The Q2 2026 benchmarking report for UK car dealers has just been published. Learn how these leading 12 UK dealerships perform across the digital space.
The latest Q2 2026 benchmarking report for UK car dealers has just been published. It covers 12 of the largest UK car dealers, including The RRG Group, Porsche Retail Group, John Clark Motor Group, Drive Motor Retail, Steven Eagell Group, Perrys Motor Sales, Hendy Group, Citygate Automotive, Cambria Automobiles, Sinclair Group, Barretts Kent, and Hartwell Automotive Group. 
The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other dealerships to increase market share, generate leads and sales, and increase brand exposure. The report highlights year-on-year digital performance, plus winner and loser comparisons across 20+ online performance metrics for the dealerships included.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
Q2 2026 WINNERS LEADERBOARD
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these 12 leading dealerships on, check out our quick-look table below; 
To understand what the *CTM Digital Performance Index™ is click here.
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing automotive dealerships, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
What The Industry Research Report Covers
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each site based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.
Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels
Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing. Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q2 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK automotive dealerships (group 2) was £16,507 with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £6. This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, both Drive Motor Retail and Sinclair Group reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, and Citygate Automotive reported has the highest at £42.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. The RRG Group has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £945, and John Clark Motor Group has the highest at £841,000.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
Technical Website Compliance
Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. For UK car dealers, their website is one of the most important components of their business. It is therefore vital for their site to be running smoothly to ensure their customers can easily navigate across key pages.
In our previous audit, Drive Motor Retail received the most 404 errors (173). This quarter, Drive Motor Retail has made improvements to decrease their total to 96 — no longer putting them at the bottom of the leaderboard. Currently, the dealership with the most 404 errors is Perrys Motor Sales, flagging a total of 237. 404 errors can lead to missed opportunities for engagement. Instead of guiding users to relevant content, a 404 page can act as a dead end, preventing consumers from discovering products, services, or information they were interested in.
Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance
When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. For UK car dealers, their customers need to have full and absolute trust in their brand. A slow, lagging mobile site will not ensure the customer has trust and may lead them to try other businesses instead.
In our last audit, Drive Motor Retail reported the slowest mobile site speed (7). This quarter, Drive Motor Retail has increased their mobile site speed to 31, moving them up the leaderboard. Currently, the mobile site speed ranges between 45 and 14, with Hartwell Automotive Group receiving the slowest score. A lack of regular testing and optimisation can result in declining mobile speeds over time. Without ongoing monitoring, issues can accumulate, making the website progressively slower for mobile users.
Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that is not gained through sponsored ads. UK car dealers should be continually pushing to improve their DA and should focus on creating shareable content that high-authoritative websites will want to share with their audience. A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60.
Cambria Automobiles received the lowest DA score (12), and Porsche Retail Group received the highest score (87). A strong domain authority can help build trust with both users and search engines. When a website consistently earns links from reputable and relevant sources, it signals credibility and reliability. This trust can encourage users to spend more time on the site and engage more deeply with its content.
Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. With a variety of UK car dealers for consumers to choose from, we would expect all the companies to be seeing increases in their mobile and desktop traffic.
Three companies reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with both Hartwell Automotive Group and Barretts Kent seeing the biggest drop (-15%). On mobile, four companies reported a decrease in organic traffic, with Steven Eagell Group seeing the biggest loss (-37%). Screen size plays a major role in how users interact with search results. Mobile users see fewer results above the fold, which makes rankings even more competitive. Websites should prioritise strong SEO practices to secure higher positions and maximise visibility on smaller screens.
Universal Search Opportunity
Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. UK car dealers should be utilising ‘images’ and ‘reviews’ so prospective customers can read past customers’ experiences and see visuals for cars they want to purchase.
John Clark Motor Group continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (15,584) — an increase from 12,600 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (13,500).
The Longtail Keyword Opportunity
Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for brand-new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options that UK car dealers could use, such as ‘cars for sale’ and ‘vehicles available to hire’.
John Clark Motor Group continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,068) — an increase from 937 previously. John Clark Motor Group also continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 4–10 (5,231) — an increase from 4,843 previously. Content that focuses on niche audiences is another opportunity to use longtail keywords naturally. When websites write for a specific group of users or address specialised interests, the language often becomes more detailed and descriptive. These natural descriptions frequently align with the longer search phrases that niche audiences use when searching online.
Facebook Adverts
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. Social media is a great way for UK car dealers to expand their audience and provide updates about new launches to prospective consumers.
We’ve included screenshots of Porsche Retail Group’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK automotive dealership stuck to a maximum of two lines of text per post, ensuring they didn’t overbear their users with too much content.
Top Social Shares & Content
When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. As with building content for digital PR strategies, UK car dealers can look to create highly engaging, shareable content to expand their audience reach.
Porsche Retail Group secured the most Facebook Likes (12m) and the most Instagram followers (33.2m). Twitter was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Porsche Retail Group received the highest total engagement rate (10,202) and the highest average engagement (68).
Website Readability & Accessibility
20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. UK car dealers need to ensure that their websites are accessible to everyone.
In our previous report, John Clark Motor Group received the most accessibility alerts (189). This quarter, John Clark Motor Group has increased their total to 194. However, the dealership with the most accessibility alerts currently is Perrys Motor Sales (499). Alerts related to accessibility can also overwhelm users cognitively. Too many notifications or instructions can make it difficult to focus on the primary task, particularly for individuals with cognitive impairments. This overload can result in confusion and a negative overall experience.
GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 2026 REPORT
To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Rory Tarplee.