2024 Cars.com Dealer Awards FAQ

If you received an email telling you that your dealership is “in the running” for a Cars.com Dealer Award, this means that your dealership has met the minimum requirements (as of 9/30/23) to qualify for one of our Dealer Awards.  Assuming you continue to collect & respond to reviews through Q4, your dealership will be eligible to compete with other top-rated for our Dealer of the Year and Consumer Satisfaction Awards. 

The minimum requirements for being “In the Running” are: 

• Minimum of 15 reviews on DealerRater throughout the first 3 calendar quarters of 2023.

• Minimum of 1 review in each calendar quarter, through the first 3 calendar quarters of 2023. 

• Minimum of 1 “Sales (New)” review on DealerRater in the award category, throughout the first 3 calendar quarters of 2023.  

• An average rating greater than 4.0 (out of a maximum of 5.0) for reviews received during the first 3 calendar quarters of 2023. 

To be eligible to win a Cars.com Dealer Award at the end of this year, the following minimum criteria must be met:

• Minimum of 25 reviews for the previous calendar year.

• Minimum of 1 review in each calendar quarter of the previous calendar year.

• Minimum of 1 “Sales (New)” review in the award category during the previous calendar year (only applicable for Dealer of the Year).

• An average rating greater than 4.0 (out of a maximum of 5.0) for reviews received during the previous calendar year.

Once the minimum criteria has been met, a PowerScore will be calculated for each dealership in their award category based on reviews collected in 2023.  This PowerScore calculation considers the following three metrics for reviews in each category: the dealership’s average star rating, the total number of reviews collected, and the dealership’s response rate on reviews received during 2023.  

The Dealer of the Year award is offered at the Regional level, National level (by brand), and State/Province level (by brand).  Only reviews & review responses submitted on DealerRater will be included in the PowerScore calculation for Dealer of the Year.  Dealers who meet the criteria above and have earned the highest PowerScore in their category based on their DealerRater reviews & responses will be named Dealer of the Year for that category. 

The Consumer Satisfaction Award will be awarded to all dealers that win Dealer of the Year, as well as a number of dealers that ranked highly but came just short of winning Dealer of the Year.  Dealers must meet the same minimum requirements as listed above.  However, one change for the 2024 award is that reviews and review response rate on both DealerRater and Cars.com will now be included in the PowerScore calculation for the Consumer Satisfaction Award.  The top 10% of US franchise dealers (regardless of make) will receive the award, along with a top percentage of US Used Car dealers, and Canadian Franchise and Used Car dealers.

Review response rates will now be factored into the 2024 PowerScore calculations.  This metric is being included since it is an important factor in how consumers evaluate dealerships.  Per BrightLocal’s 2023 Consumer Review Survey, “88% of consumers are more likely to buy from stores that are actively responding to reviews”.  The best dealerships treat every review as an opportunity to build loyalty and create connections with their customers.

The Consumer Satisfaction Awards is intended to recognize dealerships that provide an exceptional customer experience, and Consumer Satisfaction awards are given out to a percentage of the top-rated dealerships. There is no limit to the number of dealerships within a certain State/Province or brand that could potentially receive a Consumer Satisfaction Award - rather each dealership is compared against all others when determining Consumer Satisfaction Award recipients.

As of 2024, the Consumer Satisfaction Award will also be calculated based on reviews collected on both DealerRater & Cars.com, while Dealer of the Year will be based solely on DealerRater reviews.

Most Dealer of the Year categories are awarded by brand, necessitating that the reviewer identifies the make of the vehicle sold or serviced within their review.  While a field to identify the vehicle brand is available on the DealerRater review form, that same brand field does not yet exist on the Cars.com dealer review form.  As a result, Cars.com reviews cannot be folded into the calculation for the 2024 DOTY awards.  We are actively working to update the Cars.com review form to include this brand field, and we expect to include both DealerRater & Cars.com reviews in the 2025 DOTY awards.

Similar to last year, DOTY and CSA will both be announced in early March via email. There will be an email campaign to alert the winners. Email recipients will be dealer users who have administrative access to DealerRater.

We do not yet have the final Powerscores calculated, but encourage you to consider your race a close one and push hard to finish the year strong with review collection. Many races are decided by just a handful of positive reviews, so every review counts. If you’re not leveraging your staff to ask every customer to share their feedback on DealerRater, now is a great time to build in a program to encourage them to do so. Review gathering is most powerful when it’s a team sport!