The fastest car dealer websites we tested were built by KGI. On a phone, KGI dealer websites scored a median of 94 in Google's Lighthouse speed test, with 100s in accessibility, best practices, and SEO.
We tested 55 other independent used car dealer websites from these vendors:
- Carsforsale
- DealerCenter
- Wayne Reaves
- Dealer Car Search
- A handful of smaller vendors
Together they scored a median of 41. On a phone, their main content took 11 seconds to appear.
Full disclosure: KGI builds dealer websites, so we're one of the vendors in this test. That's exactly why every number below can be checked. Run any dealer website through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool and you'll see the same kind of results.
Car dealer website speed scores by vendor
The headline number for each vendor: its median mobile performance score. The colors match PageSpeed Insights. Green is 90 to 100, orange is 50 to 89, and red is 0 to 49.
KGI
Wayne Reaves
Carsforsale
DealerCenter
Dealer Car Search
Other vendors
How we ran the dealer website speed test
We ran the homepage of 59 used car dealer websites through Lighthouse, the open-source test Google built and the engine that powers PageSpeed Insights. Every site belongs to an independent dealer in North or South Carolina, from Asheville to Wilmington and from Winston-Salem to Columbia.
- 4 dealer websites built by KGI, plus 55 built by competing vendors
- About half of the competitor sites came from the Google searches a shopper would run, like "buy here pay here used car dealership near me," in nine Carolina cities
- Every site tested 3 times on mobile and 3 times on desktop, and we report the middle result
- Lighthouse version 13.5, tested in October 2026
- Vendor results are the median of that vendor's sites, so one unusually fast or slow site can't swing the result
- Vendors with only one or two sites in our sample, like Overfuel, AutoFunds, and DealerInspire, are grouped as "Other vendors," along with WordPress and custom-built sites.
- Two of the KGI sites were tested days before launch, while they were still set to keep Google out. That setting drops Lighthouse's SEO score to 66 no matter how the site is built, so KGI's SEO score comes from the two live sites.
- One competitor site never finished loading in the desktop test, so it appears only in the mobile results.
We don't name the dealerships. Every site belongs to a real business, and the point is the vendor, not the dealer. One note on the numbers: Google's PageSpeed Insights servers tend to score every site a few points higher than our test machine did, so your own results may run higher across the board. The gap between vendors stays about the same.
How fast are dealer websites on a phone?
Mobile matters most. Google ranks websites based on their mobile version, and most car shoppers browse on their phones. Lighthouse tests mobile the hard way: a mid-range phone on a slow 4G connection.
| Vendor | Performance | Main content shows | Accessibility | Best practices | SEO | Page size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KGI | 94 | 2.8 s | 100 | 100 | 100 | 0.5 MB |
| Wayne Reaves | 49 | 15.5 s | 74 | 96 | 100 | 4.8 MB |
| Carsforsale | 46 | 6.5 s | 92 | 77 | 92 | 2.8 MB |
| DealerCenter | 38 | 15.7 s | 79 | 69 | 92 | 3.3 MB |
| Dealer Car Search | 36 | 11.5 s | 93 | 73 | 100 | 2.6 MB |
| Other vendors | 45 | 10.0 s | 87 | 77 | 92 | 2.2 MB |
Median of each vendor's sites. "Main content shows" is Largest Contentful Paint: when the biggest thing on the screen, usually the hero photo, finishes loading.
The slowest KGI site scored 92 on mobile. The fastest competitor site, a WordPress site, scored 80. None of the 55 competitor sites reached 90, and 39 of them scored under 50, in the red. On a phone, the typical competitor homepage made a shopper wait 11 seconds to see its main content, and many shoppers don't wait that long.
That's not just our sample. In a 2026 study by Overfuel Inc., another dealer website company, 92% of local dealership websites fell short of Google's mobile speed mark of 90, and nearly 70% scored in the red. Their study covered about 90,000 Google search results across 250 U.S. markets.
How fast are dealer websites on desktop?
On desktop, almost every website looks better. KGI sites scored 99 or 100. Carsforsale came the closest of the major vendors at 85, and the smaller vendors came in at 84. Desktop is where a dealer could look at a competitor's score and think the vendors are about even.
| Vendor | Performance | Main content shows | Accessibility | Best practices | SEO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KGI | 99 | 0.7 s | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Carsforsale | 85 | 1.9 s | 93 | 77 | 92 |
| Wayne Reaves | 81 | 1.9 s | 74 | 96 | 100 |
| DealerCenter | 67 | 3.0 s | 82 | 69 | 92 |
| Dealer Car Search | 59 | 2.8 s | 96 | 73 | 100 |
| Other vendors | 84 | 1.8 s | 90 | 77 | 92 |
The real story is the drop from desktop to phone. Carsforsale falls from 85 to 46, Wayne Reaves from 81 to 49, and the other vendors from 84 to 45. KGI drops from 99 to 94. A site that holds up on a phone was built for one from the start.
How website speed affects SEO and GEO
SEO gets your dealership into Google's search results. GEO, generative engine optimization, gets it mentioned when a shopper asks ChatGPT, Google's AI Mode, or Perplexity where to find a used truck near them. Both start the same way: a machine has to load your page and read it.
Google crawls fast sites more. Its crawl budget documentation says that when a site responds quickly, Google raises how much of it Googlebot will crawl, and when the site slows down or throws errors, Google crawls less. Your inventory changes every week, and a new listing can't show up in search until Google has crawled it.
