Searchmetrics releases study of car rental providers in organic and paid Google searches

New York - October 28, 2013 - Enterprise.com is the most visible web site in Google US organic search results for searches related to car rentals, while travel portal, kayak.com, is most visible in Google’s paid search results according to a new study.

Established car rentals providers such as avis.com, hertz.com and alamo.com dominate the top 10 organic and paid results for air travel searches.  Of the broader travel portals, only expedia.com and kayak.com feature.

The findings come from an analysis of the search and social media performance of sites offering car rentals by digital marketing software and services provider, Searchmetrics. The study is Part 2 of a detailed report analyzing the search and social visibility of brands in the travel sector in the US, UK, Germany and France (Part 1 focused on airlines and Part 3 will look at the hotel sector).

For its study of car rental providers, Searchmetrics analyzed the sites that rank in the top 10 organic and paid search results for a list of the 360 most popular search terms related to car rentals in US and UK English and French and German. It used this data to calculate the SEO Visibility and Paid Visibility scores[1] – index values developed by the company to measure how visible and prominent sites are within organic and paid search results, respectively – for each site.

The table underneath shows the most visible car rental providers in US organic searches on Google.com (based on SEO Visibility scores). Enterprise.com is the runaway leader with an index score of 900 ‒ much higher than second placed, Expedia.com (521).  Eight out the ten sites are dedicated car rental or car sales providers, including comparison sites rentalcars.com and carrentals.com in position 6 and 10 respectively.  Travel portal kayak.com comes in at 8th position.

Top sites for car rental searches in Google US organic search

View table at: http://www.realwire.com/releases/Enterprisecom-is-top-for-car-rental-searches-on-Google-US-says-new-research

For paid search, kayak.com takes top spot with enterprise.com again positioned highly in second place (see table underneath). Three sites in the paid search list which do not feature in the organic top ten are nationalcar.com in 6th place, thrifty.com in 9th place and airline web site, united.com, in 10th place.

Top sites for car rental searches in Google US paid search

View table at: http://www.realwire.com/releases/Enterprisecom-is-top-for-car-rental-searches-on-Google-US-says-new-research

Marcus Tober, CTO and founder of Searchmetrics said, “These days a big portion of people who want to get a hire car,  start their search for a rental company online through a search engine, so for car rental brands, travel portals and price comparison sites, being visible for the most popular keywords for car rentals on Google is hugely important.” The data for the study was taken at the end of August 2013 from the global search and social media database which Searchmetrics operates to power its online software tools.  This is a regularly updated store of millions of data points related to web sites and their visibility in search engines and social networks.

An infographic which provides a summary of the key findings of the study can be viewed here: http://www.searchmetrics.com/media/images/whitepaper/travel-study_infographic_carrental_us.jpg.  The full study can be downloaded at: www.searchmetrics.com/en/white-paper/travel-industry-carrentals/