AEO and GEO for car dealers

Do car buyers trust AI recommendations? What the surveys say

By Michael Garber, Co-founder, AutoLander · Updated November 3, 2026

Short answer

Car buyers trust AI recommendations, with a check. In a Cars.com survey released November 20, 2025, 71% of respondents said they have at least a moderate amount of trust in AI tools for vehicle information, while 63% of shoppers worried those tools could recommend cars in a biased way, and BrightLocal found 97% of AI users sometimes double-check AI recommendations against real reviews. For a dealership, an AI mention sends the buyer to your reviews and your vehicle pages, so both have to hold up.

Do car buyers trust AI recommendations?

Car buyers mostly trust AI recommendations, with checks. In a Cars.com survey released November 20, 2025, 71% of respondents said they have at least a moderate amount of trust in AI tools to give unbiased, accurate vehicle information, yet 63% of shoppers worried AI might recommend cars in a biased way. Trust and doubt sit side by side.

BrightLocal’s follow-up analysis of its 2026 consumer survey found the same pattern for local businesses in general: 63% of active AI users trust AI tools’ recommendations, and 97% of AI users sometimes double-check them against real reviews. The Cars.com figures are about AI tools for car shopping; BrightLocal’s cover local businesses of every kind.

Use is already broad. The same Cars.com release says 44% of the consumers it surveyed used AI-powered car search tools on marketplaces such as Cars.com, and among AI users, 97% say AI will impact their purchase decisions. For the wider picture, see our look at car buyers and AI, and our AI visibility scan for car dealers shows what ChatGPT and Claude tell those buyers about your store.

What do buyers do after an AI recommendation?

After an AI recommendation, most AI users keep researching. Cars.com found 59% of AI users treat AI as a starting point for further research, while 30% find it gives a satisfactory final answer. BrightLocal found 97% of AI users sometimes double-check AI recommendations against real reviews, so your reviews and pages get the next look.

Picture the path. A buyer asks an assistant for the best dealer near them for a used truck and gets a short list with a line or two about each store; how AI answers best dealer near me walks through how that list gets built. Then the buyer opens reviews, the website and the inventory for the names on it. The recommendation opens the door, and your own pages decide whether the buyer walks through it.

That is the practical takeaway for a store. An AI mention is worth little if the buyer who checks finds three months of silence in your reviews, a price that differs from what the assistant said, or hours that do not match.

Why do buyers worry about AI bias and mistakes?

Buyers have reason to worry about AI bias and mistakes, and the AI companies say so themselves. OpenAI says ChatGPT search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or incorrect, and Google tells searchers that AI Overviews can and will make mistakes. Add Cars.com’s finding that 63% of shoppers worry about biased car recommendations, and double-checking looks sensible.

On paid influence, OpenAI’s advertising principles say “Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.” How any assistant chooses its sources is still mostly out of view; OpenAI’s help page says ChatGPT ranks search results using multiple factors meant to find relevant, reliable information.

Mistakes about your own store are the part you can act on. If an assistant has your hours, address or status wrong, the buyer who double-checks finds the conflict, and the fix happens at the source; see fixing wrong AI answers about your store.

What do the surveys say, side by side?

The surveys agree on the shape of trust: buyers use AI, mostly trust it and check it against reviews and other sources. Each figure below keeps its own base, because the studies asked different people different questions, and none of them should be merged into one number.

Study	Who the figure covers	Finding
Cars.com, released Nov 20, 2025	Survey respondents	71% have at least a moderate amount of trust in AI tools to give unbiased, accurate vehicle information
Cars.com, released Nov 20, 2025	Shoppers surveyed	63% worry AI tools might recommend cars in a biased way
Cars.com, released Nov 20, 2025	AI users	59% treat AI as a starting point for further research; 30% find it gives a satisfactory final answer
BrightLocal AI trust analysis, Mar 10, 2026	Active AI users	63% trust AI tools’ recommendations
BrightLocal AI trust analysis, Mar 10, 2026	AI users	97% sometimes double-check AI recommendations against real reviews
BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026	1,002 US adults	74% look for reviews from the last three months; 89% expect owners to respond
Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey, Jan 13, 2026	Mostly-digital buyers who engaged AI assistants	84% were highly satisfied with the overall buying process
CarGurus 2025 consumer study	3,030 people who bought or sold a vehicle in the past four months	Summarizing dealership reviews (36%) was among the most wanted AI uses

Sources and links are listed at the end of this article.

