UK wrong-fuel searches by the fuel mix-up they name
Petrol in a diesel accounts for 56.8% of UK wrong-fuel searches that name a specific mix-up, against 21.5% for diesel in a petrol, in the Fuel Fixer Google Ads search-terms report covering the account's lifetime to its August 2026 export.
Which fuel mix-ups UK drivers name when they search for help after putting the wrong fuel in. Each row is a mix-up (petrol in a diesel, diesel in a petrol, AdBlue, water, screen wash, red diesel, contaminated fuel, or no specific mix-up named), with its share of search impressions and clicks and the number of distinct query phrasings. Built from the search-terms report of the Fuel Fixer Google Ads account, account lifetime to the August 2026 export. Shares, not counts: the figures describe the searches the ads were shown against, not total UK search volume.
Wrong fuel search data at a glance
| Version | 2026.10 |
|---|---|
| Last updated | 3 October 2026 |
| Rows | 8 |
| Source | Fuel Fixer Ltd, Google Ads search-terms report (account lifetime, exported August 2026) |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 |
| Formats | CSV, JSON, Parquet, Croissant |
Search demand by fuel mix-up: first 8 rows
| mix up | label | share of impressions pct | share of clicks pct | distinct query phrasings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| petrol-in-diesel | Petrol in a diesel | 25.22 | 30.3 | 1127 |
| diesel-in-petrol | Diesel in a petrol | 9.56 | 8.42 | 595 |
| adblue | AdBlue in the wrong tank | 6.69 | 3.53 | 7862 |
| water | Water in the fuel | 1.3 | 0.58 | 710 |
| screen-wash | Screen wash in the wrong tank | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| red-diesel | Red diesel | 0.05 | 0.01 | 385 |
| contaminated | Contaminated or bad fuel | 1.6 | 0.7 | 800 |
| none | No specific mix-up named | 55.58 | 56.46 | 97279 |
Method
Every search term in the account-lifetime search-terms report was lower-cased, de-duplicated and assigned to the first mix-up whose pattern it matches — for example a petrol word followed by "in" or "into" and then "diesel". Terms naming no specific mix-up (such as "wrong fuel near me") form their own row. Shares are of total impressions and total clicks across all terms. Terms with no impressions and obvious non-motoring searches were excluded.
Limitations
The report covers searches the ads were eligible to appear for, so it reflects the account's keywords, budgets and bidding over time as well as driver behaviour. It is not total UK search volume. Shares can shift as campaigns change. Other exports from the same business were not merged, because they may overlap this one and would double-count.
Sources
Fuel Fixer Ltd, Google Ads search-terms report (account lifetime, exported August 2026). How the report is produced: Google Ads Help, search terms report.
Download the search demand by fuel mix-up data
- CSV sha256 790ed5830c209380…
- JSON sha256 c8640e6012f1b01d…
- Parquet sha256 31e45aebe5967a10…
- Croissant JSON-LD for ML tooling
- Markdown version of this page
Cite this
Misfuel Doctor (2026). UK wrong-fuel searches by the fuel mix-up they name (v2026.10). https://mis-fueldoctor.co.uk/datasets/wrong-fuel-search-demand/. CC BY 4.0.
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: reuse it, including commercially, with credit. See the licence page.
Sister data: Wrong Fuel Drain publishes the fuel-drain coverage dataset (catalogue: DCAT). Each dataset lives on one site only.