Dealers, you have a lot on your plate. You don’t need to worry about how AI may or may not be impacting your automotive SEO performance and strategy. Sure, AI has seen a ton of development over the last year, but even today, in 2025, there isn’t too much to be concerned about. Today, I’m going to be dispelling some of the common misconceptions about how AI is taking over or ruining dealership’s SEO, so listen up.
AI Overviews Are Killing My Dealership’s Site Traffic: False
Google hard launched AI Overviews in May of 2024, and since then, we’ve seen a continuous increase in their existence. These overviews are AI-generated snippets of text that answer a person’s search query. First of all, they’re not always accurate. Some people will rely on them anyway, but you, as a dealer, are in luck because you can’t shop for a car with an AI Overview.
The overviews focus on informational searches, such as “Chevy Tahoe cargo space.” Your SEO strategy should focus on transactional searches, like “Chevy Tahoe for sale,” which AI can’t and won’t attempt to help with. If your SEO strategy has been targeting these informational search terms, sure, you’ll see a dip in traffic. But that’s not the traffic that’s driving sales; it was actually only inflating your performance. So long as you focus your efforts on transactional keywords that bring purchase-intended visitors to your site, you shouldn’t see much impact from AI Overviews.
Google Is Out, AI Is In: False
There was a lot of commotion around the decrease in or even the death of Google searches in 2024. OpenAI released ChatGPT Search right at the end of October, only further highlighting this conspiracy. But, like AI Overviews, there’s not much to worry about. You don’t need to learn an OpenAI algorithm to optimize for, nor is ChatGPT going to take traffic from your website.
Yes, some people may go to ChatGPT to get answers to those informational questions about vehicle specs and MSRPs. But again, your focus should be on increasing transactional traffic to your site; for the most part, the rest is irrelevant! To find a dealership and begin the car shopping process, people still need to use traditional search engines.
My SEO Vendor Shouldn’t Use AI: False
We should all know by now that AI is not sophisticated or humanized enough to develop and implement your SEO strategy. Since models like ChatGPT are just word-smithing bots trained to predict the best next word to write, there is a full lack of critical thinking that is necessary when it comes to SEO. That said, your SEO vendor should be utilizing AI to help with the brainstorming and mapping side of things.
For example, AI is a great tool for spitballing. You can input a keyword, ask for iterations related to that keyword, and receive a whole list of new target ideas. AI is also great at generating content outlines. While you can’t rely on these models to write human-focused, unique content for your site, they’re super useful when it comes to creating outlines that will help your content marketing teams with their writing. Honestly, when used the right ways, AI does have the ability to enhance your SEO strategy (emphasis on “the right ways”), and your SEO vendor should not be actively avoiding it.
Understanding AI’s Piece in Your Marketing Puzzle
AI has been a hot topic for the last few years. And though there have been numerous changes and improvements to the different AI models, especially in 2024, AI still isn’t destroying your SEO strategy or replacing Google. It’s just another tool in your marketing toolbox, one that should be utilized. Remember, it’s good to be excited about transformative technology, but actions need to be based on data and pragmatism, not sales pitches.
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