THIS guest blog post was written by Chris Lunn, marketing and online manager at Hartwell. You can follow Hartwell on Twitter or join their Facebook page here.

AT Hartwell, we were recently using Google Trends data to learn more about the state of the automotive industry online, and came across some fascinating facts that we just had to share.

Google’s publicly available trend data shows how people search for different words to reflect the rise and fall of popularity for certain keywords in different areas around the world. Here are our five favourite facts from Google Trends.

1. Used cars are more popular than new cars, except for in New Zealand

In the United Kingdom, there are approximately 1.5m searches in Google for used car related terms each month, and only 300,000 searches for new car terms. However, this trend doesn’t appear to be the same for the kiwis, who as a nation make more searches online for new cars than old cars.

2. 4x4s are the most searched for car type in the UK, but convertibles are the most searched for in the United States

It appears one method of finding out whether a location is going have good whether or not is to compare the search volumes of different car types. In the United States, convertible cars were the highest searched for car style, with the most popular region for that term being Miami. In the United Kingdom, it appears our preference as a nation is to take shelter from the unpredictable weather in 4x4s.

3. Hybrid cars are more popular than electric cars in the United States and Canada, but not here in the United Kingdom

What’s the difference you ask? Hybrid cars combine both gas and electricity as power source, where electric cars are well, just powered by electricity. This trend has likely got far more to do with the increased availability of hybrid cars in the United States, although the difference in search volume is rather interesting.

4. Land Rovers are most heavily searched for in Milton Keynes, UK

Despite Land Rovers traditionally being designed for well, land, almost all of the areas with the highest search volumes are very urban cities, with Milton Keynes taking the number one city in the world for Land Rover related searches on Google.

5. There are more searches in Google for ‘fast car’ than ‘reliable car’ or ‘safe car’ in all countries except for Australia, where ‘safe car’ is almost as popular as ‘fast car’.

Unsurprisingly, fast cars are the top of the list when it comes to searching in Google in both the United States and United Kingdom. However, it would seem that Austrailians are slightly more concerned about the safety of their vehicles with the number of searches for ‘safe car’ related terms being almost as popular as those for ‘fast car’ terms. Interestingly, it appears that the search volume for ‘eco friendly car’ is so insignificant relative to the other categories that it barely makes a mark on the graphs below.

This guest blog post was written by Chris Lunn, marketing and online manager at Hartwell. You can follow Hartwell on Twitter or join their Facebook page here.