The online prominence of brands can be a key metric for brand owners, and can serve as a data input for a number of areas, including search-engine optimisation (SEO) and web-traffic analysis, and brand valuation. Overall, it provides a measure of the amount of accessible brand-related online content - both official and third-party - and can also provide an indication of the likelihood of a brand being targeted by infringers. 

We have developed a simple methodology for quantifying the relative online prominence of brands, based on the concept of ‘brand content score’ (a metric for measuring the amount of brand-related content on an individual webpage), using a sample of the most highly-ranked search-engine webpages returned in response to relevant search terms. We have applied this principle to the top twenty fashion brands of 2023.

The analysis finds that the top five most prominent fashion brands are Nike, Gucci, Skims, Dior, and Burberry. Significantly, no strong correlation was found between online prominence and brand rankings (as measured by the Lyst Index), though this is perhaps unsurprising given that Lyst attempts to reflect the frequency of use of brand-specific searches by Internet users, and mentions and engagement on other platforms such as social media. By contrast, our measure of prominence is focused specifically on search-engine visibility, and the extent of brand-related content on the most highly-related webpages (i.e. factors more closely connected with SEO).

However, the methodology does provide meaningful insights in its own right, and extensions to the technique could be applied to produce deeper-dives of content relating to specific industry areas, and allow analysis of other characteristics, such as brand sentiment. 

You can read the full report of our findings here.