Internet Monitoring and Clipping:Strategies for Public Relations, Marketing, and Competitive Intelligence.

A White Paperfor Professional

Education

by Amelia Kassel

Table of Contents Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Introduction: What’s the Buzz? . . . . . . . .2

Why Monitor the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Case Study: Financial Services . . . . . . . . .3

Anticorporate Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Electronic Grapevine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Applications of Internet Monitoring . . . . .6

Value of Internet Monitoring . . . . . . . . . .8

Internet Monitoring Strategies . . . . . . . . .9

How Monitoring and Clipping Services Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Selecting an Internet Monitoring Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Integrated Internet Monitoring Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Comparing Internet Monitoring Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . .16

Editor’s Note:This article is designed as a professional educational program for widespread publication. It is copyright by CyberAlert, Inc.,but may be copied and published at will in its entirety or in part, provided the article or excerpt carries appropriate credits for the writer, Amelia Kassel of MarketingBASE(www.marketingbase.com) and for CyberAlert,Inc.(www.cyberalert.com). The proper bibliographical citation is: Kassel, A., Guide

To Internet Monitoring and Clipping:

Strategies for Public Relations, Marketing

and Competitive Intelligence inhttp://www.cyberalert.com/whitepaper.html. The copyright owner would appreciate notification of publication. Please send notice to comcowic@cyberalert.com

About The AuthorAs president and owner of MarketingBASE (www.marketingbase.com) in Sebastopol, CA, Amelia Kassel has specialized in market research, competitive intelligence, and worldwide business information since 1984. She is author of Super Searchers on Wall

Street: Top Investment Professionals Share

Their Online Research Strategies

(http://store.yahoo.com/infotoday/supsearonwal.html).In her “Web Wise Ways” column in Searcher Magazine (www.infotoday.com), she evaluates new Web databases and searching technologies. As a recognized author and national and international speaker, she conducts workshops for conferences and associations and consults formajor corporations. amelia@marketingbase.com.

Executive SummaryIn a few short years, the Internet has evolved into an indispensable marketing tool and the epicenter ofbusiness “buzz.” At the same time, the Internet hasbecome the favored weapon for angry customers, disaffected employees, and consumer activists to attackcorporations and their products. These published criticisms influence attitudes and purchasing decisionsof thousands or even millions of people worldwide,threatening a company’s reputation or brand image andpotentially causing serious financial damage throughreduced sales or a battered stock price. In general, thelonger negative buzz persists, the greater the damage.And no company or organization is immune.

As a result, monitoring what is said on the Internetabout a company and its products has become a fundamental corporate responsibility to manage corporate reputation, protect brand images, track market opinion, correct misinformation, and improvecustomer service. A well-conceived and well-imple-mented Internet monitoring strategy provides an earlywarning system by finding key nuggets of market intelligence or spotting important trends in publishedarticles or criticism.

Like traditional public relations clipping services,Internet monitoring and news retrieval services monitor the contents of major news sources, “clip”those articles containing the company or brand name,and deliver the “clips” – enabling their client compa-nies to assess market penetration and effectiveness ofspecific news releases and public relations programs.

In pre-Internet days, effective market intelligence andreputation management could be achieved by trackinga few thousand publications. On the Internet, thereare literally millions of Web sites where crucial marketintelligence and criticism can appear, available forviewing by over 100 million wired consumers.

Monitoring the Internet with search engines is less than thorough, lacks the required timeliness, and isextraordinarily labor intensive. Costs of professionalhours devoted to manual monitoring are high – though hidden in base salaries.

Because of the limitations of search engines, online database services, and Internet-based newsaggregators, a new class of Internet-based applicationservice provider has emerged – Internet monitoringand clipping services. These highly automated services are designed to provide comprehensive andtimely “clips” to meet the information needs of publicrelations, marketing, market research, and competitiveintelligence. The services are also used by businessplanning departments, information managers andlibrarians, and legal departments for intellectual property infringement monitoring.

Automated Web monitoring services combine the bestattributes of search engines (in-depth coverage of thevisible Internet), electronic news aggregators (timelycoverage of news sources), and traditional clipping services (delivery of all found articles) into a single,automated, timesaving, and productivity-enhancinginformation retrieval service.

Services for Internet monitoring and clipping varywidely in their capabilities, features and softwaresophistication. They range from purely manual servicesthat rely on live editors using public search enginesto fully automated services using sophisticated,

proprietary technologies. Automated services likeCyberAlert 3.0 (www.cyberalert.com) deliver morecomprehensive and timely results than manual ones.

The key criteria in selecting an Internet monitoring and clipping service are: extent of automation, mediacoverage and selectivity, search frequency and depth,timeliness of delivery, complexity of search definition, relevance, clip management system, cost and value,and customer service.

Internet monitoring and clipping services, such asCyberAlert, are more effective and less expensive than assigning staff to find news and other articles onthe Internet about a company and its products. As abusiness-to-business (B2B) service with relatively low costs starting at $295 per month with quantity discounts, Internet monitoring and clipping servicesare an affordable productivity tool for almost any sizedcompany in almost any industry or business. The benefit is superior market intelligence for better-informed business decision-making.

1

The Internet has become

the favored weapon for

angry customers, disaffected

employees and consumer

activists to attack corporations

and their products.

Monitoring what is said on

the Internet about a company

and its products has become

a fundamental corporate

responsibility.

Automated Web monitoring

services combine the best

attributes of search engines,

electronic news aggregators, and

traditional clipping services.

Internet monitoring and clipping

services are more effective and

less expensive than assigning staff

to find news on the Internet about

a company and its products.

Introduction: What’s the Buzz? Today, the “buzz” about companies and products is on the Internet.

In making buying decisions, wired consumers use the Internet as the primary information resource forproduct features and specifications, independent product reviews, consumer opinions, and other available information. As a result, the Internet hasemerged as a key medium for marketing, public relations, and e-commerce worldwide.

At the same time, the Internet has become the favoredweapon for angry customers, disaffected employees,consumer activists, stock traders, and others to bludgeon corporations and their products. Bashing ofcompanies or products, rumors, and hoaxes can turnup almost anywhere on the Internet. These criticismsinfluence attitudes and purchasing decisions of thousands or even millions of people worldwide, threatening a company reputation or brand image, and potentially causing serious financial damagethrough reduced sales or a battered stock price.

Often, the criticisms are one-sided, inaccurate, or simply false. Sometimes they are intentionally malicious. No company is immune.

The net is also becoming a breeding ground for scamsof every design. The US Federal Trade Commission(FTC) identified 18,660 instances of potential Internetfraud last year. At the US Securities & ExchangeCommission, officials receive about 2,000 e-mails a day identifying potential Internet cons.1

These days, smart companies, large and small, use specialized Web monitoring services to learn what others are saying about the company, its products andservices; to manage corporate reputation and brandimage; to identify trademark and copyright infringe-ments; to track press clippings; and to conduct marketresearch and competitive intelligence.

Web clipping and monitoring services such asCyberAlert 3.0 (www.cyberalert.com) capture the most current information from online news sources and Web publications including news syndication services, newspapers, magazines and journals, networks, electronic bulletin boards, and other Websites. Corporations and other organizations employ the online clipping services to track mentions of companies, brands, executives, and issues. The

specialized services can monitor any subject of consequence daily, such as key topics that center ontrends, regulations, legal issues, and thought leaders.

Why Monitor theInternet? “Bad things happen to good companies on theInternet,” contends William J. Comcowich, presidentand CEO of CyberAlert, Inc. in Stratford, CT.“Monitoring what is said on the Internet about a company and its products has become a fundamentalcorporate responsibility to manage corporate reputa-tion, protect brand images, track market opinion, correct misinformation, and improve customer service. A well-conceived Internet monitoring strategy providesan early warning system by finding key nuggets of market intelligence or spotting important trends or patterns in published articles or criticism,” he explains.