AI tools are pickier readers than Google. When Vercel studied AI crawlers, it found that the crawlers behind ChatGPT and Claude download a page's JavaScript files but don't run them. If your content only appears after scripts run, those crawlers may see a mostly empty page.
Speed matters even more when an AI tool looks something up live to answer a shopper's question, because the answer waits on every page it opens. Perplexity's developer documentation says a live fetch can fail when a site responds slowly. No AI company publishes a speed cutoff. But every page these companies load costs them computing time and makes their user wait, so a page that loads in under a second is cheaper and quicker for them to read than one that takes 11.
Google now tests for this directly. The newest version of Lighthouse added an Agentic Browsing category that checks whether AI agents can read and use a page: whether its structure is readable, and whether the layout holds still while it loads. All 4 KGI sites passed every check, on mobile and desktop. Thirteen of the 55 competitor sites did too, and every one of those 13 scored 77 or lower for mobile speed. None of the DealerCenter or Wayne Reaves sites passed every check on both. A readable page and a fast page are two different tests, and the KGI sites were the only ones that passed both.
What the other Lighthouse scores mean
PageSpeed Insights shows four scores next to the AI checks. Here's what each one tells you about your website, in plain terms.
Performance score
Performance measures how quickly your page loads and becomes usable. A shopper who taps your listing from Google and stares at a blank screen goes back and taps the next dealer. Google also uses loading speed and layout stability, its Core Web Vitals, as part of how it ranks pages. Speed won't outrank better content on its own, but a slow page hands shoppers a reason to leave.
Accessibility score
Accessibility checks whether people using screen readers, larger text, or a keyboard can use your site. KGI sites scored 100 on mobile and desktop. Wayne Reaves and DealerCenter sites scored in the 70s on mobile. The same structure that helps a screen reader also helps search engines and AI tools understand your page.
Best practices score
Best practices covers security and code quality: secure connections, no browser errors, no outdated code. One thing that costs points is third-party tracking cookies, like the ones some advertising tags set. One KGI site scored 77 here only because the dealer runs a Google Ads tag on it. The other three scored 100.
SEO score
Lighthouse's SEO score checks the basics: page titles, descriptions, readable links, and whether Google can crawl the page. KGI sites scored 100, and most other vendors scored between 92 and 100. This is close to a tie, and we're saying so. A 100 here means the foundation is in place. It doesn't mean a site ranks. Ranking comes from what's built on that foundation: local pages, your Google Business Profile, and reviews. That's the work our automotive SEO service does.
Dealer website speed by vendor
KGI Dealer Solutions
94 on mobile, 99 on desktop, and 100 in accessibility and SEO. Every homepage came in at about half a megabyte, the lightest in the test. All 4 sites passed every AI check on mobile and desktop.
Carsforsale
46 on mobile and 85 on desktop, the best desktop score of the major vendors. Homepages ran about 2.8 MB. Mobile scores ranged from 23 to 61, and 4 of the 11 sites passed every AI check on mobile.
Wayne Reaves
49 on mobile and 81 on desktop. The homepages were the heaviest in the test at about 4.8 MB, roughly 10 times a KGI homepage. On a phone, the main content took more than 15 seconds to appear. None of the 5 sites passed every AI check.
Dealer Car Search
36 on mobile and 59 on desktop, the lowest scores of any vendor in the test on both. Accessibility was a bright spot at 93, and 6 of the 12 sites passed every AI check on mobile.
DealerCenter
38 on mobile and 67 on desktop. On a phone, the main content took almost 16 seconds to appear, the longest wait of any vendor, and accessibility scored 79. None of the 13 sites passed every AI check, on mobile or desktop.
Other vendors
Fourteen sites from seven smaller vendors, plus WordPress and custom builds, scored 45 on mobile and 84 on desktop. This group had the widest spread in the test, from 12 to 80 on mobile.
How to test your own dealer website in two minutes
- Go to Google's PageSpeed Insights at pagespeed.web.dev.
- Paste your homepage address and click Analyze.
- Look at the Mobile tab first. That's the version Google ranks.
- Check the Performance score. Under 50 shows red, and it means shoppers on phones are waiting.
- Scroll to Agentic Browsing to see whether your site passes the AI checks.
- Run the test two or three times. Scores move a few points between runs.
A red mobile score usually isn't something the dealer caused. Speed comes from how the vendor builds the page: how much code it loads, how big the images are, and what runs before the shopper sees anything.
Car dealer website speed questions
What is a good PageSpeed score for a car dealer website?
90 or higher is good, and Google shows it in green. 50 to 89 needs improvement, and under 50 is poor. Judge your site by the mobile score, not desktop.
Why is my mobile score so much lower than my desktop score?
The mobile test simulates a mid-range phone on a slow 4G connection, so heavy pages get punished. A site that's light and built mobile-first loses only a few points on mobile. A heavy one can lose 30 or more.
Does website speed affect where my dealership shows up on Google and in AI search?
It's one factor. Google uses Core Web Vitals, which include loading speed and layout stability, as part of how it ranks pages, and it crawls fast sites more often. AI search tools have to load your page before they can mention you. Content, your Google Business Profile, and reviews matter more, but a slow page loses shoppers who already found you.
The bottom line
On desktop, the other vendors come closer to KGI. On a phone, where your shoppers are and where Google measures you, none of them come close. The slowest KGI site in our test beat the fastest competitor site by 12 points, and no competitor site reached 90.
Run your own homepage through PageSpeed Insights today. If the mobile score is red, see what a KGI dealer website scores, and what it costs, on our pricing page.