• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 6, 2023

Compare the Market, a search-engine platform that provides comparison shopping prices, released its annual most-searched cars report. The winner is Toyota, for the third consecutive year.

The data, based on Google Trends, provides insight into the car brands consumers have searched for the most in the past year on Google. The analysis looks at trends in 155 countries for 2022, where data was available.

Porsche did not appear in the 2022 report, but it did in prior years. Tesla, Renault, Rolls Royce and Mazda also experienced major losses in 2022.  

One important point to note is that queries on search engines like Google reflects the brands and products or services consumers are interested in learning more about, and are not necessarily based on purchases.

With that in mind, the 2022 analysis -- based on Google Trend data -- shows Toyota was the most popular search of any car brand in 69 of the 155 countries included in the research. The brand accounts for about 44.5% of total searches, up from 31% of searches in 2021.

This should not be not surprising, considering that Consumer Reports named Toyota and its high-end model, Lexus, the most reliable car brands for 2022.

Toyota also was named the most trusted automotive brand in Australia, where it surpassed searches for competitors such as Mazda and Ford.

In the United States last year, the search volume for Toyota on average each month reached 2,740,000

BMW, the most searched in 36 countries, took second place, and Mercedes, in 10 countries, took third page.

Ireland gave BMW the honor of being the most-searched car for 2022, while Audi and Toyota were respectively the second and third most searched cars in Ireland.  

Along with Toyota, the three brands have consistently held at the top for each of the five years Compare the Market has run their analysis. Of those, 2019 was the only year that Toyota fell below BMW.

After gaining impressive traction in 2021 and closing the gap between it and BMW by almost 70%, Mercedes lost more than half of the countries it held last year over the course of 2022.

Jeep had success for the first time in the history of the report. It was the most-searched car brand in Bhutan, followed by GM and Tesla.

Nissan also saw considerable improvement in its ranking. The manufacturer increased from No. 10 in 2021 to No. 6 in 2022, which was the largest advance other than Jeep’s debut in the top 10.

Compare the Market provides a search engine to query the cost of car insurance, electricity and gas, banking and finance, and fuel and travel.