Lutz Finger | From SEO to GEO: How AI is Changing How Car Buyers Find You
Three Key Insights with Sanjiv Yajnik
Lutz Finger | From SEO to GEO: How AI is Changing How Car Buyers Find You
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Car
Honda Odyssey
The Honda Odyssey is a minivan, which is a family-focused vehicle with room for passengers. In the podcast, it’s used as an example of what happens when you search for a specific model online and see nearby options. The key point is that the search results can quickly show cars you can buy locally.
Car
Ford F150
The Ford F-150 is a large pickup truck made by Ford. People often search for it when they want to buy one, so a chatbot may suggest nearby F-150 listings. It’s being used as an example of how online tools respond to common car searches.
Concept
GEO
GEO is about making it easy for AI tools to find and use your dealership info when someone asks a question. It’s like SEO, but for AI answers instead of just web search rankings.
Concept
de-anonymize data
De-anonymizing is when data that was supposed to be anonymous can be traced back to a real person. The speaker is saying you should be careful because that can create privacy problems.
Concept
Q&A format
Q&A format means writing content like: question first, then a clear answer. The point is that AI can more reliably copy the right answer when someone asks the same question.
Concept
auto-completion
Auto-completion is when an AI tries to finish what you’re asking or writing by predicting the next words. Here, it’s why clear question-and-answer pages can work well.
Concept
cognitive load
Cognitive load here means how much extra “thinking” the AI has to do. The speaker’s point is that direct questions with direct answers are easier for the AI to handle.
Concept
AI-generated data
AI-generated data is information written by an AI instead of coming from real dealership experience. The speaker is saying you should prefer your own real customer-based info.
LIVE
on this episode of Three Key Insights.
Complete the sentence, life is like a box of...
Chocolate.
Yes, because the forest gumps it so.
Now, honestly, chocolate?
Why not full of surprises, life of happiness, love?
I mean, there are so many concepts
which we could stuck into this box.
Chocolate would be probably the least interesting one, except...
I was going to say broccoli, but it was not good.
The auto industry is moving fast, and it's getting more complex.
Success today takes more than instinct, it takes insight.
Welcome to Three Key Insights with Sanjeev Yashnik,
president of Capital One Auto.
Today, Sanjeev welcomes leading AI technologist Loot's finger
to break down AI search and how car buyers
are finding dealerships differently
and what dealerships can do now to take the lead.
You know, it's fascinating to speak with not only
a person who is involved in academics
and not only who has worked in different companies,
but you actually have created companies,
and then you've written books on this,
and so you've got this practical bent on what's going on
and how the thing is changing.
But let's take it step by step,
because we are talking to an audience
who, in my experience,
and I've worked in many industries
over 50 countries around the world,
in my experience, the auto dealer owners and principals
are the best entrepreneurs on the planet.
You know, it's a highly intense business.
It is a cash flow, compete every day,
get the customers in, then convert them.
It's a servicing business.
It's a highly intense business,
but it doesn't work unless you can bring the customers in.
And so because they are focused on so many parts of the business,
I would love to today educate our great entrepreneurs
in the auto space, in the field of AI
and how that is changing things,
because we see that more people are searching,
not using the normal search methodologies, but using AI.
But before we go there,
can you spend a little bit of time talking about SEO,
why that changed the world as a bit of a foundation
before we start moving towards
generative search optimization and why that is different?
I think there are two big topics
which are changing for the dealerships
and both have something to do with AI.
One is on the SEO Geo space.
How do you get people into the actual funnel to buy cars?
The other one is how do you manage your operations?
Also there is AI, very helpful.
So let's step back and let's do one by one.
Let's go SEO Geo first.
So SEO, search engine optimization.
There was a time where we did not have the internet.
I get like my kids don't remember that,
but I do actually, I'm now dating myself here,
remember that time.
Now the internet came around
and people are suddenly allowed to open a front door online.
And that meant there became searchable.
Before that car dealerships were just the car dealership down the road
and you put something up a flag
or something to draw attention for whoever drove by.
Now if you in the internet world now wanted to sell a car,
you became comparable.
People can search and have a way better view
about which car they want to buy,
who is offering what deal.
