Offline brands continue to surge in popularity online

The online world and offline worlds continue to merge as brands synonymous with the "real world" embrace the power of the internet to assert their status online.

Research by Nielsen and UK Online Measurement (UKOM) found half of the UK's most popular online brands already have an offline presence, up from 18 in 2004, after firms like Argos, ASDA, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer all took major strides to improve their web offerings.

The top of the list is dominated by the usual suspects, though, with seven of the top 10 the same firms from 2004. This "magnificent seven", as dubbed by Neilsen, are MSN, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, BBC, eBay and Amazon.

The final firms on the list are made up of new social media giants YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook, which surged to number three, while Google is top of the pops.

UKOM general manager James Smythe said the changes in the top 50 brands since 2004 had been facilitated by the growth in social content and the realisation by large firms that they could attract their customer base online as well as in-store.

"Over the last seven years we see two broad developments: first, huge growth in the use of sites built on social content, and second, websites with a high-street or 'real-world' presence translating the strength of their offline brands into online audiences," he said.

"Traditional brands have successfully harnessed the trust and confidence consumers have had with their established businesses offline, by migrating them to their sites on the web."

However, for every winner there must be a loser, and there are several brands that have entirely slipped out of the Top 50 since 2004, with butler-powered search engine Ask Jeeves nowhere to be seen and Freeserve, lycos and Demon all suffering a similar fate.

The full top ten, then and now, is shown below.

24 Feb 2011