According to Roy Lipski, managing director, Infonic,Ltd, (www.infonic.co.uk), companies succeeding in theInternet economy take risks, act boldly, and do thingsquickly. “In order to adapt correctly and act decisively,a company needs timely feedback. Many of the tradi-tional market research and media monitoring methodsare simply too slow,” he says. “That’s why Internetmonitoring is fundamental to today’s business – provid-ing timely, early warning of problems with brand image,product features, customer service, market direction,and corporate reputation issues. Internet monitoringcan also provide key insights into competitor strategy,” he concludes.

For decades, corporations and other organizations have utilized traditional clipping services such asBacon’s in the US; Bowden’s in Canada; and Durrantsand Tellex in the UK. Their readers scan thousands ofnewspapers, business and trade journals, and broad-casts each day, clip pertinent articles, and mail or faxclips to clients. By clipping major publications world-wide, the services help companies measure the effec-tiveness and reach of corporate public relations activi-ties, provide information on brand image, and gleaninsight into corporate reputation.

Most traditional print publications now publish on theInternet — often with more and different content thanin the print version. “Monitoring online publications isjust as important as monitoring print publications —maybe more important because, today, business buzzstarts on the Internet, and Web publications wield enormous clout,” says Comcowich of CyberAlert. “Ifyou doubt it, reflect on the repercussions of an articlein The Drudge Report about the activities of a certainWhite House intern.”

2

Bashing of companies or products

on the Internet can influence

attitudes and purchasing deci-

sions of millions of people world-

wide, threatening a company

reputation or brand image.

“Buzz” appears first on the

Internet. A well-conceived Internet

monitoring strategy provides

early warning of problems.

In pre-Internet days, effective market intelligence andreputation management could be achieved by trackinga few thousand publications. On the Internet, it's notjust traditional publications that need to be monitored;anyone and everyone has the ability to publish informa-tion — accurate or inaccurate — and distribute itworldwide with few, if any, controls. There are literally millions of Web sites where crucialmarket intelligence and criticism can appear, availablefor viewing by over 100 million wired consumers, andthe Internet is growing by two million pages a day.NEC Research currently assesses the Web at 1,500 million Web pages, an 88 percent increase from 1998.IDC predicts the number to hit 8 billion in 2002,exceeding the world's population.2

“In today’s world, business buzz appears in the mostunlikely places on the Internet, spreads rapidly throughcyberspace and then finds its way into more traditionalpublication channels.” says Comcowich of CyberAlert.“The unhappy customer who once wrote a privateletter expressing outrage to the CEO about customerservice can now publish that complaint on the Internet,making it available for viewing by over 100 million people worldwide, including attentive reporters fromprint publications and TV. And, unlike a ‘letter to theeditor’ that appears in one print publication on one day, a complaint on the Internet persists for months,and often is replicated in many other Web sites, newsgroups, or e-mail discussion lists. With this wide-openpublication channel read by millions, it is virtuallyimpossible for corporations to conceal problems,”Comcowich states.

Case Study: Financial ServicesA credit card company in the United States wasassailed on the Internet by customers and consumeradvocates for offering low promotional interest ratesand then suddenly raising rates. To the company, thiswas the standard way of promoting new accounts withthe terms of agreement published on the back of thecredit card application. Many customers, however, perceived the offer as illegal “bait and switch” tactics.Many other customers charged (some with substantialevidence) that the credit card company intentionallydelayed crediting payments — and then charged ahefty late fee. A pattern of these complaints persistedover a period of at least four months. Affected cus-tomers published at least two different “attack” Websites. The company did little or nothing to rectify theperceived problems. After a short time, the complaintsfound their way into feature articles in newspapers,magazines and prime time television news shows —thus gaining a larger audience and greater credence.The buzz started on the Internet, moved to more traditional media, and found its way to the company’sbottom line. In the subsequent fiscal quarter, the parent company reported a significant drop in sales and earnings as a result of slowed growth in new credit card holders and increased defections amongexisting customers. The company’s stock price plummeted on the announcement.

Moral of the story:

1) Dissatisfied customers have far greater clout than ever before.

2) In today’s communications environment, it is virtually impossible to “bury” customer-unfriendly policies or customer complaints. (The credit card company was “hiding” its policies in plain sight in small print on the back of its credit application; customer complaints on the Internet brought those policies into plain view.)

3) Customer complaints on the Internet must be monitored; patterns of complaints must be recognized and reported to corporate decision-makers.

4) Fixes must be implemented quickly, before serious damage is done.

After the drop in stock price, the company fired theoutsourced vendor for payment entry and adoptedmore consumer friendly policies. Online criticismabated, sales and profits improved, but, six monthslater, the stock price had not recovered.

Anti-Corporate ActivitiesAttack SitesMany disgruntled customers and former employeeshave set up Web sites to excoriate corporations andbrands. The Yahoo! directory lists over 300 “consumeropinion” sites that criticize major corporations including Advanta, Allstate, American Express, AOL,Bell Atlantic, Carnival Cruise Lines, Chase Manhattan,Citibank, First USA, Ford, GM, Home Depot, Macy’s,McDonald’s, Microsoft, Monsanto, NatWest Bank, Nike,Prudential Insurance, United Airlines, Wal-Mart, and,yes, Yahoo! itself. The complete list is available athttp://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Consumer_Advocacy_and_Information.CompanyEthics.com (www.companyethics.com) listslinks to sites that use the word “sucks” in the URL. Thelist includes Abercrombie, Aerojet, Amex, Ameritech, AOL,Ford, GM, Royal Caribbean, and Home Depot.

Protected by the cloak of anonymity and empoweredby a worldwide audience, the net-complainers havecarried old-fashioned pickets and soapbox tirades intocyberspace, according to Ronald F. Lopez of the lawfirm Thelen Reid & Priest 3 (www.thelenreid.com).Comcowich estimates that more than 5,000 corporateattack Web sites have been published by disgruntledconsumers, disaffected employees, and activists. Somecompanies such as Nike and Microsoft are targets ofmultiple Web sites.

Online corporation bashing can be quite sophisticated.A number of sites, for instance, have assembled andpublished hundreds of complaints about companiesand their brands. Others utilize e-mail discussion listsand chat rooms for individuals to vent their anger —often with eloquence. Such well-stated negative opinions can affect attitudes and business decisions of hundreds or thousands of prospects and customers.

3

Some examples:

McSpotlight

www.mcspotlight.org

This site charges McDonald’s Corporation in the UKwith a wide range of transgressions including damageto the environment; exploitation of employees, espe-cially teenagers; harmful effects of styrofoam packag-ing; nutritionally deficient food that causes heart dis-ease and cancer; and exploitation of children in itsadvertising. McDonald’s sued the activists who pub-lished the site. The trial was covered extensively innewspapers and television worldwide – giving furtherexposure to the criticisms of McDonald’s policies andproducts over a period of nearly three years. Afterspending nearly $16 million on the case, McDonald’swon an uncollectible judgment amounting to less than$70,000. The persistent “bad press” from the trial wasan unmitigated public relations disaster for McDonald’s.Even though McDonald’s won the case, the criticalMcSpotlight site still exists on the Internet. Anti-McDonald’s information originally developed forthis site appears in over 30 other activist sites.

ChaseBankSucks.com

www.chasebanksucks.com

The site title includes an animated cartoon characterthat urinates on the Chase name. The site aggregatesdozens of consumer complaints about bank servicessuch as mortgage loans, credit cards, and safe depositboxes, and includes a special section for postings by disgruntled employees and former employees. The siteprovides direct e-mail links to government regulatorsand consumer groups to file complaints, and includes a

section of news reports on the Chase Bank connectionto Nazi Germany. The purported Nazi connection hasrecently been picked up by major news outlets.

