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Local SEO x website SEO
Posted by on January 9, 2026 at 5:30 amI'm helping an auto dealership with their SEO.
I've been writing a bunch of content about low competition long tail keywords, fixing technical errors, etc. etc. — all the normal things I should be doing to help my site's SEO.
My traffic is up and doing well… but for some reason, since I've started working with them, their GBP metrics are going down. I did all the usual steps — made sure their GBP was optimized, updated the category, updated the locations, etc. But the engagement is still dropping.
Is there a link I'm missing between the site content / keywords we rank on for SEO and local SEO?
What are some other things I can do to get their GBP metrics moving in the right direction?
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1 Reply
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How are you measuring engagement on the GBP profile?
Yes, there is a correlation between the terms you will rank for with your site and with GBP.
How is your review volume/frequency? Any signs of an AI Overview cropping up lately? When did the shift start to occur?
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GBP is predominantly affected by keywords in reviews and review velocity.
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What u/coalition_tech said. SEO (whether via GBP or website) tells a story, it’s not as straight forward as “Numbers went down = bad”.
The GBP stuff could be dropping off due to a lot of things like UX changes with more ads. They’re testing a new UX that makes LSAs almost indistinguishable from GBP listings. So if a heavy portion of your auto dealership gets traffic from any kind of repair, that’s a prime candidate for LSAs to be scooping up your clicks.
Additionally AI overviews are going to cause GBP traffic to drop as well.
I would suggest finding a tool that doesn’t just track your GBP via geogrid but also takes snap shots over AI overviews and recommendations to get a clearer picture.
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