The government’s car scrappage scheme has been live for a few months now, and the consensus from the industry seems to be that it is starting to have an impact on new car sales. Looking at our search data, the word ‘scrappage’ has certainly gained currency in the UK; for the 12 weeks ending 15/08/09 we monitored nearly 12,000 distinct search terms containing the word. The chart below illustrates the volume of searches for three of the most popular generic variations: ‘scrappage scheme’, ‘car scrappage scheme’ and ‘government scrappage scheme’.

As you can see, searches peaked when scheme was launched back in the spring, then declined, but have maintained a pretty consistent level during the summer months. The table below illustrates the top 20 sites receiving traffic from ‘scrappage scheme’ (currently the most popular scrappage-related search term) for the 12 weeks ending 15/08/09.

The biggest recipient of traffic from the term is UK Car Scrappage Scheme, an affiliate site that has clearly done a good SEO job (the vast majority of its traffic comes via organic search). The table above includes another affiliate site, as well as Directgov, the main UK government online portal, and other content driven sites such as Telegraph Motoring, Google News UK and BBC News. In total, Automotive sites currently pick up over 70% of traffic from the search term ‘scrappage scheme’. However, this category also includes the likes of UK Car Scrappage Scheme, so a more accurate picture is provided by looking at the Automotive sub-categories that are having success with the term.
For the 12 weeks ending 15/08/09, the Automotive Manufacturers category was the biggest recipient of traffic from the term, picking up 39.5% of clicks. It was followed by Automotive Classifieds (1.9%) and Automotive Dealerships (0.9%). The Dealerships category is much smaller than the other two, but it has received the biggest boost in traffic as a result of the scheme. UK Internet visits to Automotive Dealerships websites increase by 3.8% between July 2008 and July 2009, whereas traffic to Automotive Classifieds and Automotive Manufacturers declined by 7.4% and 13.6% respectively over the same period.
Given the catastrophic impact of the recession on the car industry, you would expect a decline in traffic to Automotive Manufacturer websites, albeit one that has been softened by the scrappage scheme. However, there are manufacturers that have bucked the trend and actually experienced an increase in UK traffic to their sites over the last 12 months. Looking at the top 10 Automotive Manufacturer websites, both Fiat and Toyota have experienced increases in traffic to their homepages over the period, while Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Renault have all improved their market share within the category.
Of course, there will be a number of reasons for these success stories (most notably in the case of Fiat, the popularity of its 500 model), but it is clear that the scrappage scheme has played a part. ‘fiat scrappage’ was the 8th most popular scrappage-related search term during the 12 weeks ending 15/08/09, and the most popular branded scrappage term. Other brands that appeared in the list of top 20 scrappage terms included: Peugeot, Fort, Hyundai, Vauxhall and Renault.
But who is searching for scrappage information online? To try and understand this io pulled the Experian Mosaic data for UK Car Scrappage Scheme, currently the most popular scrappage site. The graph below illustrates three key data points for the 12 weeks ending 15/08/09: the X axis illustrates the extent to which each Mosaic Type is represented as a visitor to the site, with those returning an index of over 100 being more likely to visit the site than the average; the Y axis illustrates the propensity for the households within each Mosaic Type to own three or more cars; the size of the circle illustrates the percentage of the site’s visitors coming from each Mosaic Type. As you can see, the graph shows a clear correlation between the number of cars owned and the likelihood of visiting the UK Car Scrappage Scheme website.


Key to Experian Mosaic types

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