DunkinDonuts.org

www.dunkindonuts.org

A Hamden, Connecticut resident, angered by the lackof 1 percent milk for his coffee and the attitude ofemployees at the local franchise, published this Website as a clearinghouse of complaints from dozens ofother Dunkin Donuts customers. For more than a year,this site was the first site listed in any search on theterm “Dunkin Donuts” in the Yahoo! search engine.Anyone looking for corporate information, such as individuals researching the value of investing in a franchise, would first see the critical site, not the corporate site. The site founder stonewalled threats by Dunkin Donuts to sue – and published those writtenthreats on the site, positioning himself as a consumer“David” against the Dunkin Donuts “Goliath.” Recently,Dunkin Donuts purchased the site from the consumerand now runs the site as a mirror image of its corporatesite. (If you can’t fight ‘em, buy ‘em.)

Untied Airlines

www.untied.com

This Web site began as a polite complaint to UnitedAirlines (UAL). Two passengers were delayed andinconvenienced by the airline and sought a forthrightapology. After weeks of neglect by the airline and thena typically nonresponsive form letter, the passengersnotified United of their intent to create a Web site.United’s response was to threaten legal action, whichdid not deter the complainants. Their anti-UAL Website has expanded to include hundreds of consumercomplaints as well as a UAL employee complaint section. Readers are encouraged to file lawsuits.

McSpotlight.org, a UK based Web site, is possibly the most infamous of the anti-corporate Web sites. It attacksMcDonald’s Corp. for a variety of purported transgressionsincluding damage to the environment; exploiting employ-ees; and nutritionally-deficient food products. McDonald’scompounded the “bad press” by suing the activist organi-zation which publishes the site. McDonald’s won the case but incurred worldwide “bad press” during the trial. And the critical Web site has remained on the Internet with little change.

Chase Bank Sucks.com features links to negative newsreports about Chase Manhattan Bank and has postedapproximately 400 separate complaints about Chase products and customer service. The site claims over168,000 visits, but this is likely overstated for effect.

4

Allstate Insurance Sucks

www.allstateinsurancesucks.com

The developers have invested substantial creativity and hours in this slick Web site. Allstate customers areinvited to share complaints, given access to a databaseof attorneys and news of pending lawsuits, and encour-aged to post their nominees for “worst adjuster.” Thesite also solicits contributions to various lawsuits filedagainst Allstate. According to the Web counter, 25,000people visited the Web site in July 2000.

Terminix – Consumer Alert!

www.syix.com/emu/

This Web site also began as a legitimate complaint to a company that went unanswered. When a dissatisfied customer notified the company of herintent to create this Web site, Terminex informed her that it would sue over the use of its trademarkedname. The consumer responded by posting complaintsfrom other dissatisfied customers, pending lawsuits, employee complaints and issues, and lawsuits lost bythe company in other states. In all, it is a damningreproach of the company’s policies and customer service – one that surely influences the buying decisions of potential customers.

Like many of these examples, the vast majority of anti-corporate Web sites originate in customer serviceproblems. Attentive, forthright customer service (and a simple apology) could often prevent customersfrom creating Web sites that expose corporate faults.

Many anti-corporate sites are extremely well-positionedin search engines – being reported in the first 10 to 20citations, sometimes even ahead of the corporate site.As a result, anti-corporate sites are nearly as “visible”to wired consumers as the corporation’s own Web site,giving the angry consumer far greater leverage than inthe past.

Consumer Opinion Web Sites

In addition to “basher” and “boycott” sites targetingspecific corporations, a new category of “consumeropinion” sites has emerged – complaint-specific sites covering a range of industries. Epinions(www.epinions.com) avows to help consumers express opinions about products and make better buying decisions. A search engine enables consumersto search; a database of complaints on hundreds ofproducts and services. And Epinions pays a royalty to the complainer each time a published complaint isaccessed. According to “Forbes,” one million reviewsand notes have been posted on Epinions since itslaunch a year ago, about 4,000 per day.4 Epinions is not alone. DooYoo (www.dooyoo.co.uk) enables consumers to share their opinions about products and be paid for their opinions. FightBack! (www.fightback.com), is the Web site of consumeradvocate David Horowitz. National ConsumerComplaint Center (http://www.alexanderlaw.com/nccc)enables consumers to complain directly to US federalagencies and is sponsored by a law firm, presumably tospot potential liability cases and class actions suits.

The aptly-named Ecomplaints.com(www.ecomplaints.com) was born out of the frustration of Jennifer Biscoe, a former Gartner Groupconsultant who fruitlessly battled AT&T for a year overa disputed cell phone contract fee. Biscoe touts thesite as more than just a place to whine, urging compa-nies to post replies so potential customers can see howthey handle problems. So far only 38% of the firmshave bothered to defend themselves.5 Airlines occupy six of the 10 top spots of complained-aboutcompanies.

Planet Feedback (www.planetfeedback.com) providesthe name and address of the CEO and the head of

Allstate Insurance Sucks.com is a typical anti-corporate Web site that enables consumers to vent their anger bypublishing their complaints against the company. The site also provides consumers with information about state insurance commissioners and ongoing lawsuitsagainst the company.

5

Epinions, one of many Web sites that aggregate consumer complaints, has compiled over 1 millioncomplaints against some 100,000 companies, products and services. The site’s search engineenables consumers to search for complaints in specific product categories or for specific brandnames.

customer service for all major US corporations, facilitating consumer complaints. Sucks.com(www.sucks.com) is owned by Dan Parisi, who hasspent $100,000 to register the domain names of morethan 500 of the world’s largest corporations plus thesucks.com suffix.6

Many perfectly legitimate sites include message boards for consumer opinions. Amazon.com(www.amazon.com) allows consumers to write bookreviews and thousands of other sites include similarmessage boards where consumers and employees canvent. Country-specific and industry-specific complaintsites abound; there are at least six complaint sites anda Usenet news group (alt.flame.airlines) devoted exclusively to the airlines industry.

These sites undoubtedly impact consumer attitudesand behavior. According to a recent survey byForrester Research, sixty-five percent of communityusers rate the opinions of other consumers as important or somewhat important influences on theirpurchasing decisions.7 A comprehensive list of “consumer opinion” sites can be found in the Yahoo!directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Consumer_Advocacy_and_Information/Consumer_Opinion/) or enter “consumer opinion” in the search box.

In Usenet, a dozen or more news groups are devotedto consumer complaints. The most prominent arealt.consumers.experiences and misc.consumers.

While “pay for whine” policies in consumer sites mayencourage unwarranted kvetching, the consumer opinion sites do provide corporations good insight intocustomer concerns and criticisms, especially focusedon customer service. “I would only hope the companiesnamed in those complaints are monitoring the site tosee what folks are saying about them,” commentsEdward Baig, columnist for “USA Today”.8

Electronic GrapevineWith a plethora of places where consumers can expresstheir opinions or vent their rage, the Internet also func-tions as a worldwide electronic grapevine that fostersrumors, innuendos, gossip, hoaxes, intentional misin-formation, and stock manipulation. The Internet makesit easy to spread misinformation quickly and widely.

Here are some of the infamous “urban legends” spreadon the Internet:• That, on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Tommy

Hilfiger said he didn’t want African-Americans wearing his clothes

• That Heinz Ketchup contains cow's blood

• That Mrs. Fields Cookies planned to host a party for the jury that acquitted O.J. Simpson

• That women’s tampons, including Proctor & Gamble’s brand, are life-threatening because they contain asbestos or dioxin

• That you can get a free Nokia cellular telephone by forwarding an e-mail

• That Pfizer heartworm medicine is deadly to dogs

• That Corona beer contains urine

• That George W. Bush refused to sell his house to an African-American family

• That Pantene shampoo contains an additive that gets a user high when injected

• That Hillary Clinton, while a law student at Yale, organized demonstrations and helped defend the Black Panthers.

