DAYTON, Ohio — Since launching CarLocate.com three months ago, Reynolds and Reynolds said the vehicle-search Web site has seen solid growth in consumer traffic as well as leads generated for dealers from these visits.

CarLocate.com — which includes vehicle inventories from dealers that use either Reynolds ERA or Power dealership management systems — made its debut in October and showed week-over-week "momentum," officials noted, as the number of consumers visiting the site, page views and sales leads climbed.

"We know we bring several unique, important strengths to the table for CarLocate.com and dealers on the site," noted Trey Hiers, vice president of corporate marketing for Reynolds. "Our track record of automotive retail experience, our technical expertise, plus the insights we gain daily into dealership operations all help guide our product development."

Hiers continued: "For us, CarLocate.com is a logical extension of the computer systems we provide to dealers. It's one more powerful tool we can offer to help them create more business and gain more share of the market — a critical concern especially considering the record number of customers whose primary dealership may have closed in 2009.

"With the help of the tremendous early enrollment to CarLocate.com from dealerships — many of whom signed up well in advance of our nationwide launch — we had a strong momentum that we have been building on since the start," he added. "Now, we're really seeing results from our search engine optimization, marketing and advertising strategies with significant increases in site visits and leads to dealerships."

Following its autumn introduction, Reynolds added such upgrades to the site as green search capabilities, CarMatch alerts (which notify registered users via e-mail when cars that meet their criteria hit the site), and the Share button, which enables visitors to bookmark and share their favorite listings from CarLocate.com on social networking sites.

Reynolds added a CarLocate.com blog, as well.

"In 2010, we expect to build on our branding and marketing activities to continue to increase consumer awareness of the site. We also have a number of feature enhancements planned to improve the usefulness and convenience of the site for car buyers — and for dealerships," Hiers stated.

"All of these activities will help us cement CarLocate.com as one of the premier destinations for car shoppers, which in turn, should increase the number of leads from the site to dealerships and add more value for our ERA and POWER customers," he concluded.