Meaning the internet made the earth way more flat
and way more comparable.
The main vehicle here for customers was search.
And I mean, I can like funny story for your car dealership audience.
I'm German as you can undoubtedly have figured out by now.
As I came to the US, I needed a car and I'm a data scientist.
So what do I do?
I did not go to a car dealership.
No, I scraped sites, figured out from all the dealers in the area
like which car I wanted.
And then I went to the like I visited three dealers
and I bought the car which like essentially within 24 hours
because well, I'm fresh in the country, I need a car, right?
So that level of you go, you scrape, that's what Google is doing.
Later on, Google said we allow you advertisements.
Now, advertisements became cheaper if more customers knew you.
Meaning the way you presented yourself to Google
became very important because this as well reduced your marketing cost.
That is the SEO world.
Right. And so dealers also became really good at this
because it's the keyword search and all of that stuff.
And to get the customers in, they had to become better and better at it.
There were some companies that helped them with it.
But I think the auto dealership world has become very adept at using SEO.
Yes, right now.
And they have to, however, and now here's the good news for your listeners.
The SEO game is a well-known game, right?
We're playing this since 20 years.
You know how to create the right keywords.
You know how Google looks at you.
Sure, Google changes the algorithm.
It's not that easy, but it's a game with clear rules.
Now, here comes AI and suddenly we're changing the rules.
And that is the reason why everybody should now actually invest into it
because we have now new rules in this setup.
Let me walk you through what GEO means.
I gave you the example I come to the US and obviously I need a car.
That did not just happen.
I just didn't board a plane and flew into the US.
I prepared, I get my passports, I packed, I thought about what do I need.
I organized my house away.
And in the whole time I was doing this, I used Google.
So if Google would have saved all my queries, they would have known
that I'm leaving Germany and going to the US.
Now, Google at that time didn't keep any data from any search queries alive.
They kind of like every time you go to Google, it's the same Google
as if you have never went to Google at that time.
But that's different now.
So we have now those chatbots and we can talk to chatbots.
And those chatbots give you answers, meaning now if you don't search,
you start planning for your trip to the US.
You're discussing what flights should I use.
Do I need an insurance?
What else?
The chatbot starts to understand, oh, Lutz is leaving Germany and moving to the US.
The chatbot knows very soon Lutz will need a car
because I know that everybody needs a car.
So the chatbot actually could make a list, like I might have asked the chatbot,
what else do I need to look for?
I need health insurance and I need a house and what else?
Oh, I like think about to stop by Sanjeev to get a car.
Given that you have that family size, I would recommend this type of car.
And by the way, you're going to the Bay Area.
Do not ever think about buying a German car
because it's not that common.
Rather think about Honda and Toyota was very common at that time as I came.
Now suddenly the chatbot is giving me a recommendation.
And the chatbot knows what to tell to me because it knows all my background.
So that recommendation lands actually extremely well.
And so let's dive into this area.
I know that you pointed out the two areas.
One is in the search and the others in operations.
Let's really focus in on the search part.
So now that being the case and the fact that people are going to be searching
for cars in a different way.
How does from a dealer's perspective, a dealer sitting with his or her inventory
and they want to present it to customers.
They want it to be presented to customers whenever they're looking for a car.
What do they need to do today that they were not doing yesterday?
You'll be able to come up on the search.
So can you describe the search first?
So how does the search algorithm, how does AI work when you're searching?
What does it look for?
Perfect.
Maybe before we do this, let me shortly explain the magnitude.
Why this is so important.
So I did some research.
I would say, okay, I let people search for a keyword and then I bring them the results.
So let's say I go to the US.
I want to buy a car.
I type in Honda Odyssey and then I get a list of Honda Odyssey's nearby.
Or I would get a site like Kelly Blue Book or whatsoever who trying to aggregate this.
And then I have to search.
I have to look at the pictures.
I would do two test groups.
I would test people with this kind of search, the traditional search, how your dealers know it.
And then I would do another site where I instead of letting the user search for a keyword,
I would say when people write Honda Odyssey, I would be a little bit more
explanatory and saying, okay, well, that's this type of car.
I have a seven-seater.