All not true — but these rumors and hoaxes were seen by tens of thousands of people on the Internetand believed by many — with potentially serious consequences to the brand, corporation, or individual.It is estimated that over three-quarters of Fortune 1000companies have experienced some type of brand abuseon the Internet.

The Urban Legends Reference Pages(www.snopes.com), researched and written by the husband-and-wife team of Barbara and DavidMikkelson for the San Fernando Valley FolkloreSociety, tracks the incidence and content of such urban legends on the Internet.

Pronouncements in Web sites and message boards havebecome fodder for legal action. Credit Suisse FirstBoston (CSFB) filed a suit seeking $1 million in dam-ages against a New Jersey man and ten others whoposted comments on a Yahoo! Finance message boardcriticizing one of CSFB’s investment research analysts.Raytheon filed and then withdrew a suit against ahandful of its own employees alleging unauthorizedpublication of confidential material on the Internet.Many companies have sued owners of attack sites,seeking removal of the critical material. In most situations, first amendment rights protect the rogueWeb sites.

Applications of InternetMonitoringNot knowing the buzz on the Internet about your company and its products can be costly — disaffectedcustomers, lost opportunities, damaged reputation, lost sales, and reduced profits. Companies must beaware of critical information disseminated throughout cyberspace about their products and product cate-gories. In general, the longer negative buzz persists,the greater the damage. Knowing the buzz is the first step in developing an effective online reputationmanagement, market intelligence, or competitive intelligence program for a corporation or brand.

6

Rumors and hoaxes on the

Internet may have serious

consequences to the brand,

corporation or stock price.

Public Relations, Market Intelligence andReputation Management

Like traditional public relations clipping services,Internet monitoring and news retrieval services monitor the contents of major news sources, “clip”those articles containing the company or brand name,and deliver the “clips” – enabling companies to assessmarket penetration and effectiveness of specific newsreleases and public relations programs.

In pre-Internet days, effective market intelligence andreputation management could be achieved by trackinga few thousand publications. In the conventional press,all articles (with the exception of letters to the editor)were written by professionals, were reviewed by editors, and adhered to well-established journalisticstandards. While “bad press” always existed, criticalarticles maintained decorum.

On the Internet, anyone can be a publisher – with littleor no journalistic training, no editors, and few guidingstandards. Now, there are millions of other Web publications and other Web sites that disseminateinformation and express opinions – not just the fewthousand traditional publications. Criticism is muchmore volatile on the Internet and information trackinghas become significantly more difficult. In the words of Ian Mount, staff writer for eCompany.com(www.eCompany.com), “Bad press, scurrilous rumors,and outright lies have always been a fact of life for corporate-image watchers, but the Internet makes itpossible to distribute that grief more quickly and widely than ever before. From the standpoint of anycompany concerned about its online reputation, theWeb is a monitoring nightmare.” 9

Debbie Forward of Cayenne Communication, LLC(www.cayennecom.com) explains that she uses anInternet monitoring service, CyberAlert, to keep trackof the press her clients receive in Web sites and UsenetNews Groups. “CyberAlert saves me a lot of time,” she says, “finds more coverage on my clients than I've gotten placed myself, and provides very timelyreports.” As a result, she says, she is able to concen-trate on strategic issues and advising on how to manage potential problems while the automated Webclip service does the grunt work of finding pertinentclips that otherwise would not be identified.

Savvy public relations professionals track the media’scoverage for both cuttings of news releases and any

other information that affects corporate reputation orbrand image in traditional publications and throughoutthe Internet.

Internet monitoring is especially helpful in situations of crisis management. Major news outlets often publishfirst on the Internet and consumer opinion appearsfirst on the Internet. Tools to monitor the Internet areeasily accessible and Internet clips can be deliveredthe next day or sooner.

Internet monitoring, then, can be a highly productivestrategy to measure effectiveness of public relationsactivities, to assess corporate reputation, to gathermarket intelligence, to protect brand equity, and tohelp guide management during crises such as theBridgestone/Firestone tire recall.

Competitive Intelligence, BusinessDevelopment, Issues Monitoring

“Competitive intelligence is one of the hottest areas in management today,” according to Jonathan Calof,associate professor at the University of Ottawa’sFaculty of Administration, and chair of the CanadianCouncil for Competitive Intelligence. “It is used to identify opportunities and minimize surprises.” 10

Internet monitoring can gather strategic or tacticalintelligence. According to Arik Johnson ofAuroraWDC, “Strategic analysis is concerned mainlywith … gaining an understanding of a competitor’sfuture goals, current strategy, assumptions held about itself and the industry, and capabilities. Tacticalintelligence . . . includes competitors’ terms of sale,their price policies and the plans they have for changing the way in which they differentiate one or more of their products from yours.” 11

Competitive intelligence (CI) on the Internet can include:

• Executive changes, which may signal changes in corporate structure or direction

• Financial reports and registrations (www.edgaronline.com)

• New patents and newly registered trademarks, which can strongly indicate what new technologies, products, or markets a company looks to for its future (www.micropat.com)

• News releases on:– Planned manufacturing capabilities– Alliances or joint ventures– Product positioning and market

development– Executive speeches on business

strategies

• Product reviews

• Consumer opinion

7

Consumer opinion appears first

on the Internet; monitoring the

Internet is crucial to reputation

management.

Not knowing the "buzz" on the

Internet about your company or

its products can be costly: lost

opportunities, lost sales, lost

reputation, and lost profits.

Are employees disseminating

your company’s confidential

information on the Internet?

Monitoring of broader business, political or socialissues, and trends is an equally important componentof an Internet intelligence program. This involves clipping of editorials, columns by opinion leaders, and op-ed articles in general news publications, trade journals, and activist Web sites.

“CI’s real value is to provide managers with the organizational tool to learn what the competitor will do, not what the competitor has already done,” writesJohnson of AuroraWDC.9 Internet-based informationcan deliver that capability.

Internet monitoring can also be useful in counter-intelligence – that is, defending company secrets byhelping assure that employees, ex-employees, or suppliers are not inadvertently or maliciously disseminating confidential company information on the Internet. (Through Internet monitoring, a bankdiscovered recently that a former employee hadrevealed the password to a server containing a proprietary set of software tools.) During a panel discussion of public relations experts convened by “PRWeek (UK),” David Phillips, managing director ofInternet Reputations Services in Milton Keynes, UKand author of “Managing Reputation in CyberSpace”maintained that companies must guard against increas-ing porosity -- by which he meant the growing dangerof confidential information being leaked out onto theInternet by employees.12 Not surprisingly, a company’sown publications and Web sites can also reveal criticalinformation.

Intellectual Property Infringement

“The amount of intellectual property infringement on the Internet is astounding,” says CyberAlert’sComcowich. "Software, music, photography, and writ-ten copyrighted materials are copied blatantly withoutpayment or attribution – and seemingly without guilt.”

Corporate and product trademarks are misused andabused – sometimes naively, sometimes maliciously.Owners of pornography and other less-than-pristineWeb sites use the names of established companies andbrands in HTML meta-tags to divert Web traffic to theirown sites. Promoters “borrow” Web domain names for spam e-mail campaigns to sell gray market, blackmarket, or unapproved products.

Internet monitoring can identify culprits – sites thatare pilfering or facilitating the theft of intellectualproperty. Since most monitoring software is text-based, it is more difficult, but still possible, to monitorfor infringements of photography or graphics.Emerging digital fingerprinting software will give corporations enhanced capabilities in spotting infringements within graphic, audio, and video files.

