The Google Possum: What Does It Mean for Your Dealer Website?

Some time ago Google launched a new Possum Update. This little “animal” unlike its “friends”, the Pigeon, Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird was aimed to improve the local search results and to prevent spam from getting good rankings in Google listings. A new algorithm is now functioning like a fully featured filtering system and can help auto dealers add Internet stability and improve their Google presence. How? Let’s try to find out.

1. The city boundaries matter. For a long time Google had problems with dealerships which locations didn’t fall within the physical limits of the city area. There were serious problems in ranking these dealer websites if the keywords contained the cities’ names. Even Google Maps didn’t see such dealerships within the cities. After Possum update their websites bettered a lot the positions in the search results and moved up. So from now on off-city dealerships will be better ranked with Google search engines.
2. More strict rules for duplicated content. This especially concerns the contact information of company’s affiliations. Local filters are used for local results by filtering the websites with the same phone number, address or domain. If your dealer website has several listings for the main office and its affiliations which all naturally refer to one and the same phone number, address and domain, only one or two of these listings will be shown in the search results. The others will be filtered out. In this case the filter is not the same thing as sanctions. Google does not remove the listings from the search results nor prevents their ranking. It works similarly to the organic filter by selecting the best and the most relevant ones. It filters out the rest which are too similar. The filtered listings don’t disappear. They will be displayed if you zoom in the map in the local search.
3. The searcher’s physical location is more important than before. The Possum algorithm makes the Google search more exact and user-friendly than some time ago so it prioritizes the user’s location. It means that if your dealership is in Lincoln, Nebraska, your customers from Denver, Colorado will see it at the bottom of the page results. For Lincoln citizens it will head up the top 10 positions. So the obligatory condition of correct ranking in this case is the correctly configured user’s location.
4. Small keyword variations play big part. Earlier you could see similar results if you typed “Black’s dealership Chicago” and “Chicago Black’s dealership” queries. After the Possum update the fluctuations in search results by using similar keywords became more vivid and stronger. In some cases the listings are filtered according to a particular query, but then appear in the local results if you added the state abbreviation.
5. The local filter got independence from the organic filter. In the past if your website was filtered out organically its ranking was not good. With the Possum Update this situation has changed. Now if your dealer website occupies the leading position in the Google search results and refers to the pages filtered out with the organic search, these pages will get promotion and move up.

The new Google algorithm is called to make order in website ranking. No spam, no duplicated pages, no trash. As a Google Partner our team knows Google rules and requirements perfectly well. Autoxloo offers you websites complying all Google updates. Autoxloo websites for dealers stand out with their responsiveness, effectiveness, high productivity and performance, excellent search engine optimization and top search systems ranking. Our products and solutions will help your business grow, develop and prosper in Google great spaces.