Just leave us a review on Google or Facebook

There isn’t an industry quite like the automotive one when it comes to vendors springing up to fill niches. My favorite these days is online ratings sites. Google and Facebook are what counts when it comes to ratings online. You can throw in someone like a Yelp too, although Yelp is a much tougher site to work with and manage. These platforms are where we want our customers interacting with us, leaving opinions and feedback and the like.

Yet leave it to the car business to add complexity into the mix. Sites like cars.com or DealerRater or Edmunds jump into the fray, creating more places where consumers can go and see what dealers are like. And I get why these sites do what they do – they are car sites, and they want eyeballs, and adding reviews is one more way to acquire eyeballs so they can charge dealers and car companies for advertising. But to the dealer, all of these sites are just a pain in the neck.

I don’t want my customers going to DealerRater or cars.com – I want them coming to my website, or my online properties such as my Google My Business page or my Facebook page. I’d rather not have to manage another extraneous listing. The entire world is pretty much on Google or Facebook anyway, so save yourself the extra work and just let us know how good or how lousy we are on the biggies.