Channel Monitoring

For most companies, marketing on the Internetinvolves alliances, partnerships and independent dealerships. The Internet is replete with organizationsor e-commerce sites selling black market or counterfeitproducts (e.g., Rolex, Gucci, Hilfiger). Approved dis-tributors and dealers often misrepresent, mis-position,or mis-price products of their manufacturing partners.Comprehensive Internet monitoring can identify Websites that claim affiliation with your company and can track online activities and promotions of channel partners to assure that they are up-to-date and complywith your company policies for promotion and onlinesales of your products. It is also possible to monitorconsumer opinion on the Web about your existing orpotential partners and dealers. Such monitoring canminimize regulatory compliance issues, prevent legalproceedings, and reduce channel conflict.

Value of InternetMonitoringSince buzz about business generally starts on theInternet, comprehensive Internet monitoring can provide early warning of market intelligence, emerging issues, perceptions, and criticisms.

“View the Internet as a vast, completely uninhibitedfocus group that can provide insights you’d never getany other way,” advises Alan Pell Crawford, a seniorcounselor at Martin Public Relations in Richmond, VA.“Proper use of the Net allows you to know what yourcustomers are saying about you and, if you are proper-ly prepared, to respond in e-time to . . . problems.”13

But Internet monitoring is much more than an onlinefocus group.

A major sporting goods company used Internet monitoring to uncover an activist group planning a rally to protest the company’s employment practicesand boycott the company’s products. The early “headsup” enabled the company to brief the press in advance.As a result, press coverage of the demonstration waseven-handed, reporting the company’s well-constructeddefense along with the activists’ criticism.

Through monitoring Usenet News Groups, an international banking company became aware of a serious image problem and major dissatisfaction withits account services among university students. Thebank addressed the problems at the start of a new term and was able to stem the drop-off in new studentaccounts.

8

Are rogues stealing or exploiting

your trademarks or intellectual

property on the Internet?

Internet monitoring can provide

early warning of market intelli-

gence, emerging issues, and

criticisms

A pharmaceutical company discovered physicians in e-health message boards advocating unusual andsometimes dangerous uses of the company’s anesthesiaproducts.

A financial company found out that its paid “run ofsite” banner advertisements in a “community” Web sitewere being placed on personal pages containingpornography.

A soft drink company discovered that a pornographysite was using its trade name to attract traffic to itssite.

An insurance company discovered that a licensed agentwas grossly misrepresenting features of the company’slife insurance product on his Web site.

A test equipment manufacturer was able to uncoverengineering specifications for a competing productbefore its launch, and was thereby better prepared todefend the market position of its own product. (The information was published in the competitor’sown Web site.)

Monitoring can also help identify inappropriate orimprovable business practices.

A business-to-business (B2B) software company wasable to identify specific customer dissatisfaction withits new product shortly after launch and provide a software “fix” within days.

A series of Usenet News Group postings tipped offHewlett Packard that customers mightily resented that HP didn’t have a toll-free telephone number forcustomer support.

Through CyberAlert clips, a manufacturer of computerhardware peripherals learned that an independentdealer was selling refurbished hardware as new – andwas refusing to honor warranties.

A manufacturer of sporting goods identified more thana dozen Web sites that were promoting its products,but were not authorized dealers.

A manufacturer of upscale watches identified Web sitesfraudulently selling goods with its trademark.

According to Amy Jackson of Middleberg Euro(www.middleberg.com), acclaimed by Inside PR as the “No. 1 Internet Agency” for 2000, “Web clippingsare key building blocks to a good image managementstrategy.”

Internet MonitoringStrategiesThe volume of information on the Internet is astonishing. Traditional publishers are migrating to the Web in droves. The Internet is growing by two million pages a day. Included in those pages areuncountable rumors, innuendo, misinformation, andgossip – all kinds of negative information that can

severely affect a company’s reputation. Because of the Web’s potential for dishing up harmful information,companies find it crucial to monitor for detrimentalpostings or discussions in order to take immediateaction and, in some cases, legal action before severedamage occurs.

Search Engines

Search engines and directories are the most evidenttool for monitoring the Internet.

Competing search engines and directories (e.g., Yahoo!, Lycos, AltaVista, InfoSeek, Go, Google, andNorthern Light) monitor only a fraction of the Web. An often-cited 1998 study in Science by SteveLawrence and C. Lee Giles of the NEC ResearchInstitute concludes that only forty percent of the Web was available when using a combination of some of the most well known search engines of the day.14

The same authors published a study in 1999 for Nature

[http://www.wwwmetrics.com] in which they maintainthat search engine coverage had decreased to sixteenpercent.15 Google (www.google.com), the search enginewith the most coverage today, now claims to covermore than 1,000 million Web pages, while other major search engines are hovering between 50 and 500 million pages.16 Competing search engines anddirectories compile remarkably different results for the same key word search — varying sometimes up to 50 percent in the number of citations.

A key shortcoming of search engines: they do not sortout NEW documents. If you search today and find 900documents with your brand name and then searchtomorrow and find 901 documents, most searchengines provide no reasonable way to find which one of the 901 documents is new. In addition, searchengines cannot provide an archive of documents thatonce existed on the Internet, but have been removed— such as news releases. Most importantly, the publicsearch engines rarely search the daily news media.Even the most advanced search engines index the Websites of newspapers, magazines, and television stationsonly once every six to twelve weeks. Newspapers oftenremove news stories from their site after a few days.That's one reason why results from public searchengines rarely include references to daily newspapersin the list of citations they produce.

Manual monitoring using public search engines alone is less than thorough, lacks the required timeliness,and is extraordinarily labor intensive. The costs of professional hours devoted to searching for citationsare high, though well-hidden in base salaries. Finally,manual monitoring with search engines is tedious work at best – a task much better suited to softwareautomation.

9

Using public search engines to

monitor the Internet is less than

thorough, lacks timeliness, and is

extraordinarily labor intensive.

Database Information Aggregators

Established information aggregators such as Dialog (www.dialog.com), and Lexis-Nexis (www.lexis-nexis.com) also offer some version of electronic monitoring and clipping services by paidsubscription. The information retrieval services provide “clips” from databases containing licensedinformation from a wide range of publications andother sources.

For close to 30 years, these companies served an extraordinarily valuable purpose by enabling electronicaccess to the archived information of multiple publish-ers and database developers. For current news andinformation monitoring, however, they have significantdisadvantages. First, many of the publications incorpo-rated into these databases have date lags that canrange from one to more than six weeks. A Lexis-Nexissearch of the publication Cable World, for example,indicates that articles from the June 19, 2000 issuewere uploaded into the database system on July 18,2000. Using the Lexis-Nexis clipping service putsthose monitoring the cable industry behind the timeson stories of interest. Like search engines, databaseaggregators often lag some four to eight weeks in making current news accessible for electronic search.

The second key drawback for the established onlineservices lies in their failure to monitor the Web, despitethe fact that the Web has become an essential resourcewith a wealth of indispensable information.Finally is the issue of costs. Today, many newspapers,magazines and journals that supply their copyrightedmaterial to database aggregators also publish theirinformation in their own Web sites on the Internet.Therefore, much of the information accessible throughelectronic database services at steep subscription feesis also available free of charge on the Internet andpotentially accessible through public search engines.On the positive side, the aggregation services add substantial value by incorporating significant databaseinformation not readily accessible on the Internet.They also store information for longer periods thanmost Internet sites.

The online information services such as Dialog andLexis-Nexis continue to fill an important niche in finding older, more esoteric information. However, they are not the best resource for staying on top ofcurrent news and information about corporations,brands, or issues.

