Every website that shows up in Google ranks for a set of keywords, the searches it appears for. Some of those searches are easy to rank for. Others are crowded with big, well-established sites. Diib’s data shows that car dealers and other vehicle shopping websites spend most of their time in the crowded part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The measure here is keyword difficulty: a 0-to-100 score for how hard it is to reach Google’s first page for a search. For each site, Diib takes the middle difficulty score across the keywords it ranks for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These figures are aggregated from websites connected to Diib, using keyword data as of late October 2026. They describe the searches sites already rank for, not where those sites rank or how much traffic each keyword brings. The data also doesn’t show why vehicle sites face harder keywords. A likely factor is that make, model and “for sale” searches are contested by national marketplaces and manufacturer sites, but the data doesn’t prove that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What it does show is that a vehicle shopping site is competing on harder ground than most small business websites, even when it ranks for plenty of searches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The keywords the typical vehicle shopping website ranks for have a median difficulty score of about 23 out of 100, against 6 for the typical website in Diib’s data. Car sites also rank for far more keywords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"insight_format":"Data point","insight_takeaway":"If you sell vehicles online, you are competing for searches that national marketplaces and manufacturer sites also want. Ranking for many keywords doesn't mean ranking well for the ones that bring buyers, so a big keyword count can hide a weak position on the searches that matter.","insight_action":"List the 10 searches that bring you the most leads, such as your town plus the makes you sell, and check where your site ranks for each. Build or improve one page per search, starting with local inventory pages that a national site can't match.","insight_source_url":"","insight_read_time":"","insight_featured":"0"},"insight_industry":[86],"insight_topic":[44],"class_list":["post-449","insight","type-insight","status-publish","hentry","insight_industry-vehicle-shopping","insight_topic-search-engine-optimization"],"acf":{"insight_format":"Data point","insight_takeaway":"If you sell vehicles online, you are competing for searches that national marketplaces and manufacturer sites also want. Ranking for many keywords doesn't mean ranking well for the ones that bring buyers, so a big keyword count can hide a weak position on the searches that matter.","insight_action":"List the 10 searches that bring you the most leads, such as your town plus the makes you sell, and check where your site ranks for each. Build or improve one page per search, starting with local inventory pages that a national site can't match.","insight_source_url":"","insight_read_time":"","insight_featured":false},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t