Steve notes the connection between major brand advertisers and their Wikipedia entries.
Wikipedia articles on the top 100 advertisers in the U.S. are consistently among the most highly ranked pages in Google on direct searches. This is according to an informal study I have conducted over the past week. The study was compiled by simply taking the largest 100 advertisers from AdAge, entering them into Google and then tallying the results….
….Consider the following examples. Febreeze’s Wikipedia entry (#2 on Google) notes that the product may be harmful to household pets. Or the article on McDonald’s (#4 on Google), which basically summarizes the critical movie Super Size Me. Even advertising icons like Snap, Crackle and Pop aren’t exempt. The trio’s Wikipedia entry notes the team once had a short-lived adventure as super heroes in the UK.
Sound advice – the fact that large corporations aren’t (seemingly) aware that this kind of thing is affecting their global reputation just goes to show that these big businesses with traditional models do not yet grasp the power os the net.
If they were aware, what would be your recommended course of action? (John, Freiderick, anyone?) A corporation, or even its employees, editing / rewriting their wikipedia entry is obviously not very ‘wikipedia-like’, and would probably be rejected on any page with an active enough user base.
I faced a similar situation at my company, where our wikipedia entry was being heavily edited by some of our very vocal detractors, and I couldn’t come up with a solution that felt correct to me.