In this week’s Wednesday Workshop, we’re talking about Google’s Questions and Answers feature, which rolled out to desktop searches at the end of last year. It’s a feature that allows any user to ask – or answer – questions about your business, right on the search results page in your Knowledge Panel.
Studies have shown that the automotive vertical is one of the most active adopters of Google Q&A, but most dealers haven’t heard of it and have no idea that there are questions being asked to their dealership… And they definitely don’t know that random people are answering them!
Watch this week’s video for more info on the new Q&A feature and why your dealership should be paying attention.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another Wednesday Workshop from DealerOn. This week, I wanted to introduce Steve to you – he’s one of our SEO managers, and he came up with this week’s idea, so he’s joining me on the video
Hey everyone… This week, we’re going to talk a little bit about Google Q&A. The Q&A feature has been on mobile for quite a while, but it was just recently rolled out to show on desktop searches as well. And a LOT of dealers have no idea what’s out there…
So the Q&A shows up in your Knowledge Panel, which is the info box that appears to the right side of a brand search. It’s a section where users can ask AND ANSWER questions.
And that’s why you need to really be paying attention – because right now, a bunch of random people are answering questions FOR YOUR DEALERSHIP!
Even if the answers are correct, it just looks bad if the dealership isn’t answering any of the questions that people are asking. Would you ignore questions that people ask you on Facebook or Twitter? Or ignore a bad review? Heck no!
You need to control the conversation and make sure the right answers are given to each question that’s asked. You can even ask your own questions – so if there are questions that come up often, ask them yourself, and then pop in and answer your own question!
Sure, this could be the same stuff you’ve got on your FAQ page on the site – but people are checking the Q&A section before they even get to your site – so it’s important that you’ve got the right info there.
A reputation company called GetFiveStars did some research on Google Q&A, and they found that car dealers are the second most active vertical for questions being asked – so you definitely need to pay attention to what’s going on in your Q&A section.
To show you just how bad things can be, Steve did a bit of digging and found some pretty scary examples of Google Q&A gone wrong – check these questions out:
Look at this one for a Toyota dealer in Richardson, Texas – even though there are 9 questions that have been asked, this one is the one that shows in the Knowledge Panel:
Yikes
And look at this one: Will the dealership do full detailing on my Toyota? If so, how long will it take? That should be a simple answer from the dealership, but instead we have all of these really bad answers:
Not for me
They’ll just run you through the automated car wash
They’re only going to rip you off, that’s what they’re good at – be careful while dealing with them
No, they closed their car wash
And some are kinda crazy questions, like on this other dealer’s q&a – even though it’d be SUPER easy to click through to the website to get the answer, this guy asked if there are any new 2017 Expeditions in stock – and the question sits unanswered…
And here’s another dealer with a tough one – instead of leaving a bad review in the reviews section, this person left it in the Q&A section – this dealership replies to every single review, but they’re not paying attention to Q&A, so this awful review is just sitting out there for everyone to see
And our last example – someone’s asking how much it costs to check the engine, and the answer is just “i am not sure”
And the really crazy thing – I didn’t even have to search very hard at all to find these examples – they’re literally everywhere.
So – go do a search for the name of your dealership and check your Q&A – and answer any questions that are there. Definitely make it a part of your weekly or even daily routine to check for new questions, so you can control the conversation and make sure the right answers are showing up
So that’s all the time we have for today – as always, if you’ve got questions or comments, leave ‘em down below, and we’ll get back to you shortly. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week with another Wednesday Workshop from DealerOn.
