Technology

There is a dodgy car rental brand in australia, nz, usa and canada that i had used, and exclusively markets to overseas tourists, but not locals - presumably because locals would know that they should not rent a car that failed the technical inspection and is illegal to drive, which to the surprise of nobody happens a lot with cheap, 20 year old rental cars. It's very hard to find organic customer reviews of the company, because their own SEO drowns out any authentic customer voices:

• Their links come from "paid blog posts" (they pay the blogger to write some fluff piece) in private travel blogs, advertising banners, forum posts and articles on big travel sites like trip advisor

• Their own "travel tips for #country#" websites which offers the same info as other tourist sites, but where they exclusively mention their own business. They have a whole network of their own sites, each for a different country they opperate in, a different language for the customer nationality they are targeting and the age group/price level they want to serve

• social media channels of course

• In forum posts where the company is mentioned in a bad way, some new account pops up defending the company, or the thread is deleted soon afterwards.

• Same with online reviews on google maps, where the company sits at a 4.5 score, but some bad reviews about deposits not being paid out after the car was returned have magically disappeared.

tl;dr: the internet is all ads!