Research · Car dealerships
Which cities' car dealership websites turn automated visitors away most? 57 US metros ranked
By Cloute · Published October 2, 2026
The short answer
Cloute tested 2,915 car dealership websites in October 2026 and ranked 57 US metros by the share that answered a plain automated request with a block or a bot challenge. Detroit, MI was highest at 62.7% and New York, NY lowest at 6%, against 29.5% overall. AI fetchers are automated clients too, so this is the share of dealers in each market at risk of being unreadable to the engines buyers ask.
Detroit, MI: the highest share of dealer sites refusing an automated request
New York, NY: the lowest
across all 2,915 dealer sites
The ranking
| Rank | Metro | Dealer sites tested | Refused or challenged | Dental sites in the same metro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Detroit, MI | 51 | 62.7% | 0% |
| 2 | Raleigh, NC | 51 | 52.9% | 4.1% |
| 3 | Omaha, NE | 55 | 50.9% | 4.4% |
| 4 | Kansas City, MO | 54 | 50% | 3.8% |
| 5 | Providence, RI | 49 | 49% | 5.3% |
| 6 | Provo, UT | 47 | 48.9% | 0% |
| 7 | St. Louis, MO | 51 | 47.1% | 6.5% |
| 8 | Sacramento, CA | 49 | 44.9% | 0% |
| 9 | Baltimore, MD | 46 | 41.3% | 3.6% |
| 10 | San Jose, CA | 55 | 40% | 3.5% |
| 11 | Phoenix, AZ | 56 | 39.3% | 0% |
| 12 | Virginia Beach, VA | 56 | 39.3% | 3.7% |
| 13 | Richmond, VA | 52 | 38.5% | 8% |
| 14 | Las Vegas, NV | 51 | 37.3% | 0% |
| 15 | Oklahoma City, OK | 49 | 36.7% | 5.9% |
| 16 | Seattle, WA | 53 | 35.8% | 3.4% |
| 17 | Tampa, FL | 50 | 34% | 3.3% |
| 18 | Boston, MA | 54 | 33.3% | 6% |
| 19 | St. George, UT | 36 | 33.3% | 0% |
| 20 | Boise, ID | 55 | 32.7% | 3.5% |
| 21 | Buffalo, NY | 43 | 32.6% | 0% |
| 22 | Riverside, CA | 52 | 30.8% | 0% |
| 23 | Miami, FL | 53 | 30.2% | 3.4% |
| 24 | Pittsburgh, PA | 53 | 30.2% | 4.2% |
| 25 | Hartford, CT | 55 | 29.1% | 8.7% |
| 26 | Jacksonville, FL | 53 | 28.3% | 2.1% |
| 27 | Louisville, KY | 53 | 28.3% | 6.1% |
| 28 | Houston, TX | 57 | 28.1% | 1.9% |
| 29 | Portland, OR | 57 | 28.1% | 1.9% |
| 30 | Philadelphia, PA | 50 | 28% | 3.7% |
| 31 | Charlotte, NC | 48 | 27.1% | 12.7% |
| 32 | Austin, TX | 52 | 26.9% | 0% |
| 33 | Tulsa, OK | 52 | 26.9% | 7.5% |
| 34 | Cleveland, OH | 50 | 26% | 0% |
| 35 | Los Angeles, CA | 55 | 25.5% | 3.6% |
| 36 | San Diego, CA | 51 | 25.5% | 0% |
| 37 | Minneapolis, MN | 53 | 24.5% | 0% |
| 38 | Cincinnati, OH | 54 | 24.1% | 5.7% |
| 39 | Memphis, TN | 55 | 23.6% | 8.9% |
| 40 | Ogden, UT | 43 | 23.3% | 2% |
| 41 | Nashville, TN | 48 | 22.9% | 1.7% |
| 42 | Birmingham, AL | 49 | 22.4% | 2% |
| 43 | Albuquerque, NM | 49 | 22.4% | 0% |
| 44 | Milwaukee, WI | 54 | 22.2% | 3.8% |
| 45 | San Antonio, TX | 51 | 21.6% | 3.9% |
| 46 | Salt Lake City, UT | 55 | 20% | 0% |
| 47 | Denver, CO | 52 | 19.2% | 2% |
| 48 | Washington, DC | 43 | 18.6% | 9.1% |
| 49 | New Orleans, LA | 43 | 18.6% | 7.4% |
| 50 | Dallas, TX | 55 | 18.2% | 1.7% |
| 51 | Orlando, FL | 49 | 14.3% | 1.9% |
| 52 | Columbus, OH | 50 | 14% | 5.4% |
| 53 | Chicago, IL | 56 | 12.5% | 5.8% |
| 54 | San Francisco, CA | 42 | 11.9% | 5% |
| 55 | Atlanta, GA | 54 | 11.1% | 3.6% |
| 56 | Indianapolis, IN | 52 | 9.6% | 2.4% |
| 57 | New York, NY | 50 | 6% | 0% |
What explains the spread
- It is not robots.txt. Only 0.3% of dealer sites block an AI search crawler there, in any metro.
- It is mostly who runs the website. Dealers named for a manufacturer brand refused 14.6% of the time, and all other dealers, mostly independent and used car stores, 39.7%. Metros with more independent dealers in the sample tend to rank higher (correlation 0.47).
- Dental practice websites in the same cities refused the same request 3.4% of the time overall and never more than 13% in any one metro, so this is a dealer website pattern, not a regional one.
Why it matters
Across 64,441 AI answers about local businesses, engines named a business 84% of the time when they had opened one of its own pages while answering, and 16% when they had not. A dealership whose site turns the engine away gives up that advantage.
How this was measured
Each site's homepage was requested once in October 2026, identifying as an ordinary web browser, without running JavaScript. We never sent a request pretending to be an AI crawler, so these figures describe how a site treats automated clients in general. Sites were collected from Google Maps listings for car dealerships, one site per domain.
Read next
Every metro's own page The same study by brand The full study: 2,915 dealership websites Dealers, hotels and dental practices comparedQuestions people ask
Which city's dealership websites block automated visitors most?
Of the 57 metros tested, Detroit, MI: 32 of 51 dealer sites (62.7%) answered a plain automated request with a block or a bot challenge.
Does this mean ChatGPT cannot read those dealers' websites?
Not necessarily. We did not pretend to be an AI crawler, and some firewalls let verified AI crawlers through while challenging other automated clients. It means the dealer should check how its firewall treats them.
Can I use this data?
Yes. It is free to cite with a link, and the underlying data is open under CC BY 4.0 in Cloute's GitHub repository.
How to cite this research
Cloute (October 2026). Dealer websites and AI by city: 57 US metros ranked. https://cloute.ai/research/dealer-websites-by-metro
The underlying data is open under CC BY 4.0: github.com/luked9/cloute-ai-visibility-research.
About Cloute. Cloute is an AI visibility company for local businesses. It measures how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend a business against its local competitors, and works every month to move it to the top.