SCANNED SEPTEMBER 18, 2026 · ALL REPORTS

Petrie Ford was never the answer to a single question we asked.

We ran 2 real shopper queries across 4 AI engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude. Every question was built from cars on your lot, in the market you serve — you were a correct answer to all of them. You were recommended in 0 of 6 answers. Your site scans 70/100, so whatever is keeping you out of these answers, it is not your website.

Fix this →See the evidence ↓

Free to get published. No card, no call.

RECOMMENDED IN 0 OF 6 ANSWERS
F21/100AI visibility

Your score weighs two things — one is fine, one is not.

70
Site readiness 70/100
AI can read your lot.
0
Presence in AI answers 0/100
No recommendation or citation credit recorded.
0 / 6
AI answers that recommend Petrie Ford
37
Vehicle pages on your site

WHAT WE COULD NOT READ

Not every engine answered every question.

6 of 8 engine checks returned an answer we could grade.

The gaps are missing checks, not results about you.

The evidence

What the engines actually answered

YOUR KINGSTON RANKING

Petrie Ford appeared in 5 of 36 Kingston buyer answers. #4 of 11 named dealerships.

We asked ChatGPT and Perplexity the questions Kingston buyers ask — monthly payments, cash budgets, where to buy — and counted every dealership named, you included, the same way. Across the whole Kingston area: 5 of 178 answers.

  1. Platinum Auto Sales5 of 36
  2. Central City Auto Sales4 of 36
  3. Victory Lane Auto Sales Ltd4 of 36
  4. Petrie Fordyou3 of 36
  5. 613 Auto Insiders3 of 36
  6. Ashie Motor Sales2 of 36

Name mentions among the local dealerships we track. The headline also counts answers that linked your site.

CASH BUDGETSGemini

“I'm paying cash for a used commuter car in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. What can I get for CAD $15,000?”

Petrie Ford appears alongside 613 Auto Insiders and BMW Kingston.

“Some dealerships in Kingston that have listed vehicles in this price range include 613 Auto Insiders, Petrie Ford, and BMW Kingston (though BMW listings under $15k often show older, higher mileage models or are quickly sold).”
Source cited: www.petrieford.com ↗
MONTHLY PAYMENTSChatGPT

“What's a good used car for commuting in Kingston, Ontario, Canada for under CAD $400 a month?”

Kingston Toyota appears. Petrie Ford does not.

“Local Dealerships: Kingston Toyota offers a range of used vehicles with transparent pricing.”
Source cited: www.kingston-toyota.com ↗

A dated sample of saved ChatGPT and Perplexity answers (September 30, 2026), not shopper traffic or a position inside an answer. See the full Kingston area findings ↗

WHAT WE ASKED

These are the 2 questions we put to all 4 engines.

Word for word, exactly as a shopper would type them. Every finding below comes from the answers to these, nothing else.

Research questions test documented policies before a dealer visit. Optional inventory questions use your scanned stock.

None of these questions use your dealership’s name. Asking an AI assistant about your store by name is a different test: it shows whether the assistant knows you, not whether it sends you a buyer who hasn’t picked a store yet.

The questions
  • “Where should I buy a used car in Kingston, Ontario?”
    BEFORE THE DEALER VISITA saved buyer or supporting research question; its wording does not establish your inventory, services or search demand
  • “What's a good used SUV under $25,000 in Kingston, Ontario?”
    BEFORE THE DEALER VISITA saved buyer or supporting research question; its wording does not establish your inventory, services or search demand
WHO THE ENGINES RECOMMENDED INSTEAD

Two marketplaces beat you on your own inventory.

All 2 of these questions were about cars sitting on your lot, in Kingston, the market you serve. You were a correct answer every time, and 6 of 6 went to someone else.

Being linked at the bottom of an answer is not the same as being the answer. Petrie Ford was the recommendation in none of the 6 answers we tested.

