The Q3 2026 benchmarking report for UK car rental companies has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK car rental companies perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2026 benchmarking report for UK car rental companies has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national car rental companies, including Hertz, Enterprise Holdings, Avis, Green Motion UK, SIXT, Zipcar, Rentalcars.com, Zest Car Rental, Hiyacar, Thrifty Car and Van Rental, Practical Car & Van Rental, and Indigo Car and Van Hire.
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 car rental companies to win brand exposure in key areas, generate online views, and drive enquiries & bookings. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 car rental companies 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 best and poorest-performing car rental companies, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer 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.
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 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 Q3 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK car rental companies was £84,655 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 £22. 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, Indigo Car and Van Hire has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £1,980, and Enterprise Holdings has the highest at £2,210,000.
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.
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. Car rental companies will want to take particular care that key pages such as locations and models are easy for users to find.
In our previous audit, Rentalcars.com reported the most 404 errors (489). This quarter, Rentalcars.com has made immense progress to reduce their total to 1. Currently, the company with the most 404 errors is SIXT (1,523). When content needs to be removed permanently, redirecting visitors to a related page can prevent frustration. Users are more likely to remain on the website if they're given an alternative destination.
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. Just as with ensuring key pages are easy to navigate to, to avoid any prospective customer frustration, car rental companies will want to convey a fast site experience to ensure potential renters have a positive experience with their brand at every digital step.
In our previous audit, Thrifty Car and Van Rental reported the slowest mobile site speed (11). This quarter, Thrifty Car and Van Rental has increased their score to 32, moving them up the leaderboard. Currently, the brand with the slowest mobile site speed is Hertz (24). Mobile users often expect websites to support features such as click-to-call buttons or easy access to maps. Websites lacking these features may struggle to meet mobile user expectations.
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. Car rental companies can look to collaborate with high-authority travel and lifestyle bloggers to build their backlink profiles, along with generating travel and motoring content that can be picked up by both national and sector-specific press.
In our previous audit, brand with the lowest DA score was Green Motion UK (23). This quarter, Green Motion UK has made improvements to increase their score to 56. Currently, the company to watch is Indigo Car and Van Hire, reporting a DA score of 23. Businesses with higher domain authority may gain a competitive advantage over rivals. Strong authority can make it more difficult for lower-authority competitors to outrank them for valuable search terms.
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. Due to the cost-of-living crisis and consumers cutting back on expendables such as holidays, car rental companies may find that they are competing for a much smaller pool of traffic than in previous years.
Four brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with both Zipcar and Thrifty Car and Van Rental seeing the biggest loss (-32%). On mobile, four brands reported a decrease in organic traffic, with Thrifty Car and Van Rental seeing the biggest loss (-18%). Mobile users are more likely to browse casually while multitasking. As a result, they may visit more pages briefly but spend less time engaging with content than desktop users.
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 retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Reviews' are a useful feature for car rental companies to capitalise on, helping them gain the trust of potential customers.
Enterprise Holdings continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (16,652) — a decrease from 26,980 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘Local Pack’ (6,400).
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 retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Car rental companies must ensure their organic content strategy acknowledges high-conversion potential keywords, including terms such as 'available now', 'instant access', or 'cost for 7 days' (or any other common length of time).
Enterprise Holdings has secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (15,352) — an increase from 14,398 previously. Enterprise Holdings also secured the most longtail keywords for positions 4–10 (12,469) – a decrease from 13,214 previously. Rather than forcing longtail keywords into content, websites should use them naturally within headings, body text and metadata. This keeps content readable while still helping search engines understand its relevance to particular searches.
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. For car rental companies, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers are seeing offers, availability, and company options.
We’ve included screenshots of Hertz’s sponsored Facebook posts. Using vertical images/videos is a sure way for brands to cater to social media users using a mobile — optimising the content to a smaller screen compared to desktop.
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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. As with building a backlink profile and creating content that ties in well with PR activity, car rental companies can look to developing topics within the holiday and automotive space to secure shareable content that will gain traction on social media.
SIXT secured the most Facebook Likes (1.6m), and Hertz secured the most Instagram followers (88,300).
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, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. It is important for brands in any sector to be accessible for all potential visitors, even when this need is not immediately obvious, such as in the automotive sector.
In our previous audit, SIXT reported the most accessibility alerts (60). This quarter, SIXT has made positive steps to reduce their total to 2. Currently, the company with the most accessibility alerts is Indigo Car and Van Hire (57). Accessibility issues can make websites seem more complicated than they really are. Users generally prefer simple, intuitive experiences and may move to a competitor if a site feels difficult to use.
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.