Forward-thinking car dealerships will be reflecting on how to innovate, stay relevant, and enhance their customer experience to remain competitive in 2025.
One of the key themes over the past year in automotive has been AI. Artificial intelligence in its many different forms could be a game-changer for automotive businesses, offering low-hanging fruit for retailers to thrive.
Whether you’re an automotive business with an existing track record of great Google rankings, or you’re completely new to the challenges of SEO (search engine optimisation), Google’s latest change will impact business either way. The introduction of Google’s AI overviews feature means that now is a great time to examine how you could be performing in terms of your digital presence.
In this post, we’ll explore what AI overviews are and how they could enhance SEO and drive web traffic for automotive retailers in an increasingly digital landscape.
What are AI overviews?
You may have noticed recently that there’s a difference with question-based searches on Google. That’s because Google released a new feature back in May 2024, called AI overviews. This update now means that the search engine results pages (SERPs) now present internet searchers with AI-generated findings.
Following testing in the US, Google’s AI overview layout can now be seen by all signed-in searchers using Google on mobile and desktop. The AI overview findings display at the top of the search engine results page, before any sponsored or paid results.
How AI overviews work
The feature uses Gemini artificial intelligence to enhance the search experience and give Google searchers more instant, convenient and accurate information at a glance. The feature works by using Google’s AI algorithms to analyse all the information available on the web to identify the most relevant and helpful results. Link cards are included below the overview text. These link to the websites Google has used to supply the information for the overview, with the resources outlined, searchers can see the source material the AI tool has identified that specific extract of the text.
So what does this mean for automotive businesses?
The AI overview search feature presents a huge opportunity for automotive businesses. By building better quality content, and focusing on information-rich, engaging website copy, dealerships could gain great visibility within the AI overview layout of Google’s search page. That means you won’t have to be a high-ranking search result to now appear as an AI overview result.
In fact, in Advanced Web Ranking’s AI Overview study they found “Only 33.42% of the sources contained domains that rank in the top 10 organic results, while 46.54% of them are domains that are not found in the top 50.”
Effectively, that means this opens the floor for smaller businesses, and those without strong existing SEO, meaning any business could gain valuable visibility in the AI overview format as a credible source.
Where before, it might have been harder for retailers to build their SEO and gain visibility among a wider pool of prospective customers, this is now no longer out of reach. For example, searches such as how often should I change my tyres or what is the best electric car for which smaller dealerships wouldn’t historically appear, may now present the chance for those businesses to get a look in. AI overviews could hand the metaphorical microphone to smaller businesses, giving them an industry voice and a chance to build brand credibility within a competitive sector.
Why retailers should be seizing the moment
Whether you ignore or embrace it, the AI overviews feature will impact your online presence as an automotive business. As retailers become increasingly tech-savvy, staying competitive means dealerships must take action with regard to their SEO. If your dealership doesn’t rank within the first couple of pages of Google, you’ll risk limiting your ability to reach new prospects or customers who are geographically further afield. Ranking further down on the Google search results page means you will likely lose out to your competitors, or those who display in the AI overviews findings.
In fact, with the overviews feature taking up significant space on the search results page, even those who formerly ranked well for certain search terms will require users to scroll before they’re visible organically.
AI overviews create a ripe new opportunity for dealerships big or small, with good or bad SEO, to gain visibility among their target buyers. Likewise, you might be a business with great SEO, but still be at risk of losing out on traffic due to this change by Google. Over the past year, Keyloop’s dedicated SEO team has researched and honed the tactics required to understand how AI overviews work and how to optimise the feature to your advantage.
Driving search engine visibility with Keyloop
As we enter a new year, there’s an opening for dealerships in the coming months to take advantage of the digital democratisation that AI overviews present.
Keyloop’s SEO services offer retailers practical support in identifying target keywords, building quality, optimised content and driving better SEO results. Working as an extension of your marketing team, our specialists can be on hand to help give your brand better digital visibility in a crowded market.
For more information about our SEO services, get in touch today.
