Answer Engine Optimization for Dealerships: A Ford Dealership Case Study
- David
- Feb 3
- 3 min read
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is getting a lot of attention right now. But does it move the needle for car dealerships, or is it just another acronym to add to the pile?
We tested it.
We began creating answer-engine-optimized content for one Ford dealership within a multi-store group in August 2025. The other stores in the group kept running everything the same: same website provider, same ad budgets, similar inventory, similar pricing.
By October, the test store had increased new-car leads by 72% year-over-year, while their Google Ads cost decreased. They became the top-performing store in their market.
This is what we found.
The Test: Three Ford Stores, One Variable
We compared three Ford dealerships within the same group. All three had the same website provider, similar inventory levels, similar pricing, and similar Google Ads budgets. Primary market areas and targeting was consistent across the stores. Nothing changed in tactics or strategy month-to-month or year-over-year.
The only variable: starting in August, we added about 30 pieces of answer-engine-optimized content to one store's website. The other two stores continued as usual.
We then pulled internet lead data from the CRM, filtered for good leads only, removing duplicates and bad leads, and compared October 2025 against October 2024 and September 2025.
The store with AEO content generated 196 new car internet leads in October 2025, compared to 114 in October 2024. That's an increase of 82 leads—72% year-over-year growth.
The other two stores in the group saw either flat or declining lead counts over the same period.
The AEO store didn't just outperform its own history. It became the top-performing Ford dealership in the area, increasing new car sales volume by 38%.
Why Google Ads Got Cheaper Without Changing the Ads
Here's where it gets interesting. We didn't change the ad spend, the targeting, or the creative. But the store with AEO content dramatically outperformed the others on Google Ads.
The AEO store's campaign had a 3.1% click-through rate, triple that of the next-best campaign in the group with a similar ad spend. It generated nearly 4,500 clicks in October, compared to roughly 2,600 combined clicks across the other two stores' campaigns.
The average cost per click was $0.37. The next cheapest campaign was $0.68. That's nearly 50% lower cost per click for significantly more traffic.
Total ad spend at the AEO store was actually lower than one of the other stores: $1,600 compared to $2,600. More clicks, better click-through rate, less money spent on advertising.
What Changed
Google Search Console showed the AEO store's organic impressions hitting 308,000 over three months—more than double the other stores. After a dip in early September, impressions climbed sharply as the AEO content gained traction.
The other two stores saw the same September dip but flatlined afterward.
Google Ads doesn't operate in a vacuum. When a website performs better organically (more relevant, more authoritative), paid campaigns benefit. The site becomes more favorable in Google's eyes, which improves ad efficiency.
The AEO content made the website better. The better website made the ads cheaper.
What Most Dealerships Get Wrong
ChatGPT has reached roughly 700+ million weekly active users. While this is still smaller than Google’s daily search volume, it represents a meaningful and rapidly growing share of how people now seek answers, especially for complex, conversational questions. People are going straight to AI tools for answers instead of scrolling through search results. However, most dealerships still rely only on traditional SEO pages, model landing pages, and standard blog content.
AEO content is structured differently. It's written to be extracted by AI tools, not just indexed by Google. The pages we created for the test store weren't typical SEO pages. They were built to answer specific questions in a format that AI-powered search engines can cite directly.
The other mistake: assuming Google Ads and website content are separate strategies. They're not. Organic performance influences paid efficiency. A site that Google sees as more relevant and authoritative will get better ad placement at a lower cost.
If you're investing in paid search but ignoring what's happening on the website itself, you're leaving efficiency on the table.