One SEO veteran on what ChatGPT actually looks at before recommending a dealership

Billings: "The counterintuitive answer is that nothing special. The discipline of AEO, which is answer engine optimization, or GEO, generative engine optimization, doesn't require anything special that a dealership shouldn't already be doing before ChatGPT came along or Gemini or Claude... the number one thing that's going to impact a dealer's visibility in one of the AI platforms for like a best-something-dealer search is going to be their reviews... ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, they all look for consensus. So when your reviews across all different platforms say, 'These guys are great. We have a great experience with them,' you get to the top when someone's looking for the best whatever dealer."

Billings: "Absolutely. Google and the other review platforms on the review side, but then moreover the other things that you could search... we're looking at at prompt visibility in ChatGPT for a range of dealers... And what we're finding time and time again is that the number one predictor of showing up for like an inventory search is the dealer had content on the page, good quality content on the page. The number two predictor is that they had inventory on the page. And down at the very bottom of the list is all the things that everyone are usually talking about, schema markup and all this technical stuff."

Billings: "It technically can, but only if a human's doing enough of the steering. You need a lot of what we just say human in the loop... Then you need an editor to fact check it. Sometimes... you asked for a piece on 2026, but most of the information on the web was 2025... AI can just draw the wrong facts and pin them on the wrong part of the donkey, so to speak."

Billings: "Imagine if everybody uses AI as their writer and it has the same information that it can pull from. Same database, same information on the web, same criteria for thinking, everything just starts to look like an even shade of gray. So even if it's not slop the way that people would often use that term, what you end up with is very lowest common denominator work."

Billings: "Say you're a Chevy dealer and you write the world's best piece of content... on Silverado towing capacity. When a consumer searches that, they get results all over the country. That is a research keyword... you get a whole bunch of traffic to your website, but it won't produce conversions. You look in those Google Analytics and you'll see zip for conversions with thousands of visits to the page. Yes, that's a position one ranking. Yes, that's SEO. No, it was not properly aligned to the outcome required."

Billings: "Employ 50 writers. Have a different writer write every single page. Unlike AI, no two human beings will run over the same thought patterns... We build a dossier on every one of our dealers. So it starts there and… would be filled with model priorities, lease vs. purchase priorities... By doing that and making sure that no two pieces are written by the same writer on the same topic at the same time, you avoid having redundant content."

Billings: "I agree... if you have the majority of the Ford stores in a region... you've got the advantage, right? Because you're going to naturally be the one that's going to show up most prominently... more inventory is a huge lever when it comes to AI search, when it comes to traditional search... groups often win sort of by default because they have so much inventory that they can just outweigh a single point dealership in terms of opportunity to be able to show up in searches."

Billings: "That is unfortunately not a realistic objective... there's no lever to make that happen... unless you're going to move your store physically closer to where that person was standing, you're not going to materially change your position... it's going to be location as the primary ranking factor for that three-pack."

Billings: "Not at all. Not at all. It's becoming more wasteful... Alphabet, Google's parent company, made more than half their money last year from Google paid search. It's not going to go away... Why is it becoming more wasteful? Because there's more and more and more reliance on automation. Google's own automation being the worst offender. So, performance max campaigns... If you're John Smith Chevrolet and you put money in the PMAX bucket, Google says, 'Well, what's the cheapest way I could get John Smith Chevrolet leads?' Just show up for John Smith Chevrolet... Now, a bunch of your PMAX budget is bidding on your own name."

Billings: "No, not inherently. In the AI space, the edge you get is unique to your own dealership circumstances, if an edge is even possible... So, inventory volume gives you an edge. That's true of SEO as well. Great reputation gives you an edge. That's true of SEO as well. Great content gives you an edge. True of SEO as well. But the brand inherently the make doesn't do anything. It doesn't have any influence one way or the other."

Billings: "We all need to be unromantic about our decisions around marketing, about not having sacred cows that we refuse to kill... Don't fall in love with SEO. Don't fall in love with SEM. Don't fall in love with the notion of showing up in AI. Fall in love with the notion of producing outcomes, getting leads, closing sales... SEO compounds in its gains over time... if you're doing SEO properly and it's producing outcomes, you can pay the same amount of money internally to your staff or out externally to a vendor every month ongoing forever. And every month you'll produce more outcomes than you produced the prior month."