Who the engines pickedAnswers
CG
CarGurus.caMarketplace
e.g. “What's a good used SUV under $25,000 in Kingston, Ontario?”
2
CL
Clutch.caMarketplace
e.g. “What's a good used SUV under $25,000 in Kingston, Ontario?”
1
Everyone except you6
Petrie Ford (you)0

3 further answers went to no single source we could name, so they are not in the bars above.

WHERE THE CITATIONS SEND SHOPPERS

62 citations across those 6 answers. None send the shopper to you.

Every source an AI answer cites is a door the shopper can walk through. Here's where each of those 62 doors actually leads:

9
53
0land on your site9land on aggregators (AutoTrader, CarGurus…)53land somewhere else (competitors, media)
FOLLOW ONE: A REAL CITATION FROM YOUR ANSWERS
cargurus.ca/Cars/dealers-Kingston-L453434?utm_source=openai
cargurus.ca/Cars/dealers-Kingston-L453434?utm_source=openai
petrieford.com's car
RIVAL
RIVAL
YOUR CAR
RIVAL
RIVAL
RIVAL
RIVAL
RIVAL
Your one car, ringed by competitors on cargurus.ca

“Car dealerships near Kingston, ON - CarGurus.ca”: the shopper who clicks this citation lands on cargurus.ca's results page: every dealer's vehicles in the region, ranked and monetized by cargurus.ca, not Petrie Ford's. The engine did its job; the aggregator took the shopper. (Page above is an illustration; click it to see the real thing.)

THE PART THAT COSTS YOU
Your car is the bait. Their competitors are the catch.

A shopper searched for a vehicle Petrie Ford has. cargurus.ca earned the citation with your car, then wrapped it in a page of every rival dealer's inventory, ranked and monetized by cargurus.ca. The buyer you attracted is now one scroll from a dozen competitors, on a page that works for cargurus.ca and against you.

THE TEST EVERY SHOPPER RUNS NOW

We asked ChatGPT what buyers ask every day

“Where should I buy a used car in Kingston, Ontario?”
CHATGPT · REAL ANSWER
Here are some well-regarded options for purchasing a used car in Kingston, Ontario, along with key considerations to guide your decision:
Dealership Recommendations in Kingston (2026)
1. Autohouse Kingston
• Widely praised by locals for its friendly, knowledgeable staff, relaxed atmosphere, and smooth transactions. Many reviews note they've found “great deals on vehicles that are slightly used but might as well be brand new” and highlight excellent communication and after‑sale support ([loc8nearme.com](
• Multiple recommendations on Reddit emphasize the dealership’s strong reputation—particularly advice to “ask for Kyle Hollett” ([reddit.com](
2. MyCar Kingston
• Specializes in inspected, reconditioned used vehicles with an emphasis on transparency and customer service. Financing options are available for all credit situations, and they offer trade-in credit benefits, such as reducing the HST payable ([mycar.ca](
3. Franchise Dealerships (e.g., Kingston Honda, Kingston Dodge, Kingston Kia, Kingston Toyota, Subaru of Kingston)
• These dealerships offer Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) programs, often include manufacturer warranties, and generally enforce rigorous inspections ([threebestrated.ca](
…
loc8nearme.comreddit.com · answer pagemycar.cathreebestrated.cacargurus.ca · listing pagetrustpilot.com
ENGINE BY ENGINE
ChatGPT
Never picked you · 0 of 2
Gemini
Never picked you · 0 of 2
Perplexity
No answer recorded
Claude
Never picked you · 0 of 2
THE FULL TEST: EVERY QUERY, EVERY ENGINE
BEFORE THE DEALER VISIT · A saved buyer or supporting research question; its wording does not establish your inventory, services or search demand
“Where should I buy a used car in Kingston, Ontario?”
ChatGPTAbsentGeminiAbsentPerplexityNo answerClaudeAbsent
BEFORE THE DEALER VISIT · A saved buyer or supporting research question; its wording does not establish your inventory, services or search demand
“What's a good used SUV under $25,000 in Kingston, Ontario?”
ChatGPTAbsentGeminiAbsentPerplexityNo answerClaudeAbsent
Not one of the 6 answers cited Petrie Ford. We ran 2 shopper queries across 4 AI engines to get them.
THE QUESTIONS YOU’RE NOT ANSWERING

Your stock earns 3 research questions. Your site answers 3.

