The Reputation Audit • Specialty 7 of 13
Most shoppers decide whether to visit your store before they visit your site. The deciding factor is what other people have already said about you.
We audit Google reviews, response cadence, sentiment patterns, third-party review ecosystems, and competitive positioning. The layer shoppers see before they ever reach your homepage.
Why reputation is upstream of every other audit
A 4.6-star store with 800 reviews and a 4.0-star store with 80 reviews are not in the same competitive set, even on the same street.
Review velocity, response rate, sentiment, and depth all feed into both Google's local ranking and the shopper's decision to call. AI engines lean heavily on review signals when describing dealers.
Some stores have a healthy review machine running. Some have not asked for a review since 2019 and are slowly being out-paced by competitors who did. Where you sit determines whether new traffic converts or bounces.
What nobody has told you
"Your CSI scores are not reputation. They are an internal OEM metric. Shoppers do not see them. Google does not weight them."
"Your BDC may already be asking for reviews, but if request cadence is uneven (post-sale only, not post-service), you are missing 60+ percent of your possible volume."
"Negative reviews left without a response do more damage than the negative review itself. Shoppers read the response, not the complaint."
"You may have great reputation hygiene. You may have a slow leak. The benchmarks tell the story."
The five failures we find on almost every dealer site
On most dealer sites in this area, you almost certainly have at least three of these.
Review velocity below local benchmark
Number of new reviews per month vs. nearby competitors. Velocity is a strong local ranking signal and a stronger trust signal for shoppers.
How we fix it: Post-sale + post-service review request cadence, SMS-first ask, single-tap link to review form.
Response rate below 90 percent
Unanswered negative reviews compound. Unanswered positive reviews leave engagement on the table. Both hurt local ranking signals.
How we fix it: Daily monitoring, templated responses with personalization, escalation path for serious complaints.
Response time above 48 hours
The longer a negative review sits unanswered, the more shoppers see it as the current state of the store. Speed of response is itself a trust signal.
How we fix it: SLA: same-day for negatives, 48 hours for positives, alerts to a named owner.
Third-party reviews ignored
Cars.com, DealerRater, Yelp, BBB. Each platform has its own ranking algorithm. Many dealers manage Google well and the rest barely.
How we fix it: Consolidated review monitoring across platforms, response cadence on each.
No review schema
Review and AggregateRating schema on the homepage and key landing pages enables review snippets in SERP and is weighted by AI engines.
How we fix it: AggregateRating schema with current count and average, review microdata on testimonial pages.
Inside the full Reputation Audit
Volume, velocity, sentiment, response cadence, competitive position.
Volume + velocity
- • Total review count
- • Reviews per month, trailing 12
- • Review source mix (Google, DealerRater, Cars.com, Yelp, BBB)
- • Velocity vs nearby competitors
Sentiment
- • Average rating
- • Sentiment breakdown by department (sales, service, F&I)
- • Recurring themes in negatives
- • Recurring themes in positives
Response
- • Response rate (%)
- • Average response time
- • Response quality scoring
- • Escalation handling
Competitive
- • Position vs 5 nearest competitors
- • Share of voice on local pack
- • Share of recent reviews
SAMPLE AUDIT OUTPUT
Good. Minor optimization recommended
- Review velocity vs benchmark 62% of peer
- Response rate 78%
- Avg response time 3.4 days
- Review schema Missing
Reviews left on the table / month
~24
Top fix: Add post-service SMS review ask. Estimated lift: +15-25 reviews/mo.
Illustrative sample. Not your site.
What happens when you fix it
Fixing this is not a website redesign. It is a series of specific, surgical changes.
01
DIAGNOSIS
We give you the report
48 hours. Every finding, ranked by impact and effort, with platform-specific instructions for your CMS. You can hand it to your web vendor and they can implement most of it.
