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New automobile search features from Google are causing a stir amongst the automobile industry.
According to Search Engine Round Table, Google is now displaying detailed specifications for certain vehicles in search without stating where the specs were sourced from.
Here is a screenshot of what this looks like that was published by Search Engine Round Table:
Now, you might be wondering, what’s the issue here?
Here’s how Brett Tabke explained things in a thread on WebmasterWorld:
“Google is testing active pricing forms for new cars in US directly on SERP’s. These forms can select trim styles, and other options to ‘price’ a car.” “This is similar to what they have done in the airline industry, but the first time they have done it with an industry with non-reactive and generally fixed pricing (such as air, and hotel rates).”
Brett further explained that “this will have a profound effect on the entire ecosystem of auto buying: from car sites, dealerships, affiliate sites, to even OEM accessory sites.”
For those who are still confused as to why this is a problem, as such specs are frequently made available by car manufacturers, see below some discussion on Twitter that helps to clarify things.
Yeah, I’ve done work for a few auto manufacturers – they’re probably fine with this *so long as the data is accurate*. It’s probably more of a problem for publishers. — Ben (@ben_gc) September 17, 2021
@rustybrick No, not all of that data is available on the manufacturer’s website. Our data team at Edmunds goes through a painstaking process every year to find the manufacturer’s data and put it together so that users can access it in the format you see 1/4@Topheratl @henshaw — Matt Smith (@mlsutah) September 17, 2021
But in a lot of cases, OEMs also don’t provide all the data you see so we need to look for other sources to fill the gaps. This manual work results in our data team working year-round to add all this data in a categorized structured format. 3/4 — Matt Smith (@mlsutah) September 17, 2021
What are your thoughts on all of this? Are you in the automotive industry and troubled by this new feature, or is this not a big deal to you?
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