Which URL and rel=canonical structure to use for location based product inventory pages?

[tdastru]

I am working on an automotive retailer site that displays local car inventory in nearby dealerships based on location. Within the site, a zip code is required to search, and the car inventory is displayed in a typical product list that can be filtered and sorted by the searcher to fit the searchers needs.

We would like to structure these product inventory list pages that are based on location to give the best chance at ranking, if not now, further down the road when we have built up more authority to compete with the big dogs in SERP like AutoTrader.com, TrueCar.com, etc. These higher authority sites are able to rank their location based car inventory pages on the first page consistently across all makes and models.

For example, searching the term "new nissan rogue" in the Los Angeles, CA area returns a few location based inventory pages on page 1. The sites in the industry that are able to rank their inventory pages will display a relatively clean looking URL with no redirect that still displays the local inventory like this in the SERP:
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue
but almost always use a rel=canonical tag within the page to a page with a location parameter attached to the end of the URL like this one:
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue/Los+Angeles+CA-90001"/>
I'm having a hard time figuring out why sites like this example have their URLs and pages structured this way.

What would be the best practice for structuring the URL and rel=canonical tags to be able to rank for and display location based inventory pages for cars near the searcher?

[tdastru]

Everett,

Thank you for your time and responses. They have been most helpful in deciding our strategy direction moving forward.

[Everett]

Barrett,

I think the Car Gurus way you laid out above is a great solution. This allows you to scale content as well, since now you can provide content only on the single canonical zip code page for that "area". What are some things that Los Angeles drivers need to know about buying a new or used vehicle? Is there anything specific you can call out, like "The last thing you want in LA is to be stuck in traffic on the 405 with a car that won't start..."? If you can pull in data about the zip code it may be possible to automate some customizations at scale as well, such as the average price of new and used vehicles in that zip code, which vehicles are the most popular in that zip code, etc...

Either way it sounds like you're thinking about the problem in the right way so I'm sure you'll be successful. Good luck!

[tdastru]

Thank you for your response Everett! The above mentioned strategy is used widely within the large brand equity type companies in the industry so it's great to know that that is not the URL structure and rel=canonical strategy that we want to go for right now. We have been exploring other similar strategies to accomplish the same goal.

One strategy that is very similar within the industry for these types of inventory pages is that of cargurus.com. For terms like "nissan rogue los angeles", they are only ranking 1 inventory page for used and 1 for new for all of Los Angeles:
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-Nissan-Rogue-Los-Angeles-d1047_L2163
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/new/nl-New-Nissan-Rogue-Los-Angeles-d1047_L2163
These pages default to the 90009 zip code no matter where in Los Angeles you are searching from. Changing the zip code within the site to 90001 for example, resets the inventory list by loading a new page, but always rel=canonicals to the 90009 zip code version of the page. I have tested this in several cities and the same is true for all major cities. For these inventory pages they have chosen one centralized zip code to display nearby inventory to rank for and all other zip codes within that same city rel=canonical back to the chosen centralized zip code.

Do you think that this would be the best way to structure our URLs for all cities to rank these types of inventory pages for search terms like "nissan rogue los angeles"?

Side question along these same lines: if we followed a similar strategy to this one, and had one zip code for Los Angeles and one zip code for San Diego, would those two inventory pages be considered duplicate content by Google? Or would they be ok since it is a product page that is simply displaying inventory much like ecommerce sites?

[Everett]

That is a very interesting setup by Auto Trader. The Rel = "Canonical" URL changes on the true canonical page depending on your location. So this URL:

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue

May canonicalize to either of the URLs below, depending on your location:

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/Nissan/Rogue/Denver+CO-80211

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue/Los+Angeles+CA-90001

Technically speaking, I think it should work the other way around. Their rankings for these geo-specific keywords seem to be pretty good so I can see why it may be tempting to emulate. However, keep in mind that Auto Trader has a TON of brand equity and PageRank so they can get away with things that might harm another site either now, or in the near future.

After speaking with two other colleagues just to verify, my recommendation here would be NOT to do this. At best, these canonical tags on Auto Trader are probably just being ignored by Google.