Electronic News Services

In the early 1980s, the MIT Media Lab conceived theidea of a personalized daily news service that woulddeliver news only on specific subjects requested by anindividual reader. That visionary concept has beenrealized in Internet-based customized news servicessuch as NewsEdge (www.individual.com), MyYahoo(my.yahoo.com), and MyLycos (my.lycos.com). A fairly new entrant is Moreover.com. Like the online information aggregators, the Internet-based newsaggregators license copyrighted material from

publishers who deliver new material as it is published. The typical online service licenses articles frombetween 200 to 1,200 news sources. The clients of the customized news service specify the news topicsthat they would like to receive. Each day, the onlinenews service then automatically delivers to the userthe top 10 or so articles on the viewer’s selected topics.Many corporations subscribe to electronic news aggregation services and make them available to keyemployees on the desktop or through the company’sintranet.

These Internet-based news services provide a no-costor low-cost way for businesses and consumers to monitor key topics in the major news media. Theirshortcomings as a reputation management and competitive intelligence tool include the limited number of news sources that are included, the limitednumber of stories that are delivered automatically each day, and the limited scope of articles. The automatically delivered stories are confined to news;the services rarely deliver editorials or other opinionpieces such as product reviews. Stories in regionalpublications almost never make it into the Internet-based news services.

While Internet-based news aggregation services provide businesses with the timely news that is necessary for business decision-making, these servicesare unlikely to provide the breadth of monitoring that is required for a comprehensive reputation management, infringement monitoring, or competitiveintelligence program.

Internet Monitoring and Clipping Services

Because of the limitations of search engines, onlineinformation aggregators, and Internet-based newsaggregators, a new class of Internet-based applicationservice provider (ASP) has emerged -- Internet monitoring and clipping services. These highly auto-mated services are designed to provide comprehensiveand timely “clips” on customized topics to meet the information needs of public relations, marketing, market research, competitive intelligence, and legaldepartments for infringement monitoring. The servicesare also used by business planning departments, information librarians, and other corporate functions.

Web clipping and monitoring services capture the most current information from Web publications, electronic bulletin boards, Web sites, and news sources. Companies can employ these services to track mentions of company activities, brands, andtrademarks, as well as those of competitors. It is possible to monitor any subject of consequence daily, such as key topics that center on trends,

10

Electronic news services have

serious shortcomings for reputa-

tion management or competitive

intelligence.

regulations, legal issues, and thought leaders.Automated services such as CyberAlert(www.cyberalert.com) employ new, proprietary searchand filtering technologies to find and capture requireddata, information, commentary, and intelligencethroughout the visible Internet including thousands ofWeb publications (news syndicators, newspapers, mag-azines, journals, and online-only publications, alsocalled E-zines or Web-zines); millions of commercial,academic, and government Web sites; and tens of thou-sands of Usenet News Groups, message boards, andforums.

These services provide the comprehensive, timely coverage required for effective reputation manage-ment, competitive intelligence, and infringement monitoring programs. In addition to CyberAlert(www.cyberalert.com), monitoring and clipping services include:

• eWatch (www.eWatch.com), a service of PR NewsWire

• Bacon’s NetClips (www.baconsnetclips.com), a service of the old-line print clipping service

• Cyveillance (www.cyveillance.com), which focuses on infringement monitoring

• NetCurrents (www.netcurrents.com) and eSleuth (www.esleuth.com), which concentrate on financialinformation on publicly traded stocks. NetCurrentsincludes analysis; eSleuth does not.

Web clipping companies provide a range of useful ben-efits that broadly include:

• Automatic monitoring of thousands of targeted Web sites

• Finding new information faster than search engines

• Delivering highly relevant information

The new Internet monitoring and clipping services differ from public search engines in a number of important ways:

• They search key information sources at least daily.

• They filter out “old” citations and deliver only “yesterday’s news.”

• They deliver results automatically each day.

The monitoring services also offer advantages overelectronic news aggregators:

• They cover more news sources – thousands instead of hundreds. CyberAlert, for example, covers nearly 3,000 news sources on the Internet.

• They cover more than just news. CyberAlert 3.0, the most comprehensive service, covers 65,000+ Usenet News Groups and millions of commercial, academic, and government Web sites as well as 3,000 news media sites.

• They deliver all new news articles found during the previous 24 hours, not just a handful of selected stories.

Internet monitoring services are not without problems.The spidering and indexing software of the monitoringservices often takes a few days or weeks to filter out allarchival references on the Internet. As a result, clientsmay receive older citations during the early stages.This is a temporary problem that usually clears up inthe first few weeks.

Some services do not have the software to deploy complex search strings and, therefore, cannot deliverfinely grained search results. Some services deliverweekly or monthly results, rather than daily, thusundercutting the timeliness of Internet monitoring.Remarkably, some Internet monitoring services deliverresults in print via U.S. mail (“snail mail”) or fax,instead of electronically via the Internet (althoughmany traditionalists still prefer paper-based news clipping services.)

11

CyberAlert, Inc. (www.cyberalert.com) positions its service as a fully-automated Internet monitoringand Web clipping service that is time efficient and cost effective to find what is being said on the Internet about a company or its brands for reputation management (public relations), marketing, and competitive intelligence.

Internet monitoring services

provide comprehensive, timely

coverage for reputation manage-

ment, competitive intelligence,

and infringement monitoring.The new Internet monitoring

services are today’s most

valuable tool to get early

warning of "buzz" and track

news worldwide.

No monitoring and clipping service can guarantee that it will find all articles or postings. (The URL of anarticle combined with an abstract is called a “citation”by some Internet monitoring and clipping services.)Most Web monitoring services do not deliver articlesfrom Web sites of major news organizations requiringsubscriptions such as the Wall Street Journal.Oftentimes, the services’ spidering and indexing software is unable to search Web sites that blocksearches by automated robots. Sometimes, the software of Internet monitoring services cannot discriminate substantive articles from unimportant listings, resulting in unwanted “clips” or citations.

Services that monitor Usenet news groups inevitablydeliver clips that contain profanity. Monitoring com-mercial Web sites may result in clips from pornographysites if those sites contain key words in the client’ssearch string. (One medical company conducting asearch on the word “stroke” was inundated with citations from pornography sites.)

Despite shortcomings, the services are today’s mostvaluable tool for Internet monitoring, contendsComcowich of CyberAlert. “Automated Internet monitoring services combine the best attributes ofsearch engines (in-depth coverage of the visibleInternet), electronic news aggregators (timely coverage

of news sources), and traditional clipping services(delivery of all found articles) into a single automated,time-saving, and customized information retrieval service that is both comprehensive and timely,” hemaintains.

How Monitoring andClipping Services WorkTo use an Internet monitoring and clipping service, aclient establishes an account and gives the customer ortechnical service department the key words, topics,company, or brand names to be monitored. The service then creates a search strategy (including theareas of the Internet to be searched) and search specification (a “string” of words to be searched, often called a “brief” in Europe). The most advancedInternet monitoring services, including CyberAlert 3.0,enable complex Boolean-type search queries such as --

(Monsanto or Pharmacia) and (biotech or genetic or food or seed or farm or

agriculture) and not Roundup.

Or

(AT&T or “Bell Atlantic” or Sprint or MCI) and(marketing or advertis* or “public relations”)

Or

+Orange +mobile -/\Rorange –alabama -california -florida -“mini mart” –clockwork -juice

In the AT&T example, truncation of “advertis*” will pick up various word forms of the root word.

12

How the CyberAlert 3.0 Internet monitoring service works

1. Specify advanced Boolean terms and submit. Automated monitoring searches the Internet.

2. Triple filtering ensures citations are relevant.

3. Daily reports are delivered in the morning via e-mail and clients own private, password protected web site for viewing with browser.

4. All citations are stored in a fully-integrated, searchable database with archiving, text retrival, knowledge management and data mining.