You can have so many people in it.
This is your options.
Here are 34 different dealerships which carry Honda Odyssey's at the price
and how close they are to you.
And then I would look at conversion rates.
So I would do this life.
And I can tell you the conversion rate.
And this is the important part from search to buy.
And I have the full chain.
The conversion rate is for some cases, five times higher, 500% higher.
Now the thing is that social proof does not live anymore in the bar next door
with your old customers that lives now in an engine.
We'll just chat to you or Gemini or whatsoever.
Now, how do those engines work?
Those engines are work completions.
They are like, if I ask you, Sanjeev, like, let's do it.
Complete the sentence.
Life is like a box of chocolate.
Yes, because the forest gum said so.
Now, honestly, chocolate, why not full of surprises?
Life of happiness, love.
I mean, there are so many concepts which we could stuck into this box.
Chocolate would be probably the least interesting one, except...
I was going to say broccoli, but it was not work.
Broccoli, nice.
Now, why would any completion engine do it?
Because most people say life is like a box of chocolates.
It's an internet meme.
So if people complete sentences, the best car for you to arrive,
if you are a father of a family of five, is now what is the car?
Where do the engines get this information from?
They look online, they see in all the chat groups what people say.
So your customer for the dealership is no longer the customer
who goes to the local bar, join, hang out, bowling club, whatever,
have a discussion and saying, oh, you're driving a Ford.
I want to have a Ford.
That's not anymore happening.
They go and talk to a chatbot and the chatbot completes the sentence with
it's the F-150, because everybody is talking to it.
Meaning, how do now your dealers who have a personalized experience with their customers,
how do they transfer this out into the world?
And that's actually relatively straightforward.
They have to make that experience digitalized and experience a bill.
Your dealers know, I mean, they are amazing entrepreneurs, as you said,
and then know their customers very well.
Make sure that those customer interactions are public.
Maybe they have a chat group, maybe they have a WhatsApp group,
maybe they have a channel where they talk to people,
because what the models are looking for is life is like a box of everybody says chocolate,
so it should be chocolate.
Now, if everybody says the best dealer you can go to is Sanjeev,
that's what you want to have out there.
Let me kind of take a step back and pull it all together,
the things that you've said, and then you can build on it.
So basically, what you're saying is, once upon a time,
the information that Google would use for the SEO, etc., and then they would do,
you know, keyword searches and you could pay for it and so on and so forth.
That was one version of doing it.
AI actually uses all the contextual information that is out there,
and if it is not available to it, it will not be able to use it to make its next word
or to help in the search.
So dealerships have a whole bunch of data, but to the extent that,
and let me break it out into two chunks and then you can talk about it,
one is the data that they have, one is the data of other people talking about the dealership.
So let's talk about the information they have, customers coming to them,
interactions that are happening, the more that that information can be available to the AI tools,
when there's a general question that is asked, the tool will try to,
will be more leaning towards, you know, exposing their information
of themselves to the person searching.
If you're a dealership and you kind of like heard, okay, life is like a box of chocolate,
let me, let me go out and make many, many, many pages saying the best car dealer is Sanjeev,
that's probably not going to work because all of those sentences are essentially meaning nothing
because they're not contextualized, they're not in the SEO game important.
So each of them needs to be important, meaning if you have a chat group, if you have a community,
if you have your own information, bring that information out.
Customers have questions about cars, about loans, about how to finance it, about events,
all of this and you informed them so far through emails, through flyers,
that information you start now bringing out and you have to build this up in an SEO setup
because that information needs to be trustworthy, trustworthy is still a topic, right?
And SEO is all about like what's the halo effect, how important is the site, do I trust the site?
So that game you still have to play and you bring it out, then the tools will pick it up and
start coming back to you and saying okay, that's interesting information which I have not seen
or which is special, which is for this area. So people are talking about Sanjeev's dealership
and they're saying I have a question about a car and the most information I get actually from Sanjeev.
So the tool will, in order to look good for the user, will say actually you know what,
all this information comes from Sanjeev. The tool is actually proud that it understood that the
information comes from Sanjeev. So if you think about...
