According to a recent YouGov study on manufacturer popularity in the UK Rolls-Royce topped the list as the nation’s favourite car manufacturer, followed by Bentley and then Jaguar. Not surprisingly, all of which have a strong British heritage.
However, do these popular British brands fair as well in terms of actual Google searches? IntelligentCarLeasing.com have analysed the monthly search volumes of 33 of the automotive industry’s leading players, based on each brand’s most common search term*, with the data sourced from ahrefs – the online SEO analysis tool – to find out.
Leading the pack was the All-Electric American based innovator, Tesla, with a volume of 415,000 monthly searches.
Given that Tesla has only been around since 2003, this fascinating statistic really highlights how successful Elon Musk’s marketing of the brand has been; managing to eclipse the UK’s long-standing love affair with premium German manufacturers.
The rest of the top 5 was made up of BMW in second place, followed by Mercedes, Audi and then Hyundai.
Hyundai was an unexpected high-flyer in terms of UK searches, however this insight comes on the back of a very strong couple of years for the brand. 2018/2019 saw Hyundai record its highest growth and market share in the UK, with the brand taking 3.8%.
Aligned with the chart-topping Tesla, Hyundai’s growth of late has been on the back of significant investment in low and fully-electric cars. We’ve also noticed a strong surge in customers looking for the Hyundai Kona on lease, as well as the IONIQ range of vehicles.
We expected to see Volkswagen higher than tenth given the Golf’s status as one of the UK’s favourite cars and the launch of the new eighth-generation Golf earlier this year. However, their ranking could improve with the launch of the brand’s exciting all-electric ID.3 which is already garnering a lot of interest. With the ID.4 all-electric SUV hot on its heels, we expect to see VW inch further up the rankings over the next twelve months.
The UK’s most popular brand, Rolls-Royce, came lower down the search volume charts with 95,900 monthly searches (search terms: Rolls Royce and Rolls-Royce); a contrast to the brand’s outstanding popularity score. Newcomer Polestar was bottom of the table, with 15k monthly searches, a statistic we fully expect to increase at pace when we re-run the analysis in 12 months, due to the fact Polestar have only entered this space in recent months with the exciting launch of the Polestar 2.
Since the UK launch of the Tesla Model 3 last year, we’ve seen a big shift in car leasing enquiry volumes towards the Tesla car brand which would align closely with its recent rise in interest from UK searchers.
The leading German brands, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Volkswagen also top our internal lists, and the shift to electric or hybrid models from all three of these brands have been worth noting.
If you’d like to speak to us about any of our most popular lease vehicles please give us a call on 0344 387 2727 – we would be delighted to help you find the perfect car.
*Most common search terms only. Analysis excludes acronyms and/or popular misspellings.
This entry was posted in Reports & Research on by Marc Murphy
Categories : Reports & Research
