The sign says closed, but the door’s still open.
Most of the more than 140 Carvana Google Business Profiles listed at government buildings, homes, parking lots, and other non-Carvana sites now say “Temporarily closed,” weeks after researcher Chris Wood and CDG News first reported on them.
But each of those listings still has a working website button that leads to Carvana.com.
For context: In October, CDG News and Wood reviewed 327 Google Business Profile pages tied to Carvana.
106 were real Carvana facilities, from vending machines to its seven Stellantis dealerships.
Another 143 listed addresses that belonged to something else: 77 civic or government buildings and 66 unrelated businesses, homes, parking lots, and other non-Carvana sites, across at least 39 states and D.C.
Of the rest, 51 were live pages with no address listed, and 20 were permanently closed.
The remaining seven couldn’t be verified or turned out to belong to other businesses.
The latest: Of the 143 listings, 109 showed “Temporarily closed” as of Nov. 9, according to a CDG News review. See two examples below.
This Nov. 9 screenshot shows a temporarily closed location in Kokomo, Ind. The address is for Kokomo City Hall.
This screenshot, taken Nov. 9, shows the listing for Salem, Ore. This address leads to a city municipal building.
Where the rest stand:
22 no longer bring up a listing in branded or address searches.
5 are marked permanently closed: Chico, Calif.; East Stroudsburg, Pa.; Greeley, Colo.; Ogden, Utah; and Temple Hills, Md.
3 still show as open: Asheville, N.C.; Pittsburgh; and one of two Flint, Mich., listings, on Richfield Road.
4 remain unresolved.
(Editor’s note: Counts reflect listings as checked Nov. 9. Google Business Profiles are live and can change at any time.)
All of the 109 temporarily closed listings still have a website button that takes users to Carvana.com, carrying a GMB tracking code that tells Carvana’s analytics which listing a visitor came from. The photos below show what that looks like.
This and the screenshot below, both taken Nov. 9, show the URL when clicking the “website” button on a Google Business Profile. At the end of the link, you can see CarvKOK, which shows that the traffic came from that listing. Below, the code CarvSLM shows that traffic came from the Salem, Ore. listing.
Carvana did not respond to a request for comment on the update. Google has also not yet responded to a request for comment.
Carvana has described the listings as a way to help local shoppers find its vehicles for delivery or pickup in their area.
Parked, not gone: Nick Chivinski, VP of sales and strategy at SavvyDealer, oversees the teams that run Google advertising and SEO for franchise dealers.
The label doesn’t remove the listing, he told CDG News via email.
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The profile stays on Maps and Search with its address, reviews, and website link.
“Temporarily closed doesn’t take a listing down,” Chivinski said. “It hangs a sign on it.”
Google’s help page says a closed profile “displays as ‘Temporarily closed’ or ‘Permanently closed’ on Google Maps and Search,” and that the temporary label helps customers “understand that the closure is only temporary.”
Google’s page also states that temporarily closed businesses “can rank after open businesses” on broad searches.
And a listing that still shows up can still crowd out local stores, Sarah Grajewski, chief operating officer of PureCars, told CDG News in October.
“If somebody searches used cars for sale and Carvana comes up as a location and they’re not actually there, that is pushing out other dealers in spots where they could be,” Grajewski said.
Why it matters: For dealers, the Google Business Profile is how Google decides a store is local, Chivinski said.
Every car in a dealer’s vehicle listing ad feed is tied to a profile location, and dealers have to prove they’re at that address, with a postcard or a video, before Google lets them show up as local.
If any of the Carvana profiles at the wrong addresses are connected to its vehicle ads, he said, “A car sitting in Arizona looks local in a town where Carvana doesn’t have a building.”
Chivinski said he can’t see inside Carvana’s ad account, so he can’t tell whether any of the profiles are tied to such ads.
As we reported, Google also has a beta program that appears to let national retailers advertise vehicles in markets where they have no brick and mortar presence.
It is unclear whether Carvana is part of that program or has another arrangement with Google that may affect these listings or their temporary status.
Bottom line: The label is a one-click switch back, Chivinski said. A dealer might use it after a hurricane, for instance, when it plans to reopen after a closure.
If those locations aren’t real stores, he added, the clean fix is to remove them or mark them permanently closed.
A permanent label won’t make a listing “disappear from Maps right away,” according to Google, but “it will slowly disappear from search results and then be completely removed.”
“Temporarily closed keeps every one of them parked and ready to turn back on,” Chivinski said.
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