Sorry, let me ask you a question on that one about making your information public,
but that information that you're making public should be powerful information.
And so my question... It should be novel, like ideally novel, it should be unique,
ideally unique and it should be authentic. So don't write 10,000 times Sanjeev is the coolest
kid in town, but put this into an authentic barrier. There is one very, very important one
because I see this going wrong a lot if people put out information. Do not ask
Judge E.P.T. Gemini or other tools to create content for you. That will not work.
And this is very important, like you have a team that wrote your newsletter that you move outside.
Do not go to OpenAI and say like write me a few statements about me and put this out. Because
it will not improve the model quality and we can go... There are technical reasons for why
SLAP does not increase the model quality because the model doesn't learn from content,
it just created, right? This is the snake eating its own tail. So all of the model provider
extremely careful to trying to figure out SLAP. If you create SLAP, you will lose out. So don't do
this. Use your human to bring it in. So there's some content that you can create, which has to
be authentic. It has to be powerful. It has to be unique. And it is something that is not created
by one of the AI tools. I got that. There's also interactions that customers are having with you.
That is not content you are creating, it's content they are creating. Because they may say,
this is what I want to do, but it's on your site. It's not outside of your dealership.
Is that another category that you... It would be good to make it public and what about privacy
laws and things like that? Totally. So if a customer comes to you and says,
oh, I have the following problem, what should I do? I'm here with this issue and you help that
customer. Then the model says, oh, wow, that's a human story that's authentic. It's novel because
I've never seen this kind of issue and Sanjeev helped them. So now I will learn this, that this
approach. So your own data, especially the interaction with a customer, are valuable. Now you
ask, what's about privacy? Well, you have to tell your customers that you're using it. Now you could
try to de-anonymize data. It's a very tricky thing to do. So I always would anonymize and ask
just to be on the safe side. There is another important part for you once you use your data,
is how you package it up. So the best way you package is up, package up your content is actually
in a Q&A format because the tool is doing auto-completion. If somebody asks,
how many wheels does a car have? It's a stupid example, but just to be very clear,
if some human asks, how many wheels does a car have? And the model has two possible
areas. One is read the sentence, the car has four wheels, and then think about it,
I should answer four. That's a cognitive load for model costs money. Or it has exactly the question,
how many wheels does a car have? And it says four. It's not a cognitive load for the model,
just picks up and says four. So the model will tend to go to what is the released
cognitive load, very much like humans. Meaning for the dealer, having this information,
try to use your customer information, try to what you have, the more it's your own data,
the better it is. Do not use SLOP, AI-generated data, and package it up in Q&A because that
is what the model will use most. Q&A format, human-generated, ideally based on your own customer.
Yeah, that is very, very interesting. By the way, you can use AI tools to help you. For example,
you take your newsletter, which you send out, like easy thing. You have sent out newsletters since
out of this newsletter, Q&As, and put this on your website. Very straightforward, very feasible to do.
And boom, you have your first authentic novel content on your website, and hopefully it's
getting picked up. The content is not created by the AI tool. It's just helping you organize
your authentic content. Got it. That's wonderful. Do not create it otherwise. It will harm you.
Now, second bucket is there is authentic content about you out there in the world, right? You did
not have control about what people said at the local hangout about your brand. You loved it when
people talked about you, but you did not have control. And in the internet, we didn't have
control, neither. So we have Kelly Blue Book. We have Google's ranking sites. We have different
advisory sites all around how good are we. We have Reddit. We have LinkedIn. We have many social
networks where people talk. We have TikTok. All of those are things where people talk about your
brand. And that is mostly authentic, right? Reddit as a typical site, they are so authentic
that their data for the models are extremely valuable. And everybody realized it and sends
now AI bots to it. So Reddit actually at one point in time says, you know what, we will probably do
a video check before somebody is allowed to post. So like you write something you want to
post, your camera goes on and says, wave at me. Show me that you're a real human, right?
