Who comes out ahead in my Google searches and website checks.
The Meerkat Index looks at two things: how companies get found on Google, and what a customer meets when they open the website on a phone. It goes one category at a time. Cars is the first.
I combine what I observe in public search results and on websites with Lighthouse lab scores and DataForSEO’s modelled traffic estimates. The sources and their limits are on the method page. Nobody pays to be in it. How the Meerkat Index measures, and how to correct us
Edition 1, cars, November 2026
30 car searches, repeated on two days. Which sites showed up both times?
I picked 20 car marketplaces and dealer groups that I track. I ran 30 searches a car buyer or seller would type, on 6 and 7 November, and wrote down who was on page 1 both days. The searches are a list I chose, not a sample of everything people search for. Then I ran automated checks on their websites at phone size: the home page, an offer page and a contact link.
Cobus van Vuuren, RhinoBerry. Searches run 6 and 7 November 2026. Phone checks 6 and 7 November 2026.
Round 1, marketplaces
Here, “winner” means the site on page 1 for the most searches on both days. It doesn’t mean the biggest audience, the best website or the strongest business.
Your guess first. Same 30 searches for every site. Which marketplace held a page-1 spot on both days most often?
Made your pick? Show the result
Words inside the block: – Overlay prompt: “Pick one. Then I’ll show you the count.” – Skip link: “Skip, just show me” – Reveal, right pick: “You picked it. {name} was on page 1 on both days for {n} of 30 searches.” – Reveal, wrong pick with n of 1 or more: “You picked {name}. It held {n} of 30 on both days. {winner} led with {max}.” – Reveal, wrong pick with n = 0: “I didn’t see {name}’s website on page 1 on both days for any of the 30. {winner} led with {max}.” – Added when first and second are one apart: “One search separated first and second.” – Reveal after a skip: “{winner} led with {max} of 30 searches.”
Caption: Searches (of 30) where each marketplace’s own website was on page 1 on both 6 and 7 November 2026. Google search set to South Africa, desktop and English. Five of the seven marketplaces are shown. The full board lists all seven.
(Shown after the reveal.) Cars.co.za 10, AutoTrader 9. No other marketplace I track held a spot on both days. Count a search if the site was there on either day, and AutoTrader leads instead, 23 to 19. Car marketplaces: two sites, one search apart
Round 2, dealer groups
Same definition of “winner”: the most searches on page 1 on both days, nothing more. Now the dealer groups. Same 30 searches. Which one held a page-1 spot on both days most often?
Made your pick? Show the result
Words inside the block: overlay prompt “Pick one.” Same skip link and reveal sentences as Round 1, including the n = 0 wording.
Caption: Searches (of 30) where each group’s main website was on page 1 on both days. Same dates and settings. Five of the 13 dealer groups and independent dealers are shown.
Dealer groups often run a separate website for each dealership. I counted each group’s main website only, and a subdomain of that site counts too. So the count may understate a group’s combined visibility where separately registered dealership sites also show up. Dealer groups: who buyers find, and who they miss
The counting rule changes the winner. Hatfield Motor Group leads the dealer groups on both days (3 to 2), but CFAO Mobility leads on either day (8 to 7). Cars.co.za leads the marketplaces on both days (10 to 9), but AutoTrader leads on either day (23 to 19). I publish both, and rank on both days because it rewards showing up reliably.
Page 1 moves between the two days
I ran the same 30 searches on two days. 56% of the page-1 spots changed hands between them.
Of the 200 website-and-search pairs on page 1 on 6 November, 88 (44%) were still there for the same search on 7 November. I left out Facebook and Reddit posts, and counted a brand’s subdomains as the brand. Not one of the 30 searches showed the same page-1 order on both days. Daily totals can hide changes in which searches a site shows up for. That’s why a brand only counts here if it was on page 1 on both days.
Caption: Searches where each site was on page 1 on 6 November, on 7 November, and on both. Cars.co.za 15, 14 and 10. AutoTrader 14, 18 and 9. Hatfield Motor Group 4, 6 and 3. CFAO Mobility 5, 5 and 2. Auto Pedigree 4, 3 and 1.
If you check your own Google ranking once and file it, you’ve seen one day. Check it again on another day before you decide anything.
Who owns page 1
Most of page 1 went to sites outside the 20 I tracked.
58% and 54% of page-1 results went to other websites outside my 20 brands (not counting Facebook and Reddit), on 6 and 7 November. 14% and 19% went to Cars.co.za and AutoTrader together. 15 of 20 brands didn’t hold a page-1 spot on both days for any of the 30 searches.
Caption: Page-1 results across the 30 searches: 274 on 6 November and 272 on 7 November. Other websites, excluding Facebook and Reddit, 58% and 54%. Cars.co.za and AutoTrader 14% and 19%. My other 18 brands 8% both days. Facebook and Reddit posts 20% and 19%. A Facebook or Reddit post never counts for a brand’s own website.
