Here Are the Most Popular Brands in America

Regional differences can be enlightening for brands, far beyond knowing whether you say water or wooder.  

Is your city a Coca-Cola town or does Pepsi reign? Is Ford bigger than Chrysler in your hood? How about Hulu versus Netflix? These are the questions that stalk the nation's biggest brands--and the subject of a new 24/7 Wall Street survey, which recently reviewed 12 months of search results. After running them through Google Trends, the results show the most popular brands in each state.

That list, truncated below, might mean little for smaller companies, as the likelihood of spying your company's name might be slim. But the end result may well prove enlightening; your brand  shares similarities with others on the list.

It should be noted that the brand specified for each state is not necessarily the most searched brand but rather the brand with the most searches relative to other states. Also, the reasons behind the higher volume of searches for a brand range from the location of the corporate headquarters to how much the brand serves that region. 

Here are the most searched brands in the 10 largest states: 

1. California

Brand: Yahoo
Nationwide total brand searches: 70,901,530

Yahoo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, which may account for the strong interest in the search engine among state residents. 

2. Florida

Brand: Bank of America
Nationwide total brand searches: 13,600,000

The residents of the Sunshine State are unusually interested in many brands, including PayPal and Home Depot, but in particular Bank of America. 

3. Georgia

Brand: Family Dollar Stores
Nationwide total brand searches: 1,000,000

Out of roughly 1 million searches for the discount store nationwide, 57,590 came from Georgia, which routinely ranks toward the bottom by median household income.

4. Illinois

Brand: Walgreens
Nationwide total brand searches: 10,938,380

Interest in the most widely Googled drugstore is likely due to the headquarters being located in Deerfield, Illinois.

5. Michigan

Brand: Ford
Nationwide total brand searches: 1,220,000

The Big Three car manufacturers, Chrysler, GM and Ford, are all headquartered in Detroit, Michigan.

6. New York

Brand: Twitter
Nationwide total brand searches: 13,584,070

Twitter's IPO in 2013 may explain why the finance capital of the world is so interested. 

7. North Carolina

Brand: Time Warner Cable
Nationwide total brand searches: 5,914,370

North Carolina's disproportionate share of searches is likely associated with the Time Warner Cable Arena located in Charlotte. 

8. Ohio

Brand: ESPN
Nationwide total brand searches: 24,900,000

Home to eight NCAA Division I college football teams and many other professional sports teams outside of football, Ohio is a state invested in sports, which explains the high interest in ESPN.

9. Pennsylvania

Brand: Siemens
Nationwide total brand searches: 206,270

With 36 locations in Pennsylvania, far more than most other states, international tech company Siemens has captured the interest of the state's residents.

10. Texas

Brand: American Airlines
Nationwide total brand searches: 5,000,000