AUTOMOTIVE
Ask ChatGPT who to buy a prestige car from in Melbourne. See if your name comes up.
I run a licensed prestige car business here in Melbourne. I also build websites, which is an odd combination, but it means when I tell you your dealership is invisible to AI assistants I've usually already checked.
Most of the dealers I look at don't come up at all. It's got nothing to do with how good the operation is.
Free. 90 seconds.
THE PROBLEM
Buyers stopped starting on Google
A serious buyer used to open Google and work through the results. Plenty still do. But a growing number now open ChatGPT or Gemini and ask a question, and they get one answer with two or three names in it.
If you're not one of those names, you're not in the conversation. There's no page two to be on. And unlike Google there's no rank tracker to tell you it's happening, so most dealers have no idea either way.
Here's the part that should annoy you. The dealers who are getting named usually aren't the best in Melbourne. They're just the ones whose websites are set up in a way assistants can read.
WHAT WE ACTUALLY FOUND
I tested it on my own dealership
Apex Prestige is my business. I ran it through the same audit I'd run on yours, across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok, using the questions a real seller would type.
It scored zero. Not low. Zero.
Worse, when I searched my own brand name, what came back was a car rental company at Melbourne Airport, a storage facility on a street called Apex Drive, and a dealer in Bedfordshire in the UK. The assistants couldn't work out which business was mine, so they didn't name any of them.
Meanwhile the dealers winning those answers all had the same thing in common. A page on their site written as a plain question and answer, the sort of thing an assistant can quote directly, plus enough reviews to look credible. That's most of it.
If it can happen to a business run by someone who does this for a living, it's almost certainly happening to yours.
WHAT WE DO ABOUT IT
Four things, in this order
Sort out who you are.
Assistants need to be certain which business you are, where you operate and what you're licensed to do. That means your Google profile, Bing, your schema markup and your LMCT details all saying the same thing. Boring work. It's also the part that unblocks everything else.
Build the pages that get quoted.
Answer shaped content for the questions your buyers actually ask. Where to sell a prestige car in Melbourne. What a particular model's worth. Whether to trade or sell privately. Written so an assistant can lift it whole.
Get the reviews moving.
Assistants lean hard on review volume and recency when they decide who to recommend. Most dealers have a trickle. The ones getting named have a stream.
Then ads, if it makes sense.
Google Ads for the buyers who are ready now. I run them on my own business first, so I'm not learning on your money.
THE WORK
Proof
APEX PRESTIGE
My own prestige car business in Melbourne. The testbed for everything above, which is why I can tell you what actually moves and what doesn't.
REZZA GARAGE
Mechanical workshop. More detail and results to follow.
WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH
I'm Filip. Ten years in UX and web development, and a licensed motor car trader in Victoria. I've spent my own money on marketing that didn't work, which is a reasonably good teacher.
You'll deal with me, not an account manager, and I take on a few clients at a time because that's what doing the work properly allows.
FAQ
Questions dealers ask
Why doesn't my dealership come up when I ask ChatGPT?
Usually one of three reasons. The assistant can't confirm which business you are, because your details are inconsistent across Google, Bing and your own site. Or your site has nothing written in a form it can quote. Or you've got too few reviews to look like a safe recommendation. Often all three.
Isn't this just SEO with a new name?
No, and anyone telling you it is hasn't looked closely. SEO gets you into a list of ten links. This is about being one of two or three names in a single answer, and the things that decide it are different. Citations from other sites matter more. Your own marketing copy matters less.
How long before it changes anything?
Weeks to months, not days. Assistants update on their own schedule and nobody controls that. What I can do is measure where you are, fix the things that demonstrably affect whether you get cited, and show you the number every month so you're not taking my word for it.
Can you guarantee I'll be the top recommendation?
No. There's no ranking to buy and anyone promising one is either lying or doesn't understand how these systems work.
Do you work with dealers outside Melbourne?
Yes, though Melbourne's where I know the market and the competitors properly.
FIND OUT
Find out what it says about your dealership
Ninety seconds, ten questions, no payment. You'll get an estimated score, the gaps I can already see, and what a proper audit would test.
See where you stand