New Car Dealerships Are Eligible for Multiple Listings on Google Maps

This tweet recently got a lot of attention from the Local SEO community because it implied that car dealerships were allowed listings for each brand.

As of today, the help center doc has been updated to include:

“New car dealerships are eligible for multiple listings. You can have one listing for your dealership and one listing for each brand you sell of new cars.”

Take this example :

• If a dealer sells for Ford, Lincoln, and Toyota.  They would be allowed to have 3 listings for this – one per brand.  It does not matter if they have separate entrances or staff. The main goal here is likely to have the brands have more control over their listings at a corporate level.  If Ford wanted to keep track and organize the listings for all their dealers, they can do so. An example of one of these listings is here.
• Using the same example, these guys could also have a listing for just Western Slope Auto, if they wanted.
• Car dealers can also have listings for their sales & parts departments, if they qualify under the rules for departments.  To qualify, they would generally need a separate entrance, different categories, and sometimes differnt hours.  So using this example, this dealer could have a listing for their parts department as they already have here.
• These rules do not apply to used car dealers – Used car dealerships are only eligible for one listing since car brands that are sold can change frequently.
• These rules do not apply to other industries. These rules are specific to car dealers and cannot be broadly applied to other industries.  For example, insurance brokers are not allowed to create listings for each brand they sell insurance for.