Online searches for car hire related websites steadily declined throughout the year’s third quarter according to reports compiled by one of the U.K.’s leading internet search agencies. Greenlight announced in its Car Hire Sector Report - Q3 2009 that September searches were down 25% on August and 34% on July. Greenlight’s independent report also found that a number of the big players in the car rental sector had slid down the rankings of most searched for on the web by potential customers.
September’s report showed that the three most popular searches by people looking for car hire related sites were: Car hire, which made up 13%, Car rental making up 5% and Car hire UK taking 3%.
The Greenlight study also looked at the visibility of car hire firms on the web in terms of how many times a key word was used in a search and the respective positions they held on page one of Google. The three most visible car hire websites according to the Greenlight team were CarRentals (54%) Travelsupermarket (40%) and Easycar (32%). Falling down the rankings were AnyCarHire and EuropCar who both lost out to the more aggressive marketing tactics of both Hertz and Enterprise. Avis meanwhile stayed in it second quarter position being visible to only 21% of car hire related online searches in September.
Greenlight’s CEO, Warren Cowan said that achieving the top rankings in the car hire sector was incredibly difficult in such an aggressive market like car hire. He pointed out that it was a market where everyone was in direct competition with everybody else.
