Its true. when you allow your inventory or listings to be posted on third party sites like Oodle or VAST your are in effect giving them your most important asset... your inventory to get their site posted high on search engines.
Recently on DeaerRefresh (a great blog site for auto dealers) Brian Pasch wrote about this problem
Go here:
http://www.dealerrefresh.com/inventory-free-sites-brian-pasch/
Understand what is going on here. When you take your inventory and post it to all those free sites what you are doing in effect is giving them your name, what you have listed for sale, and your location and letting them create THEIR OWN SEO. This is instead of you spending time building your own site, investing in Social Media Marketing techniques that will raise YOUR WEB SITE'S SEO.
We understand that these FREE 3rd party sites are addictive but if you were to spend a little time tracking what these sites are really doing for you in terms of generating traffic to your site and then converting that traffic into sales you will quickly see that what they are really doing is stealing your customer who is searching in your market for your inventory - and selling it to the highest bidder.
This is true for auto dealers and real estate agents. Everyone in both industries pushes to get their listings on as many sites as they can - the thinking is - more sites means more visibility. Fact is, what is really happening is you are simply giving these sites the best way to push YOUR web site off the front page of the search engines.
Take back the keys to your own inventory and spend more time posting on sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook... and now Google Buzz and direct that traffic back to your own site. Get back on the front page of Google by fighting the urge to give your inventory (and your SEO) away
