Announcing the Dealer Website Grader

More than 30% of vehicle buyers are already using AI tools like ChatGPT to research where to buy their next ride (2026 AI Vehicle Research Study).

Yet over 80% of dealer websites are effectively invisible to AI search.

So here’s the question:

When someone asks AI…

“Best place to buy a [brand] motorcycle near me?”
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“Where should I buy a UTV locally?”
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“Top-rated car dealership near me?”

…does your dealership appear?

For most dealers, the honest answer is no.

That’s why we built the Dealer Website Grader — and we’re making it free.

What the Website Grader Does

The Dealer Website Grader gives you an instant, no-cost assessment of:

• Your AI search visibility
• Your Google SEO performance
• Your website health
• How you rank against nearby competitors

In 60 seconds, you’ll know whether your site shows up in AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — or if it’s effectively invisible.

You’ll receive:

• A clear visibility score
• A ranking among local competitors
• A prioritized fix list
• A breakdown of what’s helping or hurting your AI visibility

How the Grader Works

The Dealer Website Grader runs a series of checks designed to mirror how AI systems discover and recommend dealerships.

Step 1: Identify Your Competitive Set

We classify your dealership by category and geography, then identify the local dealers AI systems are most likely to surface for buyer-style queries.

Step 2: Test AI Recommendations Directly

We run real buyer-style prompts through major AI engines and capture the results.

We analyze:

• Whether your dealership is cited
• Which competitors appear instead
• How often you’re mentioned
• Whether AI pulls structured information from your site

This shows who AI systems trust — and why.

Step 3: Evaluate SEO and AI-Readiness

AI systems don’t just look at keywords. They look for structured, trustworthy signals.

We evaluate key technical and structural factors including:

• Time to First Byte (TTFB)
• Core Web Vitals and mobile performance
• Structured data and schema markup
• Sitemap health and crawlability
• Inventory data quality and completeness
• Content clarity and semantic structure
• Google review volume and rating strength

In short: we test whether your website is built to be cited — not just indexed.

Step 4: Deliver a Clear Score + Fix List

You receive:

• An AI Visibility Score
• SEO Performance Score
• Website Health summary
• A competitor benchmark
• A clear roadmap for improvement

No generic SEO advice. Just dealer-specific insight tied to how AI systems actually make recommendations.

Why AI Search Changes Everything

Traditional SEO was built for a world of “ten blue links.”

AI search doesn’t rank links.
It builds answers.

If your website isn’t structured to be cited by AI systems, you don’t make the answer. And if you’re not in the answer, you don’t exist.

Keyword-stuffed VDPs, slow-loading pages, and thin inventory descriptions — tactics that barely worked before — are practically invisible to AI.

The dealers showing up today have:

• Clean, structured inventory data
• Rich vehicle descriptions
• Updated sitemaps
• Proper schema markup
• Fast load times
• Clear FAQs that answer real buyer questions

Read how Evinmotors dealer group used Ekho's Website Grader to identify gaps, and used Ekho's website platform to unlock revenue.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now.

“This isn’t a future problem. It’s happening today, and dealers who don’t adapt are quietly losing leads they don’t even know they’re missing.”
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— Rowan Mockler, Cofounder & CEO at Ekho

Why We Built This

Over the past several months, we’ve been researching how AI is reshaping vehicle discovery.

Here’s what we found:

• 30% of in-market vehicle buyers are already using AI search
• AI-driven discovery is accelerating
• Most dealership websites are not built for AI citation

We’ve written extensively about this shift:

Part 1 — From Google to ChatGPT
How vehicle discovery is shifting to conversational AI.

Part 2 — Why AI Search Is Fundamentally Different from SEO
Why rankings alone won’t keep dealers visible.

Part 3 — 2026 AI Vehicle Research Study
Our first-party research on how buyers are actually using AI.

The Bigger Picture

The Website Grader is your first step.

But visibility alone isn’t enough.

Ekho’s dealer websites are purpose-built for AI discovery, with:

• AI-enriched vehicle listings
• Automated content generation
• Structured data + schema
• Continuous sitemap updates
• Clean UX and fast performance
• GEO monitoring across competitors
• 50-state online sales infrastructure

When buyers ask AI where to buy, Ekho-powered dealers are positioned to be cited — and convert that demand into completed transactions.

Run Your Free Report

If AI is already influencing 1 in 3 buyers, the question isn’t whether this matters.

It’s whether you’re visible.

Run the Dealer Website Grader for free and see where you stand.

Run Your Free AI Visibility Report

We’ve Been Talking a Lot About AI Search

This isn’t a one-off announcement. Over the past several months, we’ve been digging deep into how AI is reshaping vehicle discovery — and what it means for dealers.

We’ve also taken the conversation beyond the blog.

Rowan, Ekho’s co-founder and CEO, was recently featured in Dealernews, where he discussed the shift to AI-driven discovery and what it means for the future of powersports retail.

And Chris and Rowan, Ekho's co-founders, joined Motorcycle& Powersports News for a conversation covering how dealerships can adapt their digital presence for the AI era: