While recently talking with a company I pointed out that when you did a Google search for their name that the 2nd/3rd/4th result (depending on the week) was a negative blog post about their organization. It's been there for almost a year. My showing them was the first time they had seen it. I didn't want to sound to dumbfounded but I really was shocked. How could they not see this for almost a year?
Everybody has done some level of ego-surfing, i.e. Googling your own name. But I see a Google 'self-lookup' to be even more crucial for organizations. If you've done a halfway decent job of constructing a web site your official site should come up as the first result, but what's second, third or fourth? It could be a newspaper article, blog post or a customer review. Is it positive or negative?
Perhaps as techies we're a bit too close to the issue and in our hyper-connected states we just assume people will Google their organizations. In meat space this would be like me putting up a negative billboard right next to your location and you not noticing it for months.
Visitor Comments
I'm surprised this company had no idea about the negative blog posts popping up when someone does a Google search. It's important that the company reads these blog posts in order to understand what others are saying. It might be a good idea for the company to have its own blog in order to respond to any negative feedback.
Whatever the case, the company must react to these blog posts. Whenever I want to know more about a company, or anything for that matter, I do a Google search. I'm sure that people interested in knowing more about this company have come across these negative blog posts and formed negative opinions about the company. The company needs to change the perceptions of these people by formulating an appropriate message that responds to these posts. Someone in the company should be monitoring feedback. The employees should have been the first to read these negative posts. Something needs to be done to ensure they aren’t in reactive mode again.
Posted by: Sarah | April 5, 2006 6:34 PM
Add to that: self-Wikipedia searches (for companies moreso than people). And, no, don't add your company, but surely correct misinformation and misunderstood concepts.
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper | April 6, 2006 10:19 PM
I am also surprised that this company had no idea about their internet presence. In today's world the internet is very much a part of everyone's business and personal lives. Because so many people use search engines like Google it is important for companies to test it out themselves, and know what people are finding when they search for their company name.
Jeremy also brought up an interesting point about Wikipedia. As I discovered in class, Wikipedia is an extremely popular site, despite the fact that many of the people using it do not know what a wiki is. I was unaware that the information could be changed by anyone, and therefore viewed the site as 100% credible. Many other people probably take what Wikipedia says as the 100% truth as well; thus it is important for companies to keep up with what is written about their organization.
Neglecting what is published on-line has potential to be very harmful to a company.
Posted by: Tiffany | April 9, 2006 6:32 PM