Shoppers put these questions to AI assistants before they know a year, make or model to search for — and each one is a question about Kingston. Engines retrieve pages; a site with no page shaped like the question has nothing to be retrieved for. Every question below is earned by cars we read on your own site, and every “answered” links the page of yours that proves it.

The fix

What we would do about it

THE FIX: HOW VIN INDEX WORKS

We make Petrie Ford the answer, and the click lands on you.

Aggregators win those queries because they publish thousands of structured, machine-readable pages. So do we, for your inventory. Here's the same question the aggregator just took from you, answered by a page you own:

petrieford.vinindex.ai/answers
petrieford.vinindex.ai/answers
VIN INDEX ANSWER · petrieford.vinindex.ai
“Where should I buy a used car in Kingston, Ontario?”

Petrie Ford has matching vehicles near Kingston, including a 2025 Ford escape, each on its own page built for AI to read, quote, and route the shopper to you.

2025 Ford escape
On your VIN Index page
YOUR LOT
The rest of your matching inventory
Every unit its own citable page
YOUR LOT
Every row is yours

PREVIEW: BUILT FROM YOUR REAL INVENTORY ONCE YOUR FEED IS CONNECTED

THE SYSTEM BEHIND IT

Not a one-time cleanup, but a system that keeps Petrie Ford in the answers as your inventory, and the questions shoppers ask, keep changing.

TRACKwhat shoppers ask
OPTIMIZEevery VIN
BUILDthe answer pages
DISTRIBUTEfeeds + agent tools
MEASUREwho got cited
…and repeat.
1We track the real questions, and who gets named

You just saw the first turn: we ran 2 live queries on Petrie Ford across the AI engines and watched whether you were named. Every gap becomes the next page we build: track, build, measure, build more, a loop that compounds your coverage.

CHATGPT · AI MODE · PERPLEXITY · GEMINI
2A page for every question they ask

For every question shoppers actually ask (“best used truck under $40k in Kingston”, “AWD SUV for winter”, “SUV that seats seven”, “financing with bad credit”), we build the page that answers it, stocked with your matching vehicles, real payment math, and eligibility rules. The generic searches no single listing can answer, answered by a page you own.

A PAGE PER SHOPPER QUESTION
3Every VIN published, not a sample

Your whole feed is rebuilt for AI: a fast page per vehicle that a crawler reads without running a line of JavaScript, carrying the full specs, market position, financing scenarios and an answer-first summary an engine can quote, refreshed within an hour of every inventory change.

EVERY VIN · ~1H FRESH
4We hand AI assistants a direct line to your inventory

Beyond pages, your live inventory is something AI assistants and shopping agents can query directly. When one goes looking for matching cars it checks your stock in real time and routes the shopper straight back to you, current and attributed to you.

A LIVE LINE TO YOUR STOCK
5We publish where shoppers already are

Syndication feeds push your vehicles into the ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google shopping tools on a rolling refresh, so you show up inside the assistants shoppers already use, not only when they happen to land on your site.

SYNDICATED · CHATGPT · COPILOT · GOOGLE
6Your lead, and the proof it's working

The shopper routes to your page and the lead lands in your inbox or CRM, never brokered, never shared with another dealer. And you get first-party proof: which engines named you, which agents pulled your inventory, which pages earned the visit.

