CarRentals and CarHire3000 top Greenlight’s Integrated Search Report for the Car Hire Sector

LONDON - Greenlight, the UK’s leading independent search marketing agency has released its first quarterly integrated research for the car hire sector. Each report consists of paid search as well as natural search analysis, to offer a fully integrated analysis. The report determines the most visible websites for car hire in Google natural and paid search results for Q2 2009.

This latest research is based on more than 6 million searches that took place between June and August 2009 within the car hire sector. The searches were categorised into generic car hire terms and broken down by destination. This data was then used to rank the most visible brands on page 1 of Google’s search results.

According to Greenlight’s report, the most visible websites in natural search results during June 2009 were CarRentals, TravelSupermarket and easyCar, achieving 58%, 38% and 35% visibility respectively. The agency’s natural search league table shows that only 15 out of the 60 top sites were visible to more than 10% of the searches in June 2009. Of the top ten websites, seven brands were purely direct car hire providers although the two most visible sites, CarRentals and TravelSupermarket, were aggregators.

Greenlight’s research analysed the 3800 most popular generic keywords used within the car hire sector. For these keywords, 25% of all keywords analysed were for generic car hire terms and 74% were for destination-led terms in June 2009. Since Greenlight’s last car hire report issued in April 2009, there has been a growth in generic and European specific car hire searches, while other searches have remained relatively stable.

The paid search section of the report determines an advertiser’s share of voice based on how often they appear on Google, against which ad position they are bidding to and also considers the search volume generated for the keywords they actually bid on - across the top 90 keywords in June 2009.

Carhire3000 was the most visible advertiser in paid search reaching 70% share of voice, achieved largely by effective bidding on 70 of the 90 keywords analysed in Greenlight’s report at an average ad position of five. Second and third positions were achieved by Avis and Hertz with 64% and 61% visibility respectively. Overall, none of the advertisers achieved strong visibility across both natural and paid search. The brand TravelSupermarket came closest out of all the sites included in the report.

Greenlight produces quarterly research reports covering a broad cross section of industries including insurance, gaming, fashion retail, retail banking, travel and white and brown goods amongst others.

To download the full car hire sector report, click here:

www.greenlightsearch.com/sectorreports/carhire.html

Greenlight is the UK’s largest independent search engine marketing ( www.greenlightsearch.com/) agency specialising in all search marketing disciplines including search engine optimization, paid search management, SEM training, consultancy and search marketing technology.

Founded in 2001 by Warren Cowan (CEO) the agency is headquartered in London with an office in New York.

Using both natural and paid search, Greenlight focuses on improving client positioning and website visibility across the top search engines, to drive qualified traffic to its clients’ websites.

Greenlight is an award winning agency, ranking in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 2009 for the second year running and 14th in The Sunday Times Tech Track 2009, making it Britain’s fastest growing digital marketing agency.

The agency’s client roster includes FTSE, NASDAQ and NYSE listed companies as well as charitable organisations and government bodies. It works with top interactive agencies, SME’s and global brands across vertical markets as diverse as publishing, financial services, retail, travel, property and entertainment.

www.greenlightsearch.com

Additional Information

Other sector reports include the Greenlight search marketing gaming sector report (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33532021).

Greenlight on Spark Something ( blog.greenlightsearch.com/greenlights_search_blog/2009/10/spark-someth ing-driving-search-demand-and-ignoring-seo.html) - Driving Search Demand… and Ignoring SEO

BusinessWeek on Greenlight Search ( investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privca pId=22974114)

iMedia Connection on Warren Cowan, Greenlight CEO ( www.imediaconnection.com/profiles/iMedia_PC_Overview.aspx?ID=8529)

(Due to the length of above URLs, it may be necessary to copy and paste the hyperlinks into your Internet browser’s URL address field. Remove the space if one exists.)

For more information, contact: Beatriz Bailey at Greenlight, T:+44(0)20-3326-6233

Source: Greenlight

For more information, contact: Beatriz Bailey at Greenlight T: +44(0)20-3326-6233 E: beatriz.bailey at greenlightsearch.com