Leading car rental companies Budget, Avis and Thrifty have featured on the list of most visible car hire websites.

Statistics released by Greenlight, the specialist researcher and technology consulting firm, have shown that UK users made 1.4 online searches related to car hire, with Avis, Thrifty and Budget all ascending into the top ten.

Total searches fell slightly from March, with worldwide destinations making up 44 per cent of the searches, and while the major players all maintained or increased their levels of visibility, a number of new players have also emerged onto the scene.

The report entitled Car Hire April 2010 from the UK’s leading pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO) outfit classified 356 of the UK’s most popular global locations, where car rental companies are subsequently booked. Google rankings on were also taken into consideration to determine the order of the most used terms and reference websites.

Findings showed that ‘car hire’ was the single largest search term, with 201,000 searches in April. This accounted for 14 per cent of all searches related to car hire. The most popular destination was Spain, with 33,100 searches conducted under ‘Car hire Spain’ – equivalent to 31 per cent of all overseas searches.

Thrifty and Budget both increased visibility under natural search terms by 13 per cent, while Avis has grown its visibility by 44 per cent since January. Suncar debuted in the top 60, while CarHire3000 was the most prominent advertiser.