In these unsure economic times, people want answers - one reason perhaps why Google's brand value is soaring and bank brands are plunging.

Google's brand value rose 25% to $31.9bn (£19.5bn) from the year before according to Interbrand's survey of global brands, the year's largest rise.

This is the first time that the total worth of the world's top 100 brands - down 4.6% at $1.15 trillion - fell.

The world's two most valuable brands are Coca Cola and IBM.

In a year when some banks were taken under government control and others fought off
collapse, the worth of financial brands plunged.

Citi's brand worth fell 49% to $10.2bn, while that of UBS fell 50% to $4.3bn. The worth of American Express's brand fell 32% to £14.9bn and that of Morgan Stanley fell 26% to $6.39bn.

Car companies are struggling to make cars that people want to buy in these straitened times, were also hard hit. Toyota, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and Porsche all saw their brand values plunge.

"Some historically valuable brands normally associated with scale and stability, experienced a very bad year," Interbrand said, alluding to the deprived performance of bank and car brands.

Brands that performed badly were those perceived to have "fundamentally broken" businesses, a category which included UBS, it said.

Tougher economic times can lead to people re-evaluating "the nature of the relationships that we have with brands and indeed how confident we feel in brands to live up to the promises they make," Jez Frampton, Interbrand CEO, said.

"Brands are promises which we value and are prepared to pay for and if we feel those promises have been broken, we're less probable to trust."

But some brands are resistant to downturn. While consumers may have less cash for big-ticket items such as cars, and their distrust of banks has increased, they still have sufficient coins in their pocket for Coca Cola, McDonalds, Gillette and H&M.
Interbrand said that "Brands that are day-to-day staples and are easy to purchase and experience have done well."

The very top-end brands - those which speak of lavishness for the very few, with names such as Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton and Hermes - held their own, falling less than the average drop of 5%.

World's top 10 valuable brands in 2009

1. Coca-Cola, up 3 percent to $68.73 billion



2. IBM, up 2 percent to $60.21 billion



3. Microsoft, down 4 percent to $56.65 billion



4. GE, down 10 percent to $47.78 billion



5. Nokia, down 3 percent to $34.87 billion



6. McDonald's, up 4 percent to $32.28 billion



7. Google, up 25 percent to $31.98 billion



8. Toyota, down 8 percent to $31.33 billion



9. Intel, down 2 percent to $30.64 billion



10. Disney, down 3 percent to $28.45 billion

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