourcing where it found those specs. It may be some data relationship but supposedly this data isn't as easy to come back as one might have thought.

Brett Tabke from WebmasterWorld started a thread about this saying "Google is testing active pricing forms for new cars in US directly on SERP's. These forms can select trim styles, and other options to 'price' a car." He added "this is similar to what they have done in the airline industry, but the first time they have done it with an industry with non-reactive and generally fixed pricing (such as air, and hotel rates)."

Why is Brett upset? Well, he explained "this will have a profound effect on the entire ecosystem of auto buying: from car sites, dealerships, affiliate sites, to even OEM accessory sites."

Here is a screen shot of some of this:

Google Auto Specs

Jon Henshaw made a video cast of it:

I honestly thought Google had a lot of this information already, so I asked for more detail:

Here are some of the responses:

The most revealing answer was from the Senior Director of SEO at Edmunds who shared this:

This seems different from what we saw Google testing in April with car dealership listings or maybe it is similar?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Google said it licenses this data and thus does not need to cite or link to the provider.

 

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