Digital Dealer - April 2020 - 37

CHART 1

Google My Business support team answered
a question about setting up GMB department
listings for OEMs that sell multiple brands

dealerships' service and parts departments? That happened when Google
turned on the department listing feature
for car dealers.
It has since become best practice for
dealerships to create these parts and
service listings (if they didn't already exist)
since it provides a better user experience.
The department listings include an extra
line of info showing that they're located
inside of the main location for the dealership, and the main dealership listing shows
the separate hours for each department.
This update basically changes the way
Google looks at dealerships. Google is
allowing separate GMB listings for the individual brands and counting those listings
as separate sales departments.
In other words, you're adding new
listings for the different sales areas you
cover - and that's it. You're not adding new
service listings for each brand. You should
have your main listing for the dealership,
and then individual department listings for
each "revenue area." Your hierarchy would
look something like this:
 Joe Mama's Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM
-Joe Mama's Chrysler
-Joe Mama's Dodge
-Joe Mama's Jeep
-Joe Mama's RAM
-Joe Mama's Chrysler Dodge Jeep
Ram - Service
-Joe Mama's Chrysler Dodge Jeep
Ram - Parts

April 2020

Make sure you follow the rules
(maybe)
In documentation about department listings (located here: https://support.google.
com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en),
Google is very clear that each department
needs to have a distinct category. In other
words, your main listing shouldn't include
"auto service" - that should only be used
on your service listing.
While it's not stated in the rules, it's
been the agreed-upon best practice to use
unique phone numbers for each department and to have the website links point
directly to the department pages.
It's still a good idea to do both - keep
categories unique on each listing and use
separate phone numbers. But you might
want to take the new suggested naming
conventions with a grain of salt.
The new rules say that the department
listings should be named "using the name
of your dealership with the department
name" - but that doesn't really make sense
when we're talking about the sales departments. You'd end up with "Joe Mama's
Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM - Chrysler Sales"
as a department name, and that's super
spammy. We're suggesting that you simply
use the dealership name and single brand
as listed in the hierarchy example.

So, what does this all mean?
Yes, it's going to be a bit more confusing
for now, as some dealers add additional

" Google is allowing
separate GMB listings
for the individual
brands and counting
those listings as
separate sales
departments. "

listings and other stick with what they
have. It's likely going to dilute the value
of your dealership's listing since you will
(potentially) split reviews between multiple listings.
But there's a very clear advantage... If
you're the ﬁrst dealer in your market to set
up a separate department listing for each
brand, and a potential customer is searching for a "Jeep dealer," you're more likely
to show up in those searches since you'll
have a Google My Business listing speciﬁcally dedicated to being a Jeep dealership.
This also solves the Cadillac and Lincoln
problem - those brands always wanted
complete separation, but Google rules
were strict and didn't allow separate listings. Now you can create separate listings
and full-stack brand experiences.

One last note
This update to the rules doesn't apply to
used cars. You can't set up a department
listing for used cars, and if you're an independent dealer, you can't set up different
listings for each brand of car that you've
got on your lot.
So, now that you know the new rules,
get your SEO team or your SEO vendor to
get out there and update your listings, so
you'll have a leg up on the competition!
To share feedback or questions related to this
article or to recommend topics, please email
magazine@digitaldealer.com.

[ d i g i t a l d e a l e r. c o m ]

37
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en http://www.digitaldealer.com
Digital Dealer - April 2020

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