You may have caught this interesting news piece last week, Brand Finance announced their latest league table ranking the most valuable brands in the world, with Google supplanting Walmart to become the new king of the hill.  Microsoft also rose up the chart, pushing Walmart into third, with IBM and Vodafone making up the top five.  Anyway, we thought it’d be worth while to compare the top ten in terms of share of voice across the news headlines:

As can be seen Google live up to their ranking as the globe’s most valuable brand, weighing in with almost a quarter (24.7%) of all news headlines when compared to their peers.  Although not far behind Google, with 24.17% of stories, is Apple whose coverage has no doubt been buoyed this past month by the release of its iPad 2.  Microsoft comes in at three, but possibly more surprising, is the inclusion of AT&T in fourth with 12.77% share of articles – although this can be explained by the massive spike in coverage since the recent announcement of their intended acquisition of T-Mobile USA.  IBM make up our top five, in terms of news coverage, suggesting perhaps that (American) tech companies make for the best headlines?

Any surprising results in there – brands you think deserve to be ranked higher or ones that deserve more press coverage?  For the complete BrandFinance Global 500 click here.