FIRST-PARTY ATTRIBUTION
Fix this →Free to start, no card. You pick your plan at the last step.
Under the hood

Why it happens, and how to check us

WHY THIS HAPPENS

What shoppers see vs. what AI can read

screenshot unavailable
SHOPPERS SEE THIS
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
	<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang='en' lang='en'>
	<head>
		<title>Petrie Ford | Ford Dealership in Kingston</title>
<meta  http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<meta  name="geo.placename" content="&lt;html&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; class=&quot; __view_map&quot; &quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;  1388 Bath Road, Kingston, ON, K7M 4X6&lt;/a&gt;" />
<meta  http-equiv="content-language" content="en" />
<meta  http-equiv="Expires" content="-1" />
<meta  http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache;max-age=0"
AI READS THIS
STEP BY STEP

3 things standing between your inventory and AI answers

1Agentic capabilityAT RISK

There is no endpoint an assistant can query. An agent that wants to search your stock, pull a VIN, or check availability has no machine interface to call, only a webpage built for human eyes.

2llms.txt / sitemap / discoveryAT RISK

No sitemap listing your vehicle pages, and no llms.txt or agent-discovery files. AI agents have no machine-readable map to your inventory. A sitemap that enumerates every VDP is the cheapest, highest-leverage gap to fix.

3Content qualityAT RISK

Text is a website template dump with placeholder variables ($MODEL, $NAME, $EMAIL, etc.) and form code rather than actual vehicle descriptions. No specific individual vehicle details, VINs, actual mileage, or self-contained descriptive copy suitable for citation.

WHAT AN ASSISTANT CAN DO TODAY VS ON VIN INDEX
What an assistant can doYour siteVIN Index
Found
Search your inventory by criteria
Get a single vehicle by VIN
Real-time availability
Convert
Financing scenarios
Trade-in appraisal
Structured lead with attribution
Be discovered
Zero-setup discovery files
ChatGPT Shopping feed—
Copilot / UCP feed—
VIN Index adds every capability marked ✓ in its column automatically. A — means the capability is not externally detectable, we could not verify it from outside your site.
DON'T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT
B
AI Readiness: B · 70/100
Your site grades B. AI engines cited you in 0 of 6 answers.

Paste the prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and it will independently check the findings above against your live site.

For your website person

The six checks behind the grade, with the evidence for each. Hand this to whoever manages your website. Every finding is a provable fact about what an AI crawler received.

Agentic capability

Can AI do anything with your inventory?

Failing

There is no endpoint an assistant can query. An agent that wants to search your stock, pull a VIN, or check availability has no machine interface to call, only a webpage built for human eyes.

The fixVIN Index does this

VIN Index gives assistants a direct line to your stock, so one can search your inventory, pull a specific car and start a lead, not just read a page.

See the detail

What we checked

Whether an assistant has a machine interface to act, search your stock, pull a VIN, request financing, or submit a lead.

How we tested

We look for an agent endpoint (MCP / WebMCP) or structured action declarations exposed by your site.

What it means

Without one, an assistant can describe your cars but can’t do anything, so every buyer action dead-ends at a human form.

Search your inventory by criteria
None detected
Get a single vehicle by VIN
None detected
Real-time availability
None detected
Financing scenarios
None detected
Trade-in appraisal
None detected
Structured lead with attribution
None detected
Zero-setup discovery files
None detected
ChatGPT Shopping feed
Not externally detectable
Copilot / UCP feed
Not externally detectable

llms.txt / sitemap / discovery

Can AI discover you the modern way?

Failing

No sitemap listing your vehicle pages, and no llms.txt or agent-discovery files. AI agents have no machine-readable map to your inventory. A sitemap that enumerates every VDP is the cheapest, highest-leverage gap to fix.

The fixVIN Index does this

VIN Index hands agents a map straight to every vehicle you have, so they find the whole lot rather than whatever they stumble onto.

See the detail

What we checked

Whether you publish the discovery files agents look for, llms.txt, an agent card, and a sitemap that actually lists your vehicle pages.

How we tested

We fetch /llms.txt and agent-discovery files, and walk your sitemap to see whether it enumerates individual VDP URLs.

What it means

These conventions are emerging with no proven citation lift yet, but a sitemap that lists every VDP is how index crawlers find your whole lot.

/llms.txt
Not found
/.well-known/mcp.json
Not found
/.well-known/agent-card.json
Not found
/.well-known/ucp
Not found
<link rel="mcp-server">
Not found
<link rel="agent-card">
Not found
Sitemap lists vehicle pages
None found

Content quality

Is your vehicle text worth citing?

