Reputation Management Online

I saw a news article on the BBC about the top 100 brands in the world and thought it would be interesting to see how their rankings were reflected on the Internet in terms of Reputation Management.  I got the list off Interbrand which runs a report each year.  All the main brands have a http://en.wikipedia.org page but I decided not to list every Wiki page, you can easily find them yourself. The results are from the searches I did on Google.com

1. Coca Cola – Number one in the report, it looks like they have about 4 websites on the first page but this massive giant still has a negative result number 7 http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-coca-cola.html
2. IBM – One negative from the same site as Coca Cola http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-ibm.html Number 5, International Brotherhood of Magicians number 8, so as long as you don’t annoy one of these magical guys you should be OK
3. Microsoft – They pretty much dominate the first page through all the sites they run from bing to xbox,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft being the main issue
4. GE – So far is doing very well like Microsoft however they also have negatives about them on the Wiki page
5. Nokia – Have done a great job with their reputation online dominating pretty much the first page, again a wiki page with negative content is still available.
6. Macdonalds – falls into the category of having a name with a lots of other people (Scots) and businesses helping drown out negative content.  Of course there is a wiki page but on one of those rare occasions the page is about Kevin B. MacDonald so well done Macdonalds the only company so far not to have anything negative on the first page in google.com
7. Google – Guess what there is not one negative piece of content about Google not even a wiki page, I wonder how they manage that
8. Toyota – At the time I did this research Toyota had a couple of negative news stories, wiki page and this one http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10353116-54.html number 10
9. Intel – Intel have a clear bill of health apart from Wiki page
10. Disney – Have done very well, even the wiki page was number 9 in the results, a few negative news stories but not directed at them, well done!!!

I will look at the following 90 brands over the course of the week and give feedback on any that really stand out.  What is amazing is how much weight Google gives to Wiki pages.  Many of these wiki pages include previous law suits of the companies involved (many years out of date), I have no real understanding why they add such information, or even why they list companies in the first place.  It is the easiest way for someone to get negative content up the search results by adding a page to Wiki.   I thought encyclopedia’s were about how fast a Cheater can run or the Roman Wall, not how a company has had previous law suits against it.