How Ford Dealers Show Up In LLMs: A State By State Study
Adriana Dikih
SEO/GEO Researcher
SEO
/
Where Ford Dealers Show Up in AI Search, State by State
In Maryland, 94% of Ford stores are cited in Google's AI Overviews. In South Dakota, it's 44%. That's a big gap for the same brand, the same cars, and the same LLMs.
In our Ford Dealership OEM Deep Dive, we found that the Ford stores LLMs cite are the ones that already rank in Google. But you don't compete with the whole country. You compete with the Ford stores in your market. So we broke the same data down by state.
The short version: the gap between states is real, but the state isn't the cause. The websites are.
Methodology
Sample: the same 2,710 Ford dealer websites from our OEM Deep Dive, grouped by the state listed in Ford's dealer locator on Oct. 12, 2026.
Data source: Ahrefs, October 2026. US AI Overviews and ChatGPT citations, plus pages earning search traffic for each site.
States ranked: the 36 states with at least 25 Ford stores. Smaller states have too few stores for a fair comparison. They appear at the bottom of the full table.
Measures: the share of stores cited at least once, the typical store's citations, the typical store's pages earning search traffic, and how much of a state's citations go to its top three stores.
Finding #1: Some States Show Up. Others Mostly Don't.
Ford stores on both coasts tend to show up in AI Overviews. Ford stores in the Upper Midwest and Plains often don't.
Texas deserves a mention. It has 218 Ford stores, more than any other state, and they earned 14,317 AI Overview citations. Even with that much competition, 89% of Texas stores are cited.
What this means for you: If you're in a low-visibility state, AI search is still wide open. In South Dakota, more than half of Ford stores aren't cited at all. The first store in a market to build out its website has room to stand out.
Finding #2: It's the Websites, Not the Map
It's tempting to blame geography. Smaller towns get fewer searches, so maybe AI just has less to say about them. That's part of it. But the bigger driver is the websites themselves.
In the nine least-visible states (where fewer than 70% of Ford stores are cited), 51% of Ford stores have fewer than 10 pages earning search traffic. In the seven most-visible states (where 88% or more are cited), only 21% do.
Now compare stores with the same size website:
For stores with small websites, location still matters. A thin site in a busy market does better than a thin site in a quiet one. But once a website has 20 or more pages earning search traffic, the state barely matters.
Across all 36 states, the typical store's page count lines up closely with how many of the state's stores get cited. The Spearman correlation is 0.77, which is strong.
What this means for you: You can't move your store to Maryland. You can add pages. A Ford store in a low-visibility state with 20 or more pages earning search traffic is cited at about the same rate as one in a high-visibility state.
Finding #3: In Some States, One Store Takes Most of the Credit
Some states spread AI citations across many Ford stores. Others hand most of them to one or two.
In Mississippi, the top store holds 51% of the state's citations, and the top three hold 79%. Compare that with North Carolina. Its top store holds 7% of the state's citations, and its top three hold 20%. Ohio is similar, at 9% and 23%.
The stores that lead their states have one thing in common. They rank for far more searches than their neighbors. The leading store in Mississippi ranks for about 940 searches. The typical Mississippi Ford store ranks for 36.
What this means for you: When one store owns a state, the other stores aren't splitting a small pie. They're missing most of it. If a competitor already holds that spot in your area, you know what you're up against and what it took to get there.
What We Are Not Claiming
A few limits, stated plainly.
Correlation, not a controlled test. Bigger websites and more citations go together. Market size and search demand also play a part.
We didn't measure search demand by market. Smaller markets have fewer searches, which likely explains part of the gap for stores with small websites.
AI results move. This is a snapshot from October 2026.
Small states are not ranked. With fewer than 25 Ford stores, one or two stores can swing a state's numbers.
Page counts are what Ahrefs sees. Pages earning search traffic means pages with at least one estimated monthly visit, not every page on the site.
The through-line holds. Where your store sits on the map matters less than how much of your website already ranks.
Where This Leaves Your Store
Look at your state in the table below, then look closer to home. Which Ford stores near you show up in AI answers, and how many pages on their sites earn search traffic? That's the bar to clear.
A Search-to-Sale Audit shows what shoppers find when they search for your store, your brand, and your models across Google, AI search, and local results.
Book a Search-to-Sale Audit
Appendix: Full State Rankings
States with at least 25 Ford stores, ranked by the share of stores cited in AI Overviews. States with fewer than 25 Ford stores are listed at the bottom, unranked.