Failing

Text is a website template dump with placeholder variables ($MODEL, $NAME, $EMAIL, etc.) and form code rather than actual vehicle descriptions. No specific individual vehicle details, VINs, actual mileage, or self-contained descriptive copy suitable for citation.

The fixVIN Index does this

VIN Index gives each listing the condition detail and market context an assistant can lift straight into an answer.

See the detail

What we checked

Whether your visible vehicle descriptions are fact-dense and self-contained enough for an engine to quote.

How we tested

We score the visible inventory text for specific, complete, citable detail, real specs and no mid-sentence truncation.

What it means

Thin or truncated descriptions give an engine nothing quotable, so it summarizes a competitor’s listing instead of yours.

Citation-readiness score
4 / 100
Example improvement
Replace template boilerplate with actual vehicle listings like: '2026 Ford F-150 SuperCrew, 3.5L EcoBoost, 4WD, 12,450 miles, $53,985, VIN: 1FTFW1ET5DFC12345 - fully loaded with Co-Pilot360 and Sync 4.' Provide real, specific copy that an AI can confidently quote.

Page rendering

Can AI read your vehicle pages?

Passing

A no-JavaScript crawler received 493,914 characters of HTML with readable vehicles in it. Your inventory survives the way AI assistants read it.

See the detail

What we checked

Whether your vehicles are present in the raw HTML an AI crawler receives, and whether the named AI crawlers are allowed in.

How we tested

We fetch your page with no JavaScript (the way ChatGPT’s and Claude’s crawlers read), count the readable vehicles, and probe whether each engine’s crawler gets through.

What it means

If your cars only appear after JavaScript runs, most AI crawlers see an empty page and have nothing to cite when a buyer asks.

Bytes returned to a no-JS crawler fetch
493,914 chars of HTML
Vehicles readable in that HTML
Yes

Structured data

Can AI trust your vehicle facts?

Passing

Validated Vehicle data is present, with price and currency. Engines can trust and cite your listings.

See the detail

What we checked

Whether your pages carry machine-readable structured data (schema.org Vehicle and Offer) an engine can quote with confidence.

How we tested

We parse a real vehicle detail page for JSON-LD Vehicle/Offer markup, including price and currency.

What it means

Without structured data an engine can read your prose but can’t reliably extract price, mileage, or specs, so it hedges or skips you.

Vehicle (schema.org)
Found
Offer / price
Found
AutoDealer / Organization
Found
Valid JSON-LD blocks
5

Robots / crawler access

Is AI even allowed in?

Passing

Your robots.txt allows the AI crawlers that matter. Nothing here is turning assistants away.

See the detail

What we checked

Whether your robots.txt permits the crawlers that feed AI search (and doesn’t quietly wall them out).

How we tested

We read your robots.txt and check the rules that apply to AI and search engine user-agents.

What it means

A disallow here removes you from the indexes AI assistants pull from, no matter how good the rest of your site is.

ChatGPT's training crawler (GPTBot)
Allowed
ChatGPT's search crawler (OAI-SearchBot)
Allowed
ChatGPT's live fetcher (ChatGPT-User)
Allowed
Claude's training crawler (ClaudeBot)
Allowed
Claude's search crawler (Claude-SearchBot)
Allowed
Perplexity's search crawler (PerplexityBot)
Allowed
Gemini's training crawler (Google-Extended)
Allowed
Google's search crawler (Googlebot)
Allowed

Per-engine crawler probe (each bot’s real user-agent)

Search index crawlers

Build the indexes ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot answer from. A block here is the serious one: it keeps you out of AI search.

ChatGPTGoogleBingPerplexity

On-demand fetchers

Fetch your page when a shopper asks an assistant to “check this dealer.” A block breaks that.

ChatGPTClaude

Training crawlers

Crawl to train models. Blocking these only opts you out of free training; you stay citeable in search.

ChatGPTClaude

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