“If your business depends on a positive internet reputation, then you have little choice than to explicitly manage that reputation online, “said Jay Heiser, research vice-president at Gartner. “The internet is like a bad-news Petri dish; negative information multiplies and spreads with frightening speed and becomes virtually impossible to erase.”
Despite the plethora of reputational resources that are available to assess and help manage reputation - from PR agencies and competitive analysis companies to identity verification services and content analytics tools - a comprehensive ‘scan and alert’ mechanism for the internet does not yet exist.
“Reputational persistence is a unique internet phenomenon that traditional reputation specialists have never had to deal with,” said Mr Heiser. “The fact is that where the internet is concerned the only way to counteract persistent negative information is to overcome it with a greater weight of positive information. This means getting to grips with internet reputation management.”
