Hey, Google: Selling Cars is Harder Than You Think

A couple of years ago, Google debuted a new product called Google Cars. Dealerships everywhere were curious and apprehensive about the new product. There was talk about Google gaining too much power in how consumers would search for cars, and a few dealers were skeptical it would work.

Now, after a couple years, we’ve been able to determine that Google Cars was not a success. Consumers didn’t use the tool nearly as much as was anticipated, and dealers received mixed results from the leads generated by the program.

Google Cars

The failure of a company Google’s size at creating a tool to connect with car shoppers shows that it’s harder to sell cars online than everyone thinks. It’s not about “doing digital;” it’s about doing digital right.

If you’re trying to connect with car shoppers in search engines, you can do it two ways: a traditional PPC program, or a dynamic, inventory-specific program like Search Liners.

Search Liners aggregates your inventory and creates individual search ads for each car on your lot. That way, when a consumer does a search for a specific car you have, the PPC for that specific model will display and when they click it will drive them right to the VDP for that specific car.

Just because Google Cars didn’t work out doesn’t mean it’s impossible to connect with car shoppers on search engines – you just have to do it right.