The outside sites that held 2 or more searches on both days:
- car.trovit.co.za, 4 of 30
- carmag.co.za, 2
- gumtree.co.za, 2
- kia.co.za, 2
- onlycars.co.za, 2
- searchmyride.co.za, 2
- webuycars.co.za, 2
- webuyyourcar.co.za, 2
- weelee.co.za, 2
- wingfieldmotors.co.za, 2
- zambezirides.co.za, 2
A listings aggregator, Trovit, held 4 searches on both days. That’s more than 18 of the 20 brands I track. No other outside site held more than 2, so the rest of page 1 is spread thin across many sites.
You can run this test on your own business in an afternoon. Write down the searches your customers type, leave out your own name, and look at who’s on page 1.
Audience and presence
Bigger search audiences mostly mean more page-1 spots. Not always.
Caption: Across: estimated monthly visits from Google search (DataForSEO’s model, not the companies’ own numbers), on a log scale. Up: how many of the 30 searches the site held on both days. Not plotted: SCW Mobility Group, because a log scale can’t show its estimate of 0 (it still counts in the correlation), and Surf4Cars, which has no estimate.
Put the 19 brands with an estimate in order by search visits, then by page-1 spots, and the two lists tend to agree. The rank correlation is 0.64, where 1 would mean identical order. The two biggest audiences of those 19, AutoTrader and Cars.co.za, are also the two page-1 leaders.
That’s partly built in. DataForSEO models its visit estimate from the searches a site already ranks for, so the two numbers aren’t independent.
The exceptions are the interesting part. CarFind has the third-largest estimated audience of the 19 with an estimate, about 158,000 visits a month. It was on page 1 for 2 searches on 6 November and 5 on 7 November, but never the same search twice, so it held none on both days. One dealer group with about 85,000 estimated visits held none either.
What a buyer sees first
I opened the ten sites from the two rounds at phone size. On six, a cookie notice or pop-up sat on the first screen.
On three of the ten, it covered most of the screen. These ten are the quiz options above, not a sample of either category.
Caption: The home pages of the ten sites in the two rounds, first screen at phone size, one load each, 7 November 2026.
One load is a snapshot. A second visit, another time of day or an accepted cookie can look different.
Speed on a phone
None of the 19 home pages I tested had a median Lighthouse mobile score of 90 or more.
Caption: Lighthouse mobile performance score for each home page, the median of 5 retained runs, with the lowest and highest run shown as a line. Surf4Cars couldn’t be tested. It’s a lab score under my test conditions, not a measure of real visitors. 90 and above counts as good. Highest score: CarFind at 61. Lowest: 5.
Even the best score here sits 29 points short of good.
Under the hood
I saw tracking tags on more home pages than contact links.
18 of the 19 home pages I checked carry at least one tracking tag. 12 of 19 show any of a tap-to-call link, a WhatsApp link or a contact form. One by one, 14 carry a Meta (Facebook) pixel and 14 a Google Analytics 4 tag, and I saw tap-to-call on 8, a form on 6 and WhatsApp on 3.
Note: Observed on the tested pages, at phone size. “Not observed” means I didn’t see it there, not that the business doesn’t have it.
What to take from it
Four checks worth copying for your own business.
Pick 20 to 30 searches your customers type without your name in them, and count how often your own site is on page 1. Do it on two different days, and count only what held both times. Open your home page on your own phone and look at what covers the first screen. Then run a Lighthouse mobile test five times and keep the middle score. The marketplace report walks through every step. Car marketplaces: two sites, one search apart
Headline results for every brand.
See both boards in full · Method and corrections
Latest from the Index
- Category report: Car marketplaces: two sites, one search apart
- Category report: Dealer groups: who buyers find, and who they miss
- Method: How the Meerkat Index measures, and how to correct us
[CARD: Category report] Dealer groups: who buyers find, and who they miss [CARD: Method] How the Meerkat Index measures, and how to correct us
I observe public search results and public websites. I don’t measure visitors, leads, sales or revenue. I chose the 30 searches and the brand list before collecting anything. During review I corrected the brand groups, how subdomains count and a duplicated second sample, and every change is dated on the method page. No company paid to be included, and none can pay to change a result. Something wrong? Email [email protected] and I’ll re-check within a week.
The Meerkat Index is published by RhinoBerry. RhinoBerry is a Growth & Systems Partner that helps businesses win more clients, consistently.
Want a read on your own business? The free Business Momentum Score takes about 4 minutes and names your weakest area, from being found to winning enquiries. It’s separate from the Index and has no effect on any result. [https://score.rhinoberry.com/]