Are AI-assisted buyers happier with the purchase?

In Cox Automotive’s research, many buyers who used AI assistants report high satisfaction. Cox’s 2025 Car Buyer Journey study found “84% of mostly-digital buyers who engaged AI assistants were highly satisfied” with the overall buying process, and 59% of respondents reported high satisfaction with AI-powered assistance itself.

Cox also found buyers named real-time answers, personalized recommendations and interactive quizzes as the top benefits of AI. Read the figures for what they are: satisfaction reported by people who used AI along the way. They do not show that AI caused the satisfaction, and they say nothing about a particular dealership.

For a store, the useful point is simpler. Real-time answers were one of the benefits buyers named, and a dealership can give real-time answers of its own through clear vehicle pages, current reviews and a sales team that gets back to people quickly.

What does the double-check mean for a dealership?

The double-check means an AI mention is only the first step: the buyer then reads your reviews, your replies and your vehicle pages to confirm what the assistant said. BrightLocal found 74% of consumers look for reviews from the last three months and 89% expect owners to respond, so stale or unanswered reviews weaken the recommendation.

Recent reviews. Send the same neutral request to every sold and service customer every month, so the last three months always hold something to read (BrightLocal’s 2026 survey).
Answered reviews. Reply to each one by name, promptly and without promotion, as Google’s review tips ask.
Summaries that reflect the store. BrightLocal found 82% of consumers read AI-generated review summaries, and those summaries are built from what your customers wrote.
Vehicle pages that agree with the answer. If an assistant describes a car at one price and your page shows another, the buyer has reason to doubt both.
The same store facts everywhere: name, address, phone and hours on your website, your Business Profile and your listings.

What should your store make easy to verify?

Make every fact a buyer might check easy to find in plain text: the price, the mileage, the VIN, your fees, your hours, your replies to reviews and who to contact. When a buyer double-checks an AI answer, each of these should confirm it within a click or two, on your own site and your profiles.

Price as text on every vehicle page, matching what your listings show; our vehicle page guide covers how to set that up.
Mileage and the full VIN as text, next to the price.
Fees stated plainly: your documentation fee and any add-ons, so the number a buyer hears later matches the one they read.
Hours by department, the same on your site and your Business Profile.
Replies to your reviews, which show how the store handles problems.
A named contact for each kind of question: a specific car, a trade-in, financing and service.
Sold units marked sold or removed quickly, so buyers stop finding cars you no longer have.

Sources

Every number and claim in this article comes from these pages, read on September 30, 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Which AI assistants do US adults use most?

ChatGPT leads by a wide margin. Pew Research Center’s February 2026 survey found 44% of US adults use ChatGPT, 24% Gemini, 17% Copilot, 14% Meta AI, 8% Grok and 6% Claude. Car shoppers may differ, so ask your own buyers which one they used.

Do buyers who use AI still want to visit the dealership?

Most do. Cox Automotive’s 2025 buyer study found 53% of buyers completed every step at the dealership and 63% said the ideal experience mixes online and in-person steps. Cox says shoppers use AI to arrive prepared, and the visit is still part of their plan.

Should salespeople ask buyers whether they used AI?

It is worth adding to your intake questions. Knowing which assistant a buyer used and what it said shows which sources shape your market, and it gives the salesperson a chance to correct anything the answer got wrong.

Should a dealer worry about AI mistakes about their store?

Worry less and check more. Google says AI Overviews can and will make mistakes, and OpenAI says ChatGPT search results can be outdated or incorrect. Ask the questions your buyers ask, open the sources behind each answer and fix any wrong fact at the source. The free scan does this for ChatGPT and Claude, and it does not measure Google’s AI Overviews.

See what AI tells buyers before they check

The free scan asks ChatGPT and Claude up to 20 local buyer questions, 3 times each, and shows who they name, what they cite and the 3 fixes to make first. A person checks it and walks you through it in 20 minutes.

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