Which car brands won the internet last year: What you clicked on most

Data compiled by digital analytics firm Similarweb has laid bare our changing taste in cars – and automotive brands – and revealed the surge in interest in hybrid and electric vehicles.

Japanese car giant Toyota – the market leader in Australia for the past 20 years in a row – clocked up more than 23 million visits to its website last year, but there were some big upsets among the other brands.

Second-placed in the sales race, Mazda, was predictably the second most searched car website in Australia last year.

However the number of visitors to its website dropped by 8.5 per cent compared to the prior year, from 8.4 million to 7.7 million.

Visits to the Australian website for South Korean car-maker Kia surged by 12.6 per cent last year and the total came close to overtaking Mazda, rising from 6.4 million in 2021 to 7.2 million in 2022.

Despite suffering a sales setback – and falling behind Kia in the annual new-car sales race for the first time in Australia – Hyundai's website traffic is still strong, up 4.3 per cent from 6.4 million in 2021 to 6.7 million in 2022.

Interest in Ford remained stable (up 0.1 per cent) with 5.7 million visits to its official website last year, according to Similarweb data.

But Ford is being closely followed by Mitsubishi after posting a 9.6 per cent increase in visitors to its website, up from 5.1 million in 2021 to 5.6 million in 2022.

Interest in hybrid and electric vehicles hit record highs last year.

Electric-car specialist Tesla had 5.4 million visits to its Australian website in 2022, an increase of 13.1 per cent (up from 4.8 million the year prior).

Toyota attracted 1.4 million visits to its hybrid vehicle pages alone – which represented 45 per cent of all Australian hybrid vehicle traffic to manufacturer websites in 2022, according to Similarweb data.

In a trend that might worry some familiar brands, visits to the official Australian websites for Suzuki and Isuzu Ute were down last year – as Chinese brands continued to grow.

MG posted a 35 per cent increase in traffic to its official website in Australia last year, up from 2.4 million in 2021 to 3.2 million in 2022, according to Similarweb.

Fellow Chinese brand GWM Haval (formerly known as Great Wall Motors Haval) was up 21.9 per cent from 900,000 visits in 2021 to 1.1 million in 2022.

But LDV – which was outsold by GWM Haval last year – still had more traffic to its website, up from 1.1 million in 2021 to 1.3 million in 2022, an increase of 15.9 per cent.

In other upsets, Holden had more visitors to its website than Chinese arrival BYD – despite the Holden brand being axed in Australia by US car giant General Motors two years ago (Holden - 2020: 831,695 / 2021: 616,534 down 34.9 per cent / 2022: 508,547 down 17.5 per cent).

And while the Toyota Corolla might be one of the world's best-selling cars, interest in it appears to be waning in Australia.

Of the top-three small-car sellers, the Hyundai i30 received the most searches on its official website, posting 103,988 visits last year, ahead of the Mazda 3 (97,878) and Toyota Corolla (84,317).

A sign of the times, interest in the pint-sized Suzuki Jimny four-wheel-drive remains high – even though wait times have blown out to 12 months on some models and orders have been paused for the automatic three-door until the backlog is cleared.

Even though 5700 examples of the Suzuki Jimny were reported as sold in Australia last year, there were 50,963 searches for the vehicle on the official Suzuki website.

Below is a highlights package from data firm Similarweb (not all brands are listed).

– Similarweb data, not all brands listed.