The other day I was reading that 113 billion searches were made worldwide on Google last July, far outstripping its rivals Yahoo, Bing and Baidu, the growing Chinese search engine. Quite an impressive record number!
Search engines have clearly become an integral part of our lives. We turn to them whenever we want to know something about anything, that could be a brand, an organization, a product, a cause or an idea, and whether we are a student, a prospective employee, a consumer, an NGO, a journalist, a business partner… or just a curious citizen.
Search Engines are King…and Companies’ New Homepages
Today, instead of turning to official company or brand web sites, we turn directly to Google through search, meaning that an organization’s homepage is no longer www.organizationname.com, but is google.com, and even twitter.com with its real-time search interface which is indexed on Google.
The results that comes out of search have therefore an increasing capacity to impact the reputation and brand image of companies, as the search results not only aggregate content from the organizations’ website and news, but also various content from blogs, micro-blogging platforms, video-sharing websites, etc…
Whether they like it or not, organizations are getting “naked” online, and this of course includes their social and environmental impacts, such as greenwashing practices or corporate misconducts that cannot be hidden from the public.
Google Suggest: Greenwashing & Corporate Misconducts Can Be Spotted As The Search Query Is Being Made
In July, Google started rolling out ‘Google Suggest‘ into its main engine, by removing it from the ‘Google Labs’. Now, anytime you are doing a search, Suggest essentially feeds you suggestions in real-time as you type, based on the most popular keywords (and not those that bring most of the results) associated with your query.
After playing with the tool few minutes, several company names I was searching were associated with words such as “greenwashing”, “pollution”, “pesticide”, etc.
Below, are few (and easy) examples, demonstrating what type of information Google Suggest can potentially reveal to potential consumers or recruits/employees:
- I am a young consumer and I am looking for a sweater… In my search, I will start by typing the name of an apparel brand and then, as I will start writing “sweater”… there are great chances that “sweatshop” will come first and “sweater” second.
- I am a young graduate and I am looking for a job abroad, and more specifically in emerging markets … when searching certain brand/company names in association with geographical locations, i.e. China, India, Brazil, etc., environmental and social misconducts can easily come up as ’suggestions’
- Etc..
I believe this shows one simple fact: As companies’ social and environmental impacts are increasingly influencing stakeholders’ opinions and decisions, companies have no choice but finally taking CSR & Sustainability seriously, i.e. not considering this as a ‘nice to have’ or ‘add-on’ but something that is an integral part of their strategy aimed at maintaining their license to operate, both online and offline! Do you agree?
Interesting article. Here is another example of what you talk about posted on Above the Law “A sign of the times in the legal industry that I thought you might find interesting: if you have Google’s search suggestion turned on, and begin to type in virtually any law firm’s name, one of the top suggestions that comes up is that firm’s name followed by “layoffs.”
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/09/googles_layoff_predictions.php
Hi K.,
Thanks for your comment, you are totally right about the ‘layoffs’, it is also a keyword that always comes up when searching the big management consulting firms, or even investment banking…
This is definitely something very important to consider. As job seekers go to Google in the first place to conduct their job search, such google suggestions may very well impact the “employer brand” of several firms … that are already desperate for good talent despite the recession.
Cheers,
P.