MUMBAI: Google remains India‘s Most Trusted for the third year in a row but the gap with the second ranked Facebook is a miniscule 3 per cent, according to brand trust research agency Trust Research Advisory (TRA).

An analysis of the All India Most Trusted ranks shows that Google (All India rank 44) fell 13 ranks and Facebook (All India rank 48) gained 17 ranks to bridge the gap, says TRA.

Yahoo still stood as the third Most Trusted Internet brand despite its 62 rank fall in All India Brand Trust rank.

Google‘s Orkut, steadied at 4th rank despite a significant fall in daily visitors from India. Ebay follows as India‘s fifth Most Trusted Internet brand with a very small difference in BTI from the previous. The top six of last year are repeated in the same order this year as well.

TRA noted that the number of brands represented in the Internet category this year has gone up from just 14 in 2012 to 25 this year showing a direct increase in the trust internet based exchanges have begun to garner.

The Brand Trust Report, India Study - 2013, is the third in its series researched and published by TRA. This year‘s research was conducted in 16 cities generating 19000 unique brands across 211 categories. Trust Research Advisory is a part of the Comniscient Group, a group of India‘s largest non-advertising based communication businesses.

TRA CEO N. Chandramouli said, "Two reasons online brands rely significantly on trust more than any other. Firstly, the exchanges are without any physical interface, and secondly, the online world is cluttered with choices that make loyalty ephemeral. With most of the new brands entering the Most Trusted list this year being from Online Shopping or Internet Services, there will be no stopping this sub-category from seeing accelerated growth over the next 12 months."

The leaders in the various sub-categories are Naukri leading in Internet Services, Youtube in Online Sharing, Ebay in Online Shopping, Google in Internet Tools and Facebook in Social Networking.

A study of the number of brands in each sub-categories shows that Internet Tools is represented by nine brands, Online Shopping by eight brands, Social Networking by four brands and Online sharing and Online Services by two brands each.