Spain tops car hire search list

Carrentals.co.uk is the highest-ranking website in the car-hire sector with 60% visibility in Google natural-search results, according to Greenlight’s analysis of search volumes generated in April.

Travelsupermarket.com and Holidayautos.co.uk complete the top three with 44% and 20% respectively.

The Greenlight study analysed 3,880 search terms across generic and destination-based keywords used by people in the UK looking for car rental. These keywords generated 1.5 million searches. The data was then used to rank the most-visible brands on page one of Google’s natural-search results.

As well as having most visibility overall, Carrentals.co.uk also came top when analysing generic, domestic and worldwide destination keywords. The site has a 78% share for generic car-hire keywords, dropping to 68% and 62% for domestic and worldwide. Car-rental site Avis.co.uk follows closely behind for generic keyword searches, reaching 75% of the search audience.

In terms of domestic destinations, the most searched for car-hire terms are “UK” and “London”. The most-searched worldwide destination is Spain, accounting for 18% of searches, followed by the UK and United States. Predictably, destination-specific websites do well with destination-led searches, with companies such as Malagacar.com, Carspain.com and DoyouSpain attaining considerable market share.