1. Worldwide Monitoring and Clipping

2. Triple Filtering

3. Daily reports via E-mail and Web Site

4. Searchable Database of Clips

The most advanced services

incorporate complex Boolean-type

searches, enabling finely-grained

searches that produce the most

relevant results.

The “Orange” example, taken from CyberAlert 3.0which uses set logic syntax in its search definitions,illustrates how the most powerful software systems can hone in on narrow subject areas while minimizingspurious results. The search is for a mobile phonecompany in the UK named “Orange.” The basic searchis for “Orange” and “mobile” – two common terms thatcan be used in myriad contexts, including colors, flavors, refreshments, cities, counties, and retail out-lets. In this example, the + sign means “mandatory” –so both “Orange” and "mobile" must appear in the article. The -/\R means to ignore the word “orange”if the “o” is lower case. The – sign means to ignore anyarticle which contains the words “alabama,” “califor-nia,” “florida,” “mini mart,” or “clockwork” – thus eliminating references to city, county or book namescontaining the word “orange.” The result is a daily listof citations with few unwanted clips.

When a client finds that asearch specification producestoo many irrelevant clips, it can be changed using prox-imity operators. Proximitycapabilities in CyberAlert 3.0include finding terms withinthe same line, sentence, paragraph, or Web page.

Each day, the spidering software of monitoring andclipping services indexes the contents of selected Web sites and then searchesthe index for customer-specified terms. The servicedelivers to each client a list of citations for new “clips”found during the previous 24 hours that match theclient’s search terms. The filtering software to delivery

only relevant new citations is one of the key value-added features of Internet monitoring services.Each monitoring service uses different technology to identify new clips and assess their relevancy.CyberAlert 3.0 is the only service that triple filters each citation to minimize the incidence of irrelevantcitations. Most public search engines, electronic newsaggregation services, and Web monitoring services do not allow the complex, finely grained searches ofthe advanced software in CyberAlert 3.0. Each deliv-ered citation includes an abstract of the article and a hotlink to the URL of the full-text article on the publisher’s Web site. CyberAlert and a few other services also provide clients with access to a password-protected Web site where clients can track their clips.As a unique value-added service, CyberAlert 3.0 aloneincorporates a clip management system with a data-base that is fully searchable by keyword, date, andnews source. The integrated clip management system enables clients to drill down for more finelygrained market intelligence buried in their customizeddatabase of clips.

Typically, clients adjust their search criteria a numberof times during the first few weeks of service to obtainthe most relevant results to meet their specific needs.

13

Each subscriber to CyberAlert 3.0 gets access to a private, password-protectedWeb site that saves the “clips” found on the Internet. The Web site incorporates a knowledge management system which allows subscribers tosort clips into folders and mine the information contained in their privatedatabase of clips. CyberAlert is the only online clipping service which includesa database-driven clip management system enabling users to search, annotateand share clips and full text articles.

Internet monitoring services

deliver only relevant, new clips

each day -- an important added

value over search engines.

Selecting a MonitoringServiceServices for Internet monitoring and clipping varywidely in their capabilities, features and sophistication.They range from purely manual services that rely on live editors using public search engines to fully-automated services using advanced, proprietary technologies. The automated services deliver morecomprehensive and timely results than manual ones.

Key criteria in selecting a Web monitoring service include:

1) Automation: What technology is being used to deliver the service? Do editors review results before delivery?

2) Coverage: What sources does the service cover? Which online news sources and how many of them? What major news sources are not covered? Can clients request addition of specific news sites to be monitored? Does the service cover non-news Web sites – for example, consumer opinion sites such as ePinions (www.epinions.com), or other commercial, academic, and government Web sites. Does the service monitor Usenet News Groups? Does it monitor message boards and forums?

3) Search Frequency and Depth: How often does the service monitor each of the news sources? In monitoring news sites, how many layers deep does the robot search? Does it spider the entire site or only the top layer or two? Does it search text behind graphics, meta-tags, and source code?

4) Selectivity: Are the news sources divided into media groups so that clients can select specific media groups instead of monitoring the entire list? Can the software exclude irrelevant portions of Web publications such as classifieds, stock listings, and weather reports?

5) Timeliness: How often does the service deliver clips? Does the delivery include news from the previous day? What time of day are results delivered?

6) Search Specification or Definition: Does the service offer the ability to do complex Boolean-typesearches? Can you “tune” a search to get improved results? Does the software permit "and not" exclusions in the search string?

7) Relevance: What techniques are used to filter results and assure relevance? Do the service’s

automated filters exclude “old” clips? How do the filters exclude companies or brands with similar names? Can the filters exclude specific Web sites such as the client’s own Web site?

8) Clip Management: Does the service save full text or just an abstract?Does the service include a searchable database for cross-checking, isolating, or mining information in delivered clips? Is there a method to annotate clips? Is there an integrated way to easily share clips with colleagues?

9) Value: What is the cost of service compared with coverage and services delivered? What cost savings can be achieved compared with manual searching using search engines?

10) Customer Service: What are the customer service capabilities and policies? Are account representative assigned to customers? How often can clients make changes in a search string/specification?

Integrated InternetMonitoring ProgramsAn automated Internet monitoring and clipping service should be the backbone of a comprehensivecorporate Internet monitoring program for reputationmanagement, competitive intelligence, or infringementmonitoring. The best of the automated services combine breadth and depth of coverage with timelydelivery of citations. With significant advantages ineffectiveness and timeliness, the automated servicesare clearly superior to manual searching with searchengines or use of older online information aggregationservices such as Dialog or Lexis-Nexis. Internet monitoring and clipping services such as CyberAlert 3.0are usually less expensive than assigning staff to thetime-consuming and tedious task of finding news andother articles on the Internet about a company and itsproducts.

However, even the better monitoring and clipping services may need to be supplemented with other services for certain corporate applications. For reputation management, one of the Internet-basednews services may provide access to news sourcessuch as the Dow Jones publications, that may not becovered by an Internet monitoring service. Onlinedatabase information retrieval systems (e.g., Dialog,Lexis-Nexis) continue to be worthwhile for findingarchival material or database information for market

14

Automated Internet monitoring

services deliver more comprehen-

sive, relevant, and timely results

than using staff to monitor manu-

ally with search engines.

An automated service should be

the backbone of a comprehensive

corporate Internet monitoring

program for reputation manage-

ment, competitive intelligence or

infringement monitoring.

research, for example. Lexis-Nexis is still the gold standard for searches involving legal information. Aninvestor relations service such as Company Sleuth(www.company.sleuth.com) can be of considerableassistance in monitoring financial message boards suchas Silicon Investor, Motley Fool, Yahoo! Finance, andothers. At least for the time being, conventional printclipping services continue to serve a valued role inmonitoring print publications.

Independent information professionals, includingMarketingBASE and Infonic, or public relations agencies such as Cayenne Communications, Hiron’s of Indianapolis, or Middleberg Euro, can provide monitoring services using automated solutions such asCyberAlert. The ideal solution is to deploy CyberAlertor another automated Web monitoring tool for miningthe Web (thereby minimizing the amount of timerequired to gather information) and leave the morecomplex analytical work to an information professional or public relations consultant.

Comparing InternetMonitoring ServicesIn an evaluation of Internet monitoring and clippingservices that appears in “Web Wise Ways” for SearcherMagazine (www.infotoday.com), MarketingBASE foundCyberAlert 3.0 more useful than eWatch.17

CyberAlert 3.0 delivers a daily e-mail report containingnew citations from the previous 24 hours. Each newcitation has a hotlink to the original source and a key-word-in-context (KWIC) abstract of the articlewith the key words highlighted. During a two-weektrial, CyberAlert was quite reliable, delivering resultseach day, even on weekends.

