---
title: "Build car safety pages with the NHTSA API | Ian Nuttall"
description: "Car safety ratings SEO idea"
canonical: "https://ian.is/post/car-safety-data"
language: "en"
---

# Build car safety pages with the NHTSA API

Jan 2024 / 36,491 views / [via X](https://x.com/iannuttall/status/1749474380369764550)

Here's a programmatic SEO idea (with free dataset) I started but will never get time to finish:

Car safety ratings, recalls and complaints

The NHTSA has an API for this data that you can use to build a list by make, model, year and rating.

I hired a dev for this from Upwork for $200 but you can do it yourself too.

This is what the data returned looks like:
The idea was to build an entire site around this answering questions like "how safe is {make} {model}?" or "what is the safest car in {year}?".

This was my ugly work in progress. I've come a long way since 2022!

"But Ian," I hear you cry, "is it even possible to build a successful pSEO site with this data?!"

Let us take a look at CarComplaints·com:

They appear to be thriving throughout all algo updates and have built something that I would consider a truly useful programmatic SEO site.

Funny how that works when you build for users and not Google, huh.

I built a bunch of sites in the auto niche and I know that display ad RPMs are very nice. I don't see a real way to monetise beyond ads, which is why I'll never finish this product.

Also interesting to note that CarComplaints is still running AdSense and not a better paying network!

Anyway, if you want the data for this, check the next tweet for the link and build something amazing ✌️

![Image from the original X post](https://ian.is/media/tweets/1749474380369764550/1749474380369764550/5bdb81e49fdc5fe8f10149511f8730067bbb14084489b4b2605e18b08d977f58.jpg)

![Image from the original X post](https://ian.is/media/tweets/1749474380369764550/1749474380369764550/3fd64b1396cb4b742d97085ca8f148b2474d24d3edaec2d16e7f588423ff6e54.jpg)

![Image from the original X post](https://ian.is/media/tweets/1749474380369764550/1749474380369764550/61f7ded0eb1e3f1e63b8f40cab542f54dcc6f2c74489fcc4e3f8e1e079b17423.jpg)

Forgot to mention that I have CarProbs·com expiring soon if anybody wants it.

Just need a Namecheap username to push it to.

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