The Q2 2026 benchmarking report for UK care comparison sites has just been published. Learn how the top 10 UK care comparison sites perform across the digital space.
The latest Q2 2026 benchmarking report for UK care comparison sites has just been published. It covers the largest 110national care comparison sites servicing the UK, including carehome.co.uk, Autumna, Carers UK, Care Choices, Curam, Lottie, Care Sourcer, PrimeCarers, TrustedCare.co.uk, and Elder.
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 care comparison sites to win brand exposure locally, drive organic visibility, and generate online enquiries. 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 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 top 10 care comparison providers 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 care comparison sites, 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 care comparison sites was £62,576with 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 £59. 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, Carers UK reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £15, and carehome.co.uk reported the highest at £315.
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. In this report, Care Choices has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £62, and Elder has the highest at £1,290,000.
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. Care comparison sites will need to be particularly mindful of creating a positive site experience at a potentially stressful time for families. They'll need to ensure pathways to key pages such as fee information and potential care locations are clearly marked, and that users can trust them to make safe recommendations and comparisons.
In our previous audit, Carers UK reported the most 404 errors (285). This quarter, Carers UK remains the brand to watch, and they’ve since increased their total again to 295. When visitors reach a 404 page while researching a topic, they may be unable to access information they need. This can interrupt their workflow and reduce the usefulness of the website.
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. As with minimising the levels of technical errors, care comparison sites will want to ensure users can get the answers they need quickly, from a high-performing site which doesn't add to existing frustrations.
In our previous audit, Elder reported the slowest mobile site speed (29). This quarter, Elder has made improvements to increase their score to 50, moving them up the leaderboard. Currently, the mobile site speed ranged between 76 and 30, with Care Choices the brand to watch. Quick mobile performance can improve accessibility for users with older devices or slower internet connections. By optimising speed, websites become more usable for a broader audience rather than only those with the latest technology.
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 isn’t gained through sponsored ads. For brands operating in a niche sector, such as care, building authority may feel challenging. However, care comparison sites can make the most of local publications, as well as repurpose existing content to capitalise on relevant events and industry trends.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. This quarter, the DA score ranged between 80 and 30, with PrimeCarers flagging the lowest total and Carers UK and carehome.co.uk reporting the highest score. Businesses with higher domain authority often experience improved click-through rates from search results. Users are more inclined to click on websites that appear authoritative and well-ranked. This can translate into more visits without additional advertising spend.
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. Though we're seeing reductions in traffic across many sectors, due to the cost of living crisis, care comparison sites have a strong opportunity to build traffic and interest, as users will want to find the best quality care and compare prices of nearby options.
Four brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Lottie reporting the biggest loss (-82%) — an improvement form -84%. On mobile, five brands reported a decrease in organic traffic, with Lottie seeing the biggest loss (-92%). Mobile users are frequently affected by weaker internet connections compared to desktop users on broadband networks. Websites with large files, unoptimised images, or heavy scripts may therefore perform worse for mobile organic traffic due to slower loading times.
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. For care comparison sites, they'll want to ensure they have a strong presence for 'reviews', 'people also ask', and 'local pack' results, helping build trust with searchers directly from the SERP.
Carehome.co.uk continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (74,139) — a decrease from 95,853 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (68,100).
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. Longtail keywords for care comparison sites could show high-conversion intent, or they could be questions about life in a residential care home, the options for care at home, or even pre-care home residential solutions such as retirement apartment complexes.
Carehome.co.uk secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (23,479) — an increase from 21,002. Carehome.co.uk also continued to secure the most appearances for positions 4–10 (12,992) — an increase from 10,834 previously. Over time, a strong longtail keyword strategy can contribute to steady and sustainable traffic growth. By consistently attracting relevant visitors through a wide variety of search terms, websites can build a dependable source of organic traffic and improve their overall search performance.
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. For care comparison sites, Facebook ads are an opportunity to manage exposure within areas their partners are seeing a large amount of capacity or vacancies, enabling them to quickly manage fluctuating residency levels..
We’ve included screenshots of Care Choices’ sponsored Facebook posts. Brands that use sensible line spacing often create posts that feel cleaner and more professional. Well-structured text helps audiences focus on the main point instead of struggling through cluttered formatting.
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. For brands in a service-based sector, such as care comparison sites, content is an opportunity to create long-term touchpoints with prospective residents and their families, by creating pieces that help support them through managing at home, before guiding them to care home residency when the time comes.
Carers UK secured the most Facebook Likes (71,900) and the most Instagram followers (15,000).
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, care comparison sites can lose the interest or prospective residents and clients, who may turn elsewhere out of frustration. Unsurprisingly, this is particularly essential in the care sector which caters to both older customers, and those looking for quick, well-presented answers during what can be a challenging time.
In our previous report, PrimeCarers received the most accessibility alerts (82). This quarter, PrimeCarers remains the brand to watch, and they’ve since increased their total to 109. Poorly timed alerts may interrupt the user's journey through a website. If a notification appears while someone is reading, shopping, or filling out a form, it can break their concentration and reduce satisfaction.
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.