How will Rankbrain help me sell cars?

The Artificial Intelligence, Rankbrain, is Google’s newest client satisfaction tool. Your dealership’s digital strategy (you have one right?), will be more successful if you understand what Rankbrain does and how to leverage it to sell cars.

Recently Google published it’s top 3  ranking factors; content, links and Rankbrain.

There’s a host of other factors *, but these 3 trump them all. Taking advantage of each one of these on your next website refresh (your website gets updated, right?), will maximize your online visibility and help you reach more customers.

Proper execution of these 3 ranking signals will not only boost your page rank – it  will benefit your customers, your dealership and yourself.

Content and links are fairly well known, and generally well applied, but most dealerships have never heard of Rankbrain.

What is Rankbrain?

Rankbrain is a highly intelligent piece of  software created by Google to assist you when you look for something online.

It is so well designed, it is capable of learning. In fact, it’s getting smarter every second and it’s now smarter than the Google engineers who built it.

Remember “Kit” from the 80’s T.V. show  Knight Rider? That’s an Artificial Intelligence. Rankbrain is like Kit, only it doesn’t talk back and it is way smarter.

What does Rankbrain do?

Essentially, Rankbrain keeps track of your searches, sorts sites by their relevance to your search and eliminates unintersting sites from the results, and also searches out what you meant to search for, in case you misspelled a search term, forgot to include one, or might be more interested in a slightly different search.

What? Ya, it searches what you meant to find, not just what you told it to find.

How does it work?

Let’s skip this part for now. It’s safe to just know that it does. Here’s the relevant links that will explain it way better than I can:

1. Wikipedia
2. searchengineland
3. Jayson Demers on Forbes

What is its function?

Rankbrain is designed to help you have a better experience on Google and Google Chrome.

It helps eliminate search results that are spammy, ad heavy, irrelevant, not mobile friendly and un-interesting for you.

Why does this matter?

Let me ask you a serious question first.

“How bad do you want to win online?”

If winning all of the time, without fail, by whatever (ethical) means necessary, isn’t a priority for you and your dealership, don’t worry about Rankbrain.

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing- Vince Lombardi.

UNITED STATES – DECEMBER 31: Football: NFL championship, Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi victorious, getting carried off field by team after winning game vs New York Giants, Green Bay, WI 12/31/1961 (Photo by Marvin E. Newman/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (SetNumber: X8174)

Rankbrain is going to level the playing field, again, for businesses hoping to acquire new customers online in 2016.

How can you win a game, any game, if your team doesn’t know what one key element of the game even was. Let alone have a strategy and a team in place.

Imagine a football team that had zero special teams, no punts, no field goals, no touchdowns off kickoff returns. Nothing.

No one wants to play for a team like that. Don’t be that team.

How will Rankbrain help me sell cars?

Your dealership exists online, just like in the real world.

Imagine two dealerships.

The one on the left is in terrible shape. It has a burnt out light in its name. There aren’t any good cars on the lot, and none in the showroom.

The lot is hard to access off the highway and the people in the store are disinterested, not very knowledgeable or helpful.

Worse yet, there are blaring neon signs everywhere advertising cars you don’t like or want. Would you come back?

The one on the right is gorgeous and new. It is easy to get on the lot, find parking and enter the store.

Inside, there are tons of interesting cars to look at, touch and even sit in. The people are friendly and outgoing. They invite you in warmly and answer all your questions.

You are invited to come back, and the next time you do, even more interesting cars are in the showroom and new information is made available to you at your request.

Which dealership would you recommend to your friends?

Rankbrain sorts relevant search results the way you determined which dealership was the best, and organizes them by most to least interesting and helpful.

The differences between websites aren’t always as stark as my analogous dealerships here. But there are differences. Rankbrain figures out what they are for you, and ranks them from best to worst.

Rankbrain ensures good websites get found, great websites go first and poor or sleazy websites get buried.

Customized, responsive and relevant digital dealerships, with great content, will succeed at attracting, engaging and converting shoppers.

Building a website with Rankbrain in mind will allow you to reach a bigger audience, with a better experience and help you convert them into buyers with greater efficiency and greater effectiveness.

Who wouldn’t that for their dealership?

Just ask the Minnesota Vikings how important a good kicker is.

So how does Rankbrain help me sell cars again?

By building a digital dealership that is easy to find, easy to use, provides critical information and a great shopping experience you will win at the game of online dominance.

A digital dealership that invites your clients to come back and gives them relevant and important information each time they come, will thrive.

Dealerships that don’t provide Rankbrain with what it needs will begin to whither.

You can’t win a championship in football without great special teams.

You don’t have a winning digital strategy without a strong Rankbrain score in mind.

Having worked in the automotive industry as both a showroom rep and an internet rep, I have had the pleasure of working with real veterans of the game. I am continually blessed to be in your presence now.

I know how much you like to win accolades for your dealership and be the best around. I also know how much some of you enjoy references to the movies ” Suckers ” and ” Glengarry Glen Ross.” You surround yourself with greatness, you learn something new every day and apply it, you want to be better every day.

That’s what got you to where you are. Learning to use Rankbrain to your advantage is another challenge your dealership is fully capable of meeting head on.

Thanks for your time today. I hope you find value in this information and convert it to your advantage, make it powerful for you today!

Sincerely, Eduardo Aragon, digital marketing advisor and automotive industry professional. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter