Dealer Spike and ARI dealers
On Dealer Spike, or still on ARI? Your search runs on the platform's settings, not yours.
Credit where it's due: on Spark, the platform that used to be ARI, your inventory arrives complete, with real links a crawler can follow. On Dealer Spike's original platform it doesn't. Either way, the templates, files and settings that decide your search are the platform's, not yours.
75 of the 350 largest independent tractor dealers we surveyed in 16 states run on Dealer Spike, about one in five, more than any other platform. See the survey
Still call it ARI? You're on Dealer Spike's Spark platform.
"We are excited to share that ARI is changing its brand name to Dealer Spike. Be assured that our brand name is the only thing changing."
ARI's own announcement, arinet.com.
The ARI platform is now Dealer Spike's Spark. If you log in at dealerspike-cms.com (formerly ari-cms.com), that's you.
Which Dealer Spike are you on?
Dealer Spike runs two platforms: Spark, formerly ARI, and its original platform. Quick test: open
yourdomain.com/llms.txt. Dealer Spike says every Spark site has one. If you get "page not found",
you're on the original platform. The points below say which platform each applies to.
What Dealer Spike does well
Speed. Of the platforms we tested in October 2026, Dealer Spike sites were the fastest on a phone: 8 of 10 showed their main content within Google's 2.5-second guideline, against 1 of 10 on Sandhills. And on Spark, your inventory arrives complete, with real links a crawler can follow.
Where search gets stuck
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On Spark: your machine-page titles come from one template.
Dealer Spike's own Spark help says "a single template is available at this time for all verticals and inventory", that "some page titles cannot be changed", and that custom search-page titles "are always appended with your Company Name, City, Two-letter State Abbreviation, and Primary Telephone Number". Redirects need a support request, and the blog is switched on by request.
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On Spark: the AI file they give you, in their own words.
Dealer Spike's blog, October 6, 2026: AI tools answer dealer questions "by reading a file called an LLMS TXT ... Every Spark site now automatically generates this file." Dealer Spike's own help article: "there is no evidence that llms.txt ... Increases visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, or other AI platforms", and you can't customise it. Google says no AI text file is needed at all.
Check it: open
yourdomain.com/llms.txt. -
On the original platform: your inventory list arrives empty.
On the original-platform dealer sites we checked live in October 2026, the inventory page as first delivered had no machine names, no links to machines and no next-page link. The list is drawn in afterward by a script. Google can run scripts, but a crawler following links from your inventory page finds nothing to follow.
Check it: open your inventory page, right-click, View Page Source, and search for the name of a machine on screen.
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On the original platform: your sitemap is generated for you, and it shows.
On the original-platform sitemaps we checked: the same page listed several times with garbled addresses, addresses that differ only in capital letters, dates years out of date or missing, and in some, an entry with no address at all. Your robots file does not even point to it.
Check it: open
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xmland the SEO sitemap it points to. -
On the original platform: your filter pages are published as pages.
Combinations like "new, utility vehicle, this location, this brand" go into your sitemap as pages of their own. Google says crawlers spend time on large numbers of these before deciding they are useless, leaving "less time to spend on new, useful URLs". Every fix Google lists is in the template, robots file or server, all of which belong to the platform.
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On the original platform: your robots file isn't yours.
We found the same file on unrelated dealers' sites and on Dealer Spike's own. It blocks AhrefsBot, so the standard agency audit cannot run on your site, and it blocks the manufacturer model pages, the ones that would answer searches like "Mahindra 1626 specs", from every crawler.
Check it: open
yourdomain.com/robots.txtand look fornew_vehicle_detail.asp.
What we build alongside it
Pages for the towns you sell into and the models buyers research, on infrastructure we run, with our own sitemap and robots file, linking buyers to your inventory. Nothing on your Dealer Spike site changes.
Free
Free platform check
Send us your website. We run these checks on your own site and send back what we find, whether or not you hire us.
Prefer the phone? 870-253-7396. Someone answers.