When a rumor hits the Web, Google is there. Employees, consumers, investors, shareholders, and angry activists are there too. Headlines scream juicy come-ons like “Allstate or Allsnake?,” “Murderous Judges,” and “The University of Phoenix Sucks.” Google is spreading the bad word. Online blogs, search engines and websites like baddealings.com, eComplaints.com and TheSqueakyWheel.com also spout complaints, personal attacks, and accusations. A fresh outcrop of companies including Convio.com, GetActive.com and IStandFor.com specialize in coordinating online attack campaigns. Internet activism is flourishing. CEO’s cannot afford to ignore it.

Google alone receives a billion hits daily. Many travel to the search engine’s “Allegedly Unethical Firms” directory that lists companies that have been in the news for allegedly dishonorable deeds. It’s a Who’s Who list of giants like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Wal-Mart and IBM.

Links in the directory connect to hundreds more websites and articles that trumpet the dirt on virtually every company imaginable. Consumers can find cases from the well-documented Halliburton scandal to the obscure. One website calls Amway’s motivational program “a satanic distortion of Biblical truth.”

“In the past five years, I have not had a single crisis that has not had an Internet component,” says Jonathan Bernstein, Bernstein Crisis Management, who has a client on Google’s directory. “Anyone with a computer and knowledge of search engine optimization is a formidable enemy and CEOs should not ignore them.”

Bernstein, a 25-year crisis manager, helps companies fight back with Internet tools, including company blogs and email alerts to customers and shareholders.

Watchdog and anti-corporate groups agree the Internet has transformed causes. Online messaging and news alerts can produce an army of crusaders instantaneously.

“You find that you can get people organized and get the word out so quickly,” says Patricia Daly, a Catholic nun, the Executive Director of the Tri State for Responsible Investment and a member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. “You don’t have the lapse you used to to get (everyone) to the table.”

Daly also is co-founder of Campaign Exxon Mobil that works with institutional investors, activists and financial analysts to convince shareholders to pressure the energy giant to “take a responsible position” on global warming.

Investors can check any of the organizations’ websites to see if their mutual fund owns Exxon Mobil or other companies, get updated information and recommended actions, says Daly, who has negotiated with companies for 25 years on issues of human rights, labor, ecological concerns, militarism, equality, health and tobacco, and international debt and capital flows.

Another group, Corporate Accountability International (CAI), which challenges global corporations that “boost profits at the expense of people’s health and environment,” also has successfully used the Internet to fight for causes.

“We have changed corporate behavior. We have had a big impact over 30 years and the Internet has been a big part of it,” says John Wortham, Director of Finance and Administration for CAI.

Many of its targets are on Google’s directory or its “related categories” link. Nestle, Exxon and Philip Morris/Altria Groupare a few. CAI’s website touts several victories such as the World Health Organization’s adoption of the world’s fi rst public health and corporate accountability treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

SEARCH ENGINE PROTECTED
Critics complain that Google’s directory and accompanying “PageRank™ order” listing are skewed. They say the directory contains outdated articles, fails to mention Google’s own allegedly unethical acts in China and are far from balanced. Some companies–like Intel–are absent.

Few corporations are aware of Google’s Allegedly Unethical Firms directory. Viewers who click on a company name are sent to other websites and articles about the organization. When information is false or inflammatory, there is a temptation for companies to turn to the courts. But Google and others are protected from liability for anything posted. Many of the articles are from respected news organizations like CNN, BBC and the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, some corporations appear to have thwarted Google’s secret formula for placing websites in the directory. A click on the “SCO Group” produces a long list of websites filled with benign product information, and the first item listed under “Wal-Mart” is its own website.

Google’s Allegedly Unethical Firms directory contains more than 150 company names that push readers to hundreds of websites dedicated to complaints, anti-corporate activism, socially responsible investing and more.

The top half of the page contains websites selected by the Open Directory Project that is maintained by a group of volunteer editors around the world. Netscape manages the project. Many services post the directory or similar directories, including Lycos, AOL, AltaVista and HotBot.

The bottom half of the page is a list of websites ranked by Google’s patented “PageRank™” technology. Horizontal bars displayed next to each Web page indicate the importance of the page. To foil anyone who tries to manipulate its page rankings, Google engineers periodically update its PageRank™ algorithm, a mathematical recipe of steps that quantitatively ranks the importance of referenced webpages.

ONLINE SCANDALS THREATEN PROFITS
Meanwhile, online campaigns–legitimate and manufactured–are costing corporations sales and reputations. PepsiCo, Inc., known for its stellar brand management, landed in Google’s directory alongside Coca-Cola when accusations of product contamination surfaced in India. Several Indian states banned the sale of the soft drinks. Both companies issued news articles and press releases denying the claims. Once, it might have been contained to India, but word spread instantly on the Web across the globe.

“There is a real network of political activities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that all communicate with each other,” says Pamela McGuire, PepsiCo’s Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Business Practices and Compliances. “You can have inaccurate innuendo and rumors that all of a sudden end up spreading like wildfire though blogs and forwarding information that may have absolutely no veracity and it can do damage before people realize there’s no truth to it.”

For the most part, PepsiCo has avoided negative publicity.

“If you act responsibly and do the right thing, you have nothing to fear,” McGuire says. “We try to do the right thing and weare not as interested in talking about it as we are in doing it. We think actions speak louder than words.”

FIRST STEP IN DAMAGE CONTROL: PREVENTION
A smart defense is to prevent problems before they start, said Julie Freeman, president of the International Association of Business Communications (IABC). A significant number of companies have failed to effectively educate employees about ethical behavior and to explain to employees the purpose of their jobs and the mission and stratagem of their businesses, surveys by the IABC Research Foundation show.

“In some sense, the idea of ethics seems obvious: You don’t steal money from the company, you don’t cook the books,” Freeman says. “But I think there is a lot of gray area out there in making ethical choices.”

Often, an unhappy employee is the seed of destruction. Discussions that used to end at the water cooler now surface on the Web.

“Now, a disgruntled employee or customer or someone with a different view has a method to discuss that and get it out to the world,” Freeman says.

Most internet attacks are harmless, says James Lukaszewski, a veteran crisis manager who represents six corporations listed on Google’s directory. Ultimately, it is the CEO’s responsibility to keep the company ethical and set an example, he said.

He has a four-prong test for companies that find themselves the target of an internet attack:

1. Are employees asking about it?
2. Are customers and clients calling about it?
3. Is there an unexplained drop in sales or business activity?
4. Are there any inquiries from the media?

If none of this is occurring, there is no threat, Lukaszewski says.

When a serious assault occurs, the worst thing to do is ignore it, whine about it or get defensive, says Lukaszewski, whose clients encompass some of the largest companies in the world. A wise approach is to respond swiftly, but in a rational and constructive manner. Use positive, not negative terms. Don’t blame others. Most important: be nice, he adds.