What happens when you put the most famous brand names in the British high street into Google? Trouble - according to a new survey. 20 out of the top 50 biggest British grocery brands have “major issues” with critical commentators whose websites appear high in the search rankings, according to new work by internet monitoring company Market Sentinel.

The Market Sentinel survey, which involved putting the brand names into Google found that 40% of them had critical or negative commentary in the top ten results. The brands with critical commentary include Coca-Cola, Walker’s crisps, Lucozade, McCain oven chips, Mars Bars and Bird’s Eye fish fingers. Criticism covered corporate issues, product issues and worries about health. Despite the larger budgets of the brand owners, many household names are out-marketed on the internet by critics who use blogs, message boards and single issue sites to get their message across.

PRESS RELEASE: EMBARGOED UNTIL 0001 THURSDAY 30th JUNE 2005

40% of top fifty UK grocery brands “outmarketed by detractors”

According to web guru Jakob Nielsen, for most brands their Google search page is their “home” page, as far as Internet users are concerned. Research shows that more people visit “Ford” on Google than visit the Ford home page. But for many top UK brands their Google search results are dominated by negative commentary, insults, misinformation, or systematic campaigns against them.

A survey by Market Sentinel (www.marketsentinel.com) – a UK-based company specialising in online monitoring and response – shows that twenty of Britain’s top fifty grocery brands have negative commentary amongst the top ten results on their Google search page. For some the negative comment is the number one result.

The brands with critical commentary in Google’s UK top ten search results include Coca-Cola, Walker’s crisps, Lucozade, McCain oven chips, and Mars Bars. For Kingsmill Bread and Bird’s Eye fish fingers the negative results were ranked number one, ahead of the company’s official web presence.

ACNielsen UK grocery brand ranking; Brand; Google ranking of negative sites #

1 Coca-cola 5,7,8,9

2 Walker’s crisps 2

3 Warburton’s bakery 9

4 Cadbury’s dairy milk 10

7 Kingsmill bread 1,2

12 Lucozade 4

17 Bernard Matthews 5, 9

18 KitKat 10

19 McCain 3

21 Flora 6

22 Fanta 3,6

27 Heinz baked beans 9

28 Mr. Kipling 10

32 Tetley tea 7

35 Dairylea 2,3,4,8,10

38 Red Bull 5,10

41 Bird’s Eye fish fingers 1,9

42 Mars bars 4

43 Dolmio sauces 6,10

46 Bird’s Eye chicken 2,4.7,8,10

[Survey date 6th June 2005]

Market Sentinel CEO Mark Rogers suggests that brand-owners need to pay more attention to online detractors. “Corporate PRs and brand owners don’t have to give this crucial ground to their critics. Online detractors can be out-thought, out-argued and out-marketed.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Online detractors, Blogging, Buzz tracking, Competitive Intelligence, Market Sentinel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.