Data Study: What Factors Help GM Dealers Get Cited By LLMs?

Ask an AI tool where to buy a new Silverado, Sierra or Escalade, and the answer usually names one or two dealers. The question for your store is simple: are you in that answer?

We studied 4,846 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac dealer websites in the US to find out. The most-cited dealers have one thing in common. They already rank in Google.

We measured how often Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT cite each dealer. Then we compared those citations with 25 things about each website.

Methodology

• Sample: GM's dealer locator listed 4,968 US Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac rooftops on Oct. 19, 2026. We followed each website to its live address and treated each website as one dealer, with the brands it sells. We removed rooftops with no website and sites with no ranking keywords whose live address we couldn't confirm. That left 4,846 websites.

• Data source: Ahrefs, October 2026.

• AI citations: US Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT links to each site, drawn from the searches and questions Ahrefs tracks. Compare patterns, not exact totals.

• Site factors: 25 measures, including ranking keywords by position, organic traffic, Domain Rating, backlinks, internal links and paid search. These match our Ford study except one: internal links replace pages earning search traffic.

• Statistic: Spearman correlation, scored from -1 to 1. All 25 factors were positive. Rough guide: 0.7 and up is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 is moderate, and below 0.4 is weak.

Finding #1: Two in Three Dealers Appear. A Few Own the Results.

66% of GM dealer sites were cited at least once by AI Overviews. But the citations are not spread evenly. The top 10% of sites hold 73% of all AI Overview citations. The top 5% hold 55%.

67% of dealers have 10 or fewer citations, and 34% have none. The typical (median) dealer has two citations. The average is 35, pulled up by the stores at the top.

GM dealers show up less often than Ford dealers, and the citations are more concentrated at the top. Part of the reason is structural: many GM rooftops run a separate website for each brand, and the second site rarely gets cited. We cover that in a separate post.

What this means for you: Being present is not the same as being chosen. A third of GM dealer websites aren't cited at all, and a small group of stores takes most of the attention.

Finding #2: Great SEO = Great GEO

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting cited in AI answers. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the work of ranking in Google. For GM dealers, they are close to the same thing.

Backlinks scored 0.38 against AI Overviews. Internal links, the new factor in this study, scored 0.42. Links matter a little. Where your pages rank matters a lot more.

The pattern matches Ford almost exactly, where total ranking keywords scored 0.88 and Domain Rating scored 0.42.

Ranking keywords drew the clearest line. Every GM store that ranks for 150 or more searches is cited in AI Overviews. All 726 of them.

The typical GM website ranks for 31 searches. That puts most stores in the zone where citations are possible but thin.

What this means for you: The work that wins in AI search is the work that wins in Google: page-one rankings for the searches your shoppers type. If your site ranks for fewer than 50 searches, that's a clear place to start.

Finding #3: ChatGPT Is Pickier – but Points the Same Way

47% of GM dealers were cited by ChatGPT at least once, compared with 55% of Ford dealers. The typical GM store has no ChatGPT citations, and only two dealers in the network reached 50.

The same factors lead. Organic traffic scored 0.54, total ranking keywords 0.51, and page-one rankings 0.50. Domain Rating scored 0.38. These are moderate relationships, and the data is thin: 73% of dealers have zero or one ChatGPT citation.

What this means for you: ChatGPT is harder to win, but it rewards the same thing Google does. You don't need a separate plan for it.

Finding #4: What We Saw With Our Own Dealers

Of the 4,846 dealers, 30 (under 1%) are current Honest Digital SEO clients.

One of the 25 most-cited GM dealers is a current client.

Across AI Overviews and ChatGPT together, the typical client has 114 citations. The typical dealer has four.

Across six engines (adding Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot), the typical client has 175 citations, and the typical dealer has eight. 19 of our 30 clients were cited by all six engines, compared with about one in four dealers overall.

Two clients have no AI Overview citations yet. Both started with us in the last four months.

One caution: clients chose to invest in search, and many were strong before they hired us. This comparison shows where they stand today, not what caused it.

What We Are Not Claiming

A few limits, stated plainly.

• Correlation, not a controlled test. Rankings and citations may both come from the same thing: a useful, well-built site.

• AI results move. This is a snapshot from October 2026.

• ChatGPT data is thin. Most dealers have zero or one ChatGPT citation.

• Link data is crowded. Dealer website platforms and manufacturer networks flatten the differences between dealers' links.

• One website, one dealer. Rooftops that run two or three brand websites count once per website.

• The field is young. Measurement tools are improving, and nobody has this fully solved, including us.

The through-line holds. The GM stores AI recommends are overwhelmingly the ones that already rank.

Where This Leaves Your Store

The advice is familiar, and that's good news. Build strong search fundamentals. Earn page-one rankings for the searches that lead to sales: your models, your city, lease, finance and service. Keep your business information consistent everywhere it appears. And count the searches your site ranks for. Fifty is a useful first target, and 150 is where every GM store we studied was cited.

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: All 25 Site Factors

Sorted by AI Overviews correlation.