Rank | State | Ford stores | Cited in AI Overviews | Cited in ChatGPT | Typical AI Overview citations | Typical pages earning traffic | Top 3 stores' share |
1 | Maryland | 33 | 94% | 76% | 16 | 34 | 45% |
2 | Washington | 36 | 92% | 61% | 14.5 | 26.5 | 50% |
3 | New Jersey | 50 | 90% | 64% | 11 | 22 | 33% |
4 | Texas | 218 | 89% | 60% | 13 | 23 | 32% |
5 | California | 138 | 88% | 72% | 21.5 | 28 | 34% |
6 | Oregon | 34 | 88% | 65% | 9 | 16.5 | 56% |
7 | Massachusetts | 42 | 88% | 67% | 6.5 | 19 | 53% |
8 | Virginia | 65 | 85% | 62% | 7 | 22 | 36% |
9 | Pennsylvania | 138 | 83% | 52% | 5 | 17 | 35% |
10 | Florida | 101 | 83% | 81% | 15 | 30 | 35% |
11 | Alabama | 46 | 83% | 67% | 3 | 14 | 55% |
12 | Illinois | 120 | 83% | 46% | 6.5 | 15 | 35% |
13 | Arizona | 34 | 82% | 65% | 13 | 22 | 51% |
14 | Indiana | 77 | 82% | 45% | 8 | 12 | 30% |
15 | Tennessee | 59 | 81% | 61% | 6 | 18 | 54% |
16 | Connecticut | 26 | 81% | 58% | 1.5 | 12.5 | 49% |
17 | New York | 103 | 80% | 56% | 4 | 17 | 36% |
18 | Kentucky | 43 | 79% | 58% | 5 | 18 | 44% |
19 | Ohio | 123 | 79% | 54% | 7 | 17 | 23% |
20 | Michigan | 120 | 78% | 54% | 8.5 | 17.5 | 46% |
21 | Georgia | 86 | 78% | 62% | 3 | 16 | 30% |
22 | West Virginia | 31 | 77% | 65% | 4 | 10 | 77% |
23 | Missouri | 84 | 76% | 51% | 5.5 | 12 | 38% |
24 | Colorado | 33 | 76% | 64% | 11 | 27 | 67% |
25 | North Carolina | 93 | 75% | 46% | 7 | 15 | 20% |
26 | South Carolina | 43 | 74% | 63% | 13 | 24 | 46% |
27 | Mississippi | 35 | 71% | 46% | 3 | 12 | 79% |
28 | Louisiana | 49 | 69% | 55% | 1 | 12 | 54% |
29 | Nebraska | 38 | 68% | 45% | 2 | 8 | 62% |
30 | Kansas | 47 | 68% | 43% | 2 | 11 | 46% |
31 | Arkansas | 43 | 65% | 47% | 4 | 9 | 61% |
32 | Wisconsin | 103 | 64% | 36% | 2 | 10 | 39% |
33 | Oklahoma | 55 | 64% | 45% | 1 | 9 | 46% |
34 | Minnesota | 72 | 58% | 43% | 1 | 9 | 68% |
35 | Iowa | 73 | 55% | 36% | 1 | 8 | 61% |
36 | South Dakota | 25 | 44% | 32% | 0 | 5 | 76% |
– | Alaska | 4 | 75% | 50% | 1.5 | 11 | 100% |
– | Delaware | 9 | 67% | 67% | 7 | 25 | 87% |
– | Hawaii | 6 | 83% | 67% | 9.5 | 22.5 | 92% |
– | Idaho | 18 | 61% | 56% | 4.5 | 11.5 | 81% |
– | Maine | 19 | 84% | 79% | 5 | 17 | 85% |
– | Montana | 23 | 74% | 43% | 3 | 8 | 84% |
– | Nevada | 10 | 70% | 70% | 9 | 32 | 93% |
– | New Hampshire | 19 | 74% | 74% | 27 | 28 | 49% |
– | New Mexico | 18 | 83% | 50% | 6 | 17.5 | 81% |
– | North Dakota | 18 | 50% | 33% | 0.5 | 6 | 61% |
– | Rhode Island | 3 | 100% | 100% | 10 | 18 | 100% |
– | Utah | 24 | 71% | 67% | 3 | 16 | 76% |
– | Vermont | 12 | 83% | 42% | 11.5 | 18.5 | 87% |
– | Wyoming | 11 | 91% | 18% | 5 | 11 | 61% |
