Blog

January marks the one year anniversary of the .Cars/.Car/.Auto global release. Since launching, these automotive URLs have become the new standard for dealerships and businesses when upgrading or expanding their online presence. With adoption in over 25 countries already, forward-thinking automotive businesses have been able to register their brand names, cities, and keywords to stand out from the competition and improve their SEO.

At a recent Kain Automotive Workshop, Google reported that 71% of digital interactions by car shoppers occurred on mobile devices. With the popularity of cell phones and tablets continuing to increase, it has become more important than ever for businesses to have a mobile-friendly URL that shoppers can easily remember and type in on the go. That was one of the main reasons why Toronto-based Downtown Automotive Group upgraded from DowntownAutomotiveGroup.com to DAG.Cars. Other dealers who upgraded their domains to shorter, mobile-friendly URLs include:

 
In addition to branding and memorability, .Cars/.Car/.Auto domains have helped dealerships boost their SEO. In a third-party case study written by SEO experts GlobeRunner, St Louis Motorcars improved their search ranking in over 50% of keywords tested just by upgrading their URL from STLMotorcars.com to STL.Cars, while making no other improvements to the website. The study also found that conversions from organic search, traffic from referrals, and traffic from social media all increased as well. Read the full findings.

Another dealer, Arizona Car Sales, upgraded to Arizona.Cars and now organically ranks #1 in Google for competitive keywords like “Arizona used cars” ahead of Autotrader and Carfax. Merchants Auto, who rebranded from MerchantsAuto.com to MerchantsAuto.Cars, outranks Edmunds.com and many other prominent sites as a result of their move to a .Cars URL.

Since all .Cars/.Car/.Auto domains were made available for one standard price, forward-thinking dealerships capitalized on the SEO benefits by securing some of the most competitive keywords in the namespaces – their cities and states. The Colorado Automobile Dealers Association even rebranded from ColoradoDealers.org to Colorado.Auto.

 
Not only are .Cars/.Car/.Auto domains being used by dealers and OEMs, but they are also proving to be the preferred platform for automotive startups and tech businesses around the world. Charge.Auto is a UK-based startup that can build fully electric trucks in just four hours. FMC.Auto is the home of Future Mobility Corporation, a company founded by a Vice President of BMW and President of Infiniti to develop the car of the future in order to “connect us seamlessly to the entire world.” Yet another high profile business that has garnered media attention is MeetOlli.Auto, a subsidiary of Local Motors that is producing 3D-printed autonomous electric buses powered by IBM’s Watson Artificial Intelligence technology. These are just a few examples of cutting-edge businesses who are using their .Cars/.Car/.Auto domains to redefine the automotive industry.

After only one year, the movement of dealers, OEMs, and other automotive businesses rebranding to .Cars/.Car/.Auto has already begun. Awareness will continue to grow in 2017 as more dealers begin using their domains and market leaders introduce new technologies on .Cars/.Car/.Auto. Visit our digital showroom to see many more websites on the next generation of automotive domains.

Schedule a 1-on-1 meeting with the .Cars Team at NADA
In partnership with GoDaddy, the .Cars Team will be at NADA 2017 in New Orleans next week. Visit our booth #6224 to see our 1-of-1 Lucra LC470 FS with a 680hp GM Warhawk V8 (0-60 in 2.8 seconds in 1st gear), or email us at team@go.cars to schedule a meeting in advance.