Microsoft is most-mentioned brand online in 2009, Google ranks second

According to a study just released by online marketing agency Zeta Interactive, Microsoft was the most-mentioned brand in an analysis of online posts on Facebook, Twitter and blogs in 2009, with 4% more post volume than #2 Google.

Microsoft’s wide array of industry-leading software, hardware, development tools and online products, along with two major product releases — Windows 7 and Bing — gave it a bigger online buzz footprint than Google, whose many product forays in 2009 were used primarily by smaller groups of early adopters. Chrome has yet to achieve 5% market share, Gmail still only gets a quarter as many visits as Yahoo Mail and about half as many as Microsoft Hotmail (according to Experian Hitwise data from last week), Google Apps is only slowly chipping away at Microsoft’s enterprise dominance, and Google’s mobile platform, Android, only had a few months of 2009 to compete with iPhone.

Google, it seems, is still known mainly for search, and there’s not a lot to say about a search engine besides “I found it on Google,” while network admins and end-users alike are constantly abuzz about Microsoft just to get their jobs done.

Zeta listed the top 10 brands in its survey, which included tech brands Apple, Sony and Blackberry. Discount retailers Amazon.com, Target and Walmart also fell into the top 10, demonstrating the cost-consciousness of Internet shoppers during a recession. Honda was the most mentioned auto brand in the year US-based auto companies nearly collapsed. Nike was the lone sports brand in the group, but it benefited from tech talk surrounding Nike Plus iPod, which was named Digital Campaign of the Decade by AdWeek.

Zeta also measured the overall tone of the posts, and found that the average among the top 10 was 83% positive. Microsoft and Google were in line with the average — perhaps the “I’m a PC” ad campaign and the launch of Bing had a positive effect for the often derided Microsoft. But Blackberry had the largest percentage of positive posts, at 92%.

Deal-hungry recession shoppers seem to have turned sentiment around for Walmart, about whom posts registered 91% positive. Sony and Apple had the least positive sentiment, at only 71% and 74% respectively. It appears that high functioning computers and gadgets are problematic for many, while Blackberry keeps turning out solid products that users don’t need to complain about.