So because it's so valuable what these guys do, meaning there is interaction you consumers
have. Foster them. That is, it sounds like an SEO discussion because there was already
an important one for SEO, but for GEO this becomes even more important. Now the important part is
the models are focused on novel information, right? If you wrote your newsletter about the new arrival
of the van, whatever type it is. And that's about a month ago. The model knows many people wrote
about the van. It's a month old. If you have a video from somebody who is sitting in that van,
and it's from yesterday, the model will tend to say, let me rather use novel information
because most people do not like stale information. Okay, so let me just press you on
one particular point. I think you've answered the question, but I just want to be clear about this.
So on the third party sites, there's not your own website as a dealership. I'm a dealership.
I've got my own website. Now these are third party sites, maybe Reddit, maybe others. And then
somehow the search engines or whether it's Claude or any of these other things, OpenAI,
the way it searches, it will look for recency, it'll look for novelty, authentic,
but it'll also look for sites that it considers to be powerful and authentic.
Okay. And the content in those sites though, I'm just trying to be clear. If a customer,
if Lutz writes something about Sanjeev's dealership, or if Sanjeev writes something about Sanjeev's
dealership, they're both equivalent or is Lutz writing about Sanjeev's dealership more powerful
than myself writing about my own dealership? The answer will surprise you. Lutz is more powerful,
but not because Lutz is inherently more powerful. It is because you Sanjeev and you write about your
own dealership, you're limited by your own imagination. You will write about what you think
your dealership should do and why you're good. And you sit down and you write this up and you're
done after a day because that's how you run your business. And I come in and I say,
by the way, I really like the tulips. This is such a nice area and you like, wait, what's tulips?
What the heck are you talking? Oh, the tulips out there. Oh, okay. Yeah, I never paid attention.
It's like, yeah, but they drew me in. This is Lutz as an outside entity and it will give you a
different spin that makes it authentic, novel. Nobody ever talked about my tulips here,
right? So that is why Lutz is more powerful. Okay, got it. So this is the second and a really
powerful bucket. Let's talk about the third one. So the third one is about the structure for overall
content. You as a dealer, you have ever changing prices and cars and inventory. Bucket one and
up-to-date information you have. At the moment, where do I get the pricing information? I said it
as I came to the US, I scraped all the dealerships. I could have as well went to Kali Blue Book,
right, to see it, whatever the dealer placed there, right? If you are a model, you want to know
where is the best information? Because a customer will ask something, where do I get
the Ford with aircon, seed heating for lower than, I don't know, $25,000. The customer might ask this,
then the model will need not to figure out, the customer didn't say, I want the coolest friendliest
guy, which obviously will be Sanjeev. No, but the model, like the customer asked a very specific
question in order to get to a negotiation point. That means the computer will now check who offers
the car. And that means Sanjeev's website needs to be able to talk back to the model
and has to be able to do this every day. And that is a technical shift for the website.
There is an underlying protocol for agent-to-agent communication. It's called MCP.
So what the website should be able to do is saying, hey, I'm the website from Sanjeev.
Dear OpenAI, dear Antropic, ask me any question. I'm happy to answer to you.
Because now the website comes, like Antropic gets asked a question and Antropic goes around and says,
I'm here to search for a cheap car. The website should answer, this is the car I have currently
at that price. Antropic says, cool. Now, no, I know it. I go back to my user and tell them
that Sanjeev has a car. So we have two rep, a reputational buckets. And the third one is a
structural bucket. How do you communicate? That is not taking a newsletter and pulled it out.
That is take your current pricing and current inventory and make sure a model knows up to date.
Because for the model, it would be very annoying when the model says, go to Sanjeev.
You want to forward, go to Sanjeev. And then you go to Sanjeev and Sanjeev said, yeah, well,
currently I don't have any. Then people made the trip and said, I'm not going to ask Antropic again.
This has been just an amazing conversation because it is such a pertinent conversation
going from SEO to GEO. There are more people searching with GEO right now. So if I had to
summarize the three insights, it would be, for me, there's an internal, what do you do in the
dealership? External, what do you do in places outside of the dealership? And the third one,
for me, is giving some context to what it means to be authentic. So when you think about within
the dealership, it breaks up into two pieces. There's a reputational piece. And then there is a
simply the way in which your website is constructed to give information.
And the insight for a dealership for your internal pieces, SEO is incredibly important.
