Searches for the most competitive rates on the market saw British Gas as the top utility with a 26 per cent share in visibility, while Npower came second with 22 per cent and EDF Energy third with 15 per cent.
The research, from digital marketing agency Greenlight, revealed that consumer online searches through search engine Google UK have been in steady decline since March this year, most likely due to a hot summer.
However, search volumes over the 2013 summer period from May to July amounted to 790,000, up on a lull of 655,000 recorded in the period from August to October in 2012.
Greenlight said this is likely to be down to “consumer shrewdness”, with the UK’s big six energy firms recently indicating they would increase energy bills in the coming months.
While, unsurprisingly the number of searches peaked in December at 430,000 due to the cold weather, they also remained high from the moths of March and April at 310,000 and 260,000 respectively.