02
IMPLEMENTATION (OPTIONAL)
We do the work
If your vendor cannot or will not, we install the fixes ourselves. Most live in Google Tag Manager, the head of the page, or as a CDN-level configuration. Live in 7 to 14 days.
03
VERIFICATION
We re-run the scan
30 days after the fixes go live, we re-run the audit and confirm the lift. Site Health Score increase, category-level pass, downstream impact verified.
What the data says.
Velocity
is a stronger ranking signal than total count beyond a certain volume threshold. Recent activity beats historical mass.
Response
rate above 90 percent correlates strongly with higher local pack visibility in our sample.
AI engines
lean on review signals when describing dealers. Shoppers ask 'who has the best reviews near me' and the answer matters.
The Proof
How a Hyundai store doubled monthly review volume in 60 days.
A Hyundai dealership in suburban Charlotte was averaging 18 new Google reviews per month with a 4.3-star average. Their service department was not asking for reviews at all.
We deployed an SMS-based review request from both the sales BDC and the service advisor handoff, and built a response cadence with same-day for negatives.
60 days later: 41 new reviews per month average, 4.5-star average rating, 100 percent response rate. Local pack visibility for non-branded queries improved measurably.
18 → 41
Reviews per month
4.3 → 4.5
Average rating
78% → 100%
Response rate
60 days
Time to lift
Pricing
Three options. No retainer. No negotiation.
Pay once for the diagnosis. Pay once for the fixes. Or pay once and get both.
$997
Full Diagnostic
- •Comprehensive site audit across all 14 specialty areas
- •Search Console authenticated review
- •Platform-specific fix instructions
- •Priority-ranked master fix list
- •Estimated impact and effort per fix
- •Refundable if we do not find 3 surprises
- •48-hour delivery
$6,497
Fix Sprint
- •Bring your own audit report
- •We implement your top 5 priority fixes
- •Schema, speed, and structural fixes
- •Live within 30 days
- •No code changes required from your vendor
$6,997
Full Treatment
- •Full Diagnostic included ($997 value)
- •We implement every fix on the priority list, not just 5
- •Schema, speed, and structural fixes
- •Live within 7 to 14 days
- •90 days of regression monitoring after launch
- •We handle your web vendor directly
$500 more than the Fix Sprint. Includes the $997 diagnostic and the complete fix list.
Reputation Audit-specific questions dealers ask.
Answered straight.
Can I remove negative reviews?
Only if they violate Google's policies (spam, fake, irrelevant, profane). Legitimate negative reviews stay. The play is to respond well, not to remove.
Should I incentivize reviews?
No. Both Google and the FTC prohibit it. Incentivized reviews can get your entire profile suspended.
Is there a tool for this?
Many. We are tool-agnostic. The audit identifies what is broken; the implementation can use whatever review platform you already pay for.
What about CSI?
Internal OEM metric. Important for your OEM relationship. Not visible to shoppers, not weighted by Google.
How often should I run this?
Quarterly is typical. After a leadership change in sales, service, or BDC, sooner.
Will this conflict with my reputation management vendor?
Usually not. We diagnose; they execute. The findings often help them make a stronger case for the cadence changes they have been recommending.
Does this include AI-engine review scraping?
Yes. We test how AI engines describe your reputation specifically, including which review attributes they cite.
While we are at it
Reputation Audit is rarely the only thing wrong. Three areas dealers usually pair with this one.
The Local SEO Audit
Google Business Profile, NAP consistency, local pack ranking, service-area coverage. Where the in-market shopper actually starts.
Read the detailsThe AI Visibility Audit
How ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity describe your store when shoppers ask. Citations, recommendations, omissions.
Read the detailsThe Conversion Audit
VDP form friction, click-to-call gaps, broken trade-in flows. We score the path from ad click to lead and find the leaks.
Read the detailsFind out what shoppers see before they ever visit your site.
30-second scan. We pull your review profile, benchmark against competitors, and identify the highest-leverage fixes.