It'll continue to be incredibly important. You have to be good at it. However, there's a lot
that goes on in your dealership that is not readable. It is not public and it cannot be picked up
by some of these AI tools. You need to make that public and there are ways to do it. The important
thing that you need to understand is the nature of what is put together. You cannot have AI tools
generating the content. It should be authentic content that is generated within the dealership.
It could be communication with customers. It could be description of the cars. It could be
description of the dealership, but it has to be authentic. Also, your website has to be made in
such a way. It's a technical thing, but it should be made so that it will talk to the AI agents all
the time. If they're looking for a car, price, looking for facts, it should be able
to communicate it directly to the GEO agents. That's the first bucket. It's a change from what we
did previously. The second is external. There are external sites and some are more reputable than
others. The AI agents will go to the most reputable sites and it will look for content.
Now, the content can come from the dealership itself. The content can come from customers.
The combination is important. The more customers talk about you, the more it is going to show up.
If the dealership puts content, it again should be really authentic, unique, etc., so that the AI
tools are picking it up and it will show it when a customer is searching for your vehicles and for
your dealership. The third bucket that it is applicable to the first two, but I've broken
it out to be the third, is to be really clear that the content has to be three things. It has to be
unique. It has to be novel. It has to be authentic. If every dealership simply says, I look after
customers, it's not unique. Every single dealership is saying the same thing. I love some of the things
that Lutz, you were talking about, which is dealers have to use their imagination. You've
got to try to become unique. Think about unique material that is true to your dealership, that
other dealerships are not just going to mimic those words. In the example that we used here,
you said, complete the sentence, life is like a box off. If everyone says chocolate, the answer is
going to be chocolate. If every dealership says, I am the best at customer service, it's not going
to differentiate them. You have to use your imagination to bring those things to life in the
first two buckets. So those are my three insights from this conversation. Lutz, it's been such a
pleasure speaking with you. I know the dealerships will have gotten a lot out of this, but for now,
thank you for your time. You're amazing. What an amazing background. Thanks to everybody out there.
Good luck on their journey. Thank you. The dealers who win turn insights into action.
Now's the time to take the lead. This has been three key insights with Sanjeev Yajak. We'll
see you next time. Views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are solely their own
and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Capital One Auto, Capital
One NA or its affiliates. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only
and is not intended to serve as financial, legal, tax or business advice. Viewers should consult
their own independent professionals regarding their specific individual or business needs.
About this episode
Sanjeev Yajnik welcomes AI technologist Loot’s finger to unpack how AI search is reshaping dealership discovery. The conversation contrasts SEO with generative search optimization (GEO), showing how people search differently and how chatbots and new algorithms change planning and recommendations. A data scientist shares a story of scraping dealer sites to choose and buy quickly. The episode then pivots to practical dealer steps: make interactions public, rely on contextual, authentic content, anonymize data, and structure it in Q&A so AI agents can answer with current pricing and inventory.
Original notes
Sanjiv and Lutz discuss how authenticity, thinking creatively and the tulips outside your dealership plant the right seeds to grow your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) performance.
Lutz Finger is an AI and data science leader with over 20 years of experience building real-world products at Google, LinkedIn and Snap. He currently teaches at Cornell University, focusing on how AI can improve decision-making and the customer experience.
ABOUT THREE KEY INSIGHTS The auto industry is being reimagined in real time. To win in today’s landscape, dealers need actionable insights and high-performance tools to take the lead. Hosted by the President of Capital One Auto, Sanjiv Yajnik, this series convenes elite dealers and industry innovators to decode the shifts shaping the future. Known for his "Customer-first" philosophy, Sanjiv’s perspective is rooted in the belief that when dealers succeed, the entire industry thrives. His conversations prioritize transparency, pulling back the curtain on the backend infrastructure that powers modern customer confidence. Now’s the time to take the lead.
The views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Capital One Auto, Capital One, N.A., or its affiliates. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to serve as financial, legal, or tax advice. Viewers should consult their own independent professionals regarding their specific individual or business needs.
CONNECT WITH SANJIV YAJNIK LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjivyajnik/ X: https://x.com/sanjiv_yajnik
Three Key Insights with Sanjiv Yajnik
Capital One
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