For the second consecutive year, almost all of the websites for North America’s largest automotive dealership groups are failing to meet Google’s critical performance benchmarks. This is creating a poor online experience for customers and directly wasting millions in advertising dollars. A new study by Overfuel, a dealership website solutions provider, reveals that less than one percent of top dealership websites passed Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) assessment.
The study analyzed 1,910 retail-focused websites from the Top 50 dealership groups in North America, as ranked by Automotive News. The findings were stark: only 0.4 percent, or just seven websites, passed Core Web Vitals on both mobile and desktop. An overwhelming 99.6 percent of websites failed on at least one platform, with 95.5 percent failing across both. This marks a persistent and widespread issue, as the results are nearly identical to Overfuel’s 2024 report, which also found a pass rate of less than one percent.
“Two years in a row, the data reaffirms: dealerships have a massive opportunity to deliver the kind of online shopping experience customers actually want,” said Alex Griffis, President of Overfuel. “Shoppers are spending more time than ever researching vehicles online, and when sites are fast, stable, and easy to use, the results are clear—happier customers, stronger engagement, and more sales. The technology is here today, and the dealers who embrace it are already pulling ahead.”
Why Does Core Web Vitals Matter?
Core Web Vitals was created in 2020 as a set of metrics to measure the real-world user experience of a webpage, focusing on three key areas: loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint), interactivity (Interaction to Next Paint), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift). These metrics are crucial not only for user satisfaction but also for a website’s visibility in Google’s search results. Websites that fail these standards can face lower rankings, impacting organic traffic from Google Search, Maps, and emerging AI-generated results.
The consequences of poor website performance extend far beyond user frustration; they have a direct and measurable impact on a dealership’s bottom line. The report highlights findings from Shift Digital’s 2025 Digital Automotive Shopping Pulse Report, which calculated that dealerships with sites failing Core Web Vitals effectively waste $30 of every $100 spent on advertising. This “failure tax” means nearly a third of marketing budgets are squandered by driving potential customers to slow, unstable, and unresponsive digital storefronts.
Overfuel’s research backs this up, showing that passing Core Web Vitals can increase a dealership’s organic website traffic by as much as 20 percent, while failing can lead to a comparable decrease. The issue is deeply rooted in outdated technology, with many dealership sites built on legacy platforms burdened by heavy code, an excess of third-party scripts, and poorly optimized inventory pages.
Some Dealerships Are Still Succeeding at SEO
Despite the industry-wide failure, the study does show examples of success, proving that high performance is achievable even with the complexities of OEM requirements and third-party tool integrations. Jay Wolfe Honda, a dealership using the Overfuel platform, stands out as one of the only ones in North America to pass Core Web Vitals on both mobile and desktop while running all its OEM-required plugins. The result has been a 29 percent increase in organic traffic and a noticeably better user experience.
“The difference is obvious when you use the site—or look at the numbers,” said Brian Mixon, General Manager of Jay Wolfe Honda. “Inventory loads fast, pages feel steady, and customers get where they want to go without fighting popups or delays. That’s translating into real traffic and real leads.”
How to Fix Bad Dealership Website Core Vitals
For dealerships looking to address these performance gaps, the report offers several actionable steps. The first is to use real-world user data from tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to benchmark performance, with a focus on high-traffic pages like Search Results Pages (SRPs) and Vehicle Detail Pages (VDPs). Other recommendations include optimizing images, deferring non-essential code, reserving space for ads and banners to prevent layout shifts, and establishing strict performance standards with all third-party vendors.
Digital retailing is a crucial part of any dealership’s marketing. Website performance is no longer a technical concern for the IT department but a fundamental business strategy. For all of the dealerships that are currently using old and outdated websites, addressing Core Web Vitals represents a significant, untapped opportunity to improve customer experience, boost marketing ROI, and gain a critical competitive advantage.
“There’s a myth that modern performance means stripping out the tools dealers rely on, said Griffis. “Not true. It’s about smarter implementation—prioritizing what the shopper needs first, then loading everything else in a way that doesn’t derail the experience.”
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