AI Always Names Anderson First.
River Rat Motorsports scored 27 out of 30 — the highest result we've published, and not the good news it sounds like. Across ten prompts on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, this two-store Arizona powersports dealer was named in nine of ten questions, with both addresses and phone numbers correct every time. Then you read what the engines actually said. In all nine answers where a competitor appeared, Anderson Powersports was named first and described with model names, while River Rat got "and others." One engine merged the two dealers into a single entry. Another sent a Laughlin buyer 45 miles past the closest store. ChatGPT queried the Mahindra dealer locator for Mohave County and returned a tractor dealer 200 miles away, missing both River Rat locations. And the same dealership came back at 2.3, 3.5, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4 and 4.8 stars depending on which aggregator the engine happened to read. Being findable and being preferred are different problems. Here's the fifth failure mode we've documented, with every transcript published unedited.
Powersports Buyers vs. Car Buyers: How the Digital Journey Is Different
If you've ever tried applying an automotive digital marketing playbook to a powersports dealership, you already know something doesn't fit. The buyers behave differently, the timeline is longer and more emotional, and the research process looks nothing like car shopping. Powersports is its own world — and the dealers that treat it like a subset of the car business consistently leave money on the table. In this post, we break down exactly how the powersports digital buyer journey differs from automotive, and what dealers need to do differently to meet their buyers where they actually are.