Traditional retailers are also capitalizing on the popularity of furniture leasing. A host of retailers, including Haverty's, are buying Adword campaigns designed to reach rent-to-own consumers.

RTO Online has tracked search engine results for over a decade. Since we last published RTO Online's Rent-to-Own Industry Search Engine Monitor in July, 2008 (see story), there have been significant changes to the top 10. Independent operators Central Rent to Own and Affordable Rent to Own have been pushed out of the top ten in favor of CORT and duplicate listings for both Aaron's and Rent-A-Center. Affordable dropped from 6th to 11th and Central fell from 5th to 22nd. Rent-A-Center continues to dominate Google search results for the generic term "rent to own".

In Rank Order as of 3-25-09: See data table below
1. Aaron Rents (aaronrents.com)
2. Bestway (bestwayrto.com)
3. Rent-A-Center (rentacenter.com)
4. Aaron Rents (shopaarons.com)
5. ColorTyme (colortyme.com)
6. CORT (cort.com/rent-to-own-furniture)
7. Rent-A-Center (www6.rentacenter.com)
*Three of the top 10 (positions 8, 9, 10) listings do not offer consumer rent to own programs and are not listed here.

Significant changes in RTO Online's Rent to Own Industry Search Engine Monitor - term; rent to own furniture - since our last study in July, 2008;

- Bestway moved into second, pushing Rent-A-Center to third.
- Both Aaron's and Rent-A-Center have multiple listings in the top 10.
- Three of the listings are new to the top 10.
- CORT has moved into the top 10 since launching a rent-to-own program in addition to their traditional rent-to-rent.
- CORT is the only top 10 listing that is an interior page (all others are home-page).
- Rent-A-Center's backlinks - other pages linking to the site - decreased from 222 in July 08, to 146. Pagerank was not affected. This is indicative of Google's decreasing reliance on Pagerank for search results placement.
- Relevance factor increased slightly. The top 7 listings were all companies that offer rent-to-own furniture programs. In July 08, 6 of the top 7 were relevant.

Other significant findings from our search reports include;

The industry's most consistent web player is ColorTyme. The company's site is consistently in the top 4 for all popular merchandise category searches including appliances, furniture, "TV" and plasma.

The internet is a place where independent operators can compete with public companies. Single store company FastTrack RTO is second only to 3,000 store Rent-A-Center for the search rent to own plasma.

Traditional retailers are also capitalizing on the popularity of furniture leasing. A host of retailers, including Haverty's, are buying Adword campaigns designed to reach rent-to-own consumers.