CyberAlert uses Boolean and set logic for search definitions and allows for nesting and proximity operators. Proximity capabilities include, for example, finding terms within the same line, sentence, paragraph, or page – with page meaning HTML document.

At the present time, CyberAlert searches 3,000+ Web publications worldwide with 50 to 100 new Web sites added each week. These cover the majornews syndication services, newspapers, magazines,journals, television networks and online publications\on the Internet. CyberAlert 3.0 groups publicationsinto media categories based on geography or topic of interest. CyberAlert will add sites suggested by customers at no extra cost. Since some Web sites

use “robot.txt” files to block automated searching,CyberAlert respects their wishes and avoids thosesites.

All CyberAlert customers get access to a private, password-protected Web site where there are featuresthat turn CyberAlert 3.0 into more than just a clippingservice. The Web site stores every clip in a databasefrom the time a client begins using the service; eachclip is saved for as long as the customer continues theservice. Customers can organize the clips into “folders” specified by the customer. Like traditionalprint news clipping services, CyberAlert can deliver a full-text copy of the clip upon customer request.

MarketingBASE found the clip management systemparticularly handy, because it means it’s no longer necessary to review clips on a daily basis and becauseit enables deeper cross-referencing with the Booleansearch engine incorporated into the site. Within this clip database system, the customer can search at anytime for additional key words. It is also possible to sortclips by date or media source. CyberAlert also enableseach user to forward a particular citation or even awhole folder of clips to another person via e-mail.

Similar to CyberAlert, eWatch provides a daily alert and Web access, but offers fewer features and optionsby comparison, in the estimation of MarketingBASE.The e-mail alerts do not hotlink to the URL cited.eWatch saves results for only two weeks. At this writing, eWatch does not include a working searchfunction, although the user instructions describe a

15

Subscribers to CyberAlert 3.0 receive a daily e-mailwith a list of all new articles found the previous 24hours in more than 3,000 Web publications, 63,000Usenet news groups, and 3.5 million other Web sites. An abstract of the article and a hotlink to thefull article makes it easy for subscribers to revieweach article.

CyberAlert 3.0 incorporates full

text retrieval, clip management

system, and other added-value

features that make it more than

just a clipping service.

CyberAlert 3.0 offers the best

value and most flexible terms.

search capability. eWatch does include some Web services not currently offered by CyberAlert, including monitoring of investor relations message boards suchas Motley Fool and Silicon Investor. Company Sleuthprovides the same services free of charge for publiccompanies only.

MarketingBASE was unable to test Cyveillance, which delivers a monthly analytical report, compiled by their editors. The Cyveillance service is moregeared to identifying schemes that involve traffic diversion, counterfeit products, and inappropriateproduct promotion by channel partners.

Summary andConclusions

Among the three services examined, CyberAlert seemsto offer the best value and most flexible terms. At thetime of the MarketingBASE article, CyberAlert charged$395 per month per search string on a month-to-monthagreement with quantity discounts to $295 per month.The eWatch charge is based on numbers of users and ison an annual contract basis. Pricing of Cyveillancebegins at $80,000 annually.

The burgeoning Internet has created a new informationand communications revolution. Almost every industryand product category is changing with lightening speedas both dotcom and brick and mortar companies entere-commerce and consumers exploit Web benefits. Inthe Internet economy, new companies must find novelways to succeed and established firms must innovate tosurvive. The race to market and growth in competition require innovative ways to find, gather,and process information needed for business planning,reputation management, and protection of brand equity.

As a result, automated Internet monitoring services are rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for reputation management, competitive intelligence, and infringement monitoring for most companies.

By combining the best attributes of search engines (in-depth coverage of the visible Internet), electronicnews aggregators (timely coverage of news sources),and traditional clipping services (delivery of all foundarticles) into a single, automated, time-saving, and customized information retrieval service, the automated services are quite clearly the most effective and time-efficient tool now available forInternet monitoring and Web clipping. On the whole, Internet monitoring and clipping services, such as CyberAlert, are more effective and less expensive than assigning staff to find news and otherarticles about a company and its products on theInternet. With their relatively low costs – starting atabout $300 per month -- they are an affordable productivity tool for almost any sized company inalmost any industry or business, almost anywhere in the world.

Mining information on the Internet is a vital component of a well-designed reputation managementand market intelligence program. However, findinginformation on the Internet is only the first step. For that information to be useful in corporate decision-making, it must be processed – stored, organized, evaluated, analyzed and, then, reported to key decision-makers – up to and including the CEO– in an actionable form. Well-formed intelligence willlead to better-informed decision-making. For virtuallyall companies, a cohesive and well-executed program of Internet monitoring and intelligence willundoubtedly lead to better business performance.

16

The automated services are quite

clearly the most effective and

time-efficient tools now available

for Internet monitoring and

Web clipping.

Internet clipping services such

as CyberAlert 3.0 are more

effective and less expensive than

assigning staff to find news and

buzz about a company and its

products.

References1. Fraud on the Internet. Business Week e.Biz Special Report. April 3, 2000. Available at: http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_14/b3675038.htm. Accessed August 25, 2000.

2. Lake D. The Web: Growing by 2 million pages a day. The Standard. February 28, 2000. Available at: http://www.thestandard.com/research/metrics/display/0,2799,12329,00.html. Accessed August 23, 2000.

3. Lopez RF. Corporate strategies for addressing Internet “complaint” sites. Thelen Reid & Priest, LLP, Web site.Available at: http://thelenreid.com/articles/article/art_49_idx.htm. Accessed August 26, 2000.

4. Shoenberger CR. The opiners, Forbes, September 4, 2000:123 Available at http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0904/6606123a.htm. Accessed August 26, 2000

5. Blakeley K. The whiners, Forbes, September 4, 2000:122 Available at: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0904/6606122a.htm. Accessed August 26, 2000.

6. Farrell G. From sour grapes to online whine. USA Today. April 7, 2000. Available at: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth701.htm. Accessed: August 10, 2000.

7. Solomon K. Customer reviews: It’s all a matter of opinion. The Standard. July 11, 1999. Available at: http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,6880,00.html. Accessed August 26, 2000.

8. Baig E. Appreciating the value of a fine whine. USA Today CyberSpeak. Available at: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/cced020.htm. Accessed on August 26, 2000.

9. Mount I. PR disasters and ways to avoid them. July 2000. eCompany.com Web site. Available at: http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/1,1640,6760,00.html. Accessed August 26, 2000

10. Calof J. Increasing your CIQ: The competitive intelligence edge. Economic & Technology Development Journal of Canada. 1998; Available at: http://www.edco.on.ca/journal/item22.htm. Accessed August 18, 2000.

11. Johnson A. What is competitive intelligence? AuroraWDC.com Web site. Available at: http://aurorawdc.com/whatisci.htm. Accessed August 24, 2000.

12. www.yousuck.com, PR Central, Reputation Management, September/October 1999 Available at: http://www.prcentral.com/repman99/rm_cover_sep99.htm. Accessed: July 2000.

13. Gray R. PR and the Internet. PR Week (UK). February 11, 2000. Available at: http://www.prweekuk.com/uk/bprac/internet.htm. Accessed August 22, 2000.

14. Lawrence S, Giles CL. Searching the World Wide Web. Science. April 3, 1998; 280:98. Available at: www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/websize.html. Accessed August 26, 2000.

15. Lawrence S., Giles CL. Accessibility of information on the Web. Nature. 1999; 400:107-109.. Available at: http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/websize.html. Accessed August 26, 2000.

16. Sullivan D. Search engine sizes. Search Engine Watch. July 7, 2000. Available at: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/sizes.html. Accessed August 12, 2000.

17. Kassel A. The last word on monitoring and clipping services. Searcher Magazine. September 2000; 8:8, 22-35.Available at: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep00/kassel.htm. Accessed August 26, 2000.

17