In October, Media Orchard looked at the Wikipedia entries of top PR firms and found them a bit of a mess. We thought it might be nice to give these agencies a chance to redeem themselves by analyzing their Web sites.

Specifically, we decided to use our new favorite toy, TagCrowd, to assess the messaging these firms project in the top-level content of their sites. TagCrowd, you may recall, creates tag clouds based on word frequency.

So, think of these as the Web site “brand clouds” for five top PR agencies:

Burson-Marsteller –

Edelman –

Ruder Finn –

Hill & Knowlton –

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide –

For comparison to a smaller firm, here’s one for the Idea Grove –

Why don’t you try it for your own agency? It’s a good spot-check to make sure your site’s content hasn’t gone off message.

Even compared to most content on the indispensible trainwreck that is Wikipedia, the entries of many top PR firms are a mess.

What does it say about a PR agency’s ability to influence people’s perceptions — particularly in the white-hot social media space — when its presence on the Google of Web 2.0 looks like this:

Burson-Marsteller –

The entry consists entirely of a litany of misdeeds. Co-founder Bill Marsteller’s name is spelled wrong.

Edelman –

Not much better — twice as much content on two recent embarrassing controversies than on the firm’s entire history.

Ruder Finn –

Ah, you gotta love Wikipedia randomness. Two sections devoted to ethics controversies, one section that says somnabulant crooner Perry Como was a client, and the top section, which reads as follows:

Ruder Finn is an United States public relations firm founded in 1948 by David Finn and William Ruder.

Ruder Finn is a privately held, family-owned company that employs more than 450 people. Its public relations cover healthcare, technology, consumer, interactive, media, arts and culture, and environmental programming.[specify]

Since 1978, Ruder Finn has maintained an executive-training program, which approximately 20% of Ruder Finn employees have participated in to date.

Thank God (I mean Jimmy) that I now know the percentage of folks in Ruder Finn’s training program. But dammit — I need more Como!

Fleishman-Hillard –

Poor Fleishman-Hillard. Someone associated with the PR hating group PR Watch apparently is responsible for the bulk of Fleishman’s entry. Someone with Fleishman — knowing the Wikipedia ban on companies posting about themselves — then apparently tried to go through official channels and posted the following in Wikipedia’s talk section:

This article is lifted essentially verbatim from PR Watch (a cousin of Sourcewatch). PR Watch is an expressly biased publication whose self-described mission is “blowing the lid off today’s multi-billion dollar propaganda-for-hire industry.” Opinionated content written by a blatantly biased source should not be taken as fact, and as such has no place on Wikipedia.

Well put, Fleishman. Only problem is, this objection was lodged in April 2006 — and nothing has happened since.

Hill & Knowlton –

One of the longest entries of all the PR firms I checked. Unfortunately, of the entry’s nine paragraphs, seven are about various ethical controversies in which the firm has been involved.

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide [entry is for its parent firm] —

Flagged more times than a closet-full of GOP lapels.

All in all, if you read their Wikipedia entries, the top PR firms sound more like criminal enterprises than successful corporations. This goes to the fact that Wikipedia has a clear anti-corporate bias — no two ways about that.

But the sad state of PR firms’ Wikipedia entries should also be a lesson to potential clients — don’t believe the hype from agencies that pretend they’ve mastered this new world.

Beating its large-agency competitors to the punch, Edelman extended its leadership in all things Web 2.0 today by announcing the launch of its Aerial Reputation Management Practice.

The new practice was inspired by the U.S. Navy’s decision to camouflage — at the cost of $600,000 in landscaping and other changes — the appearance of 40-year-old barracks that happen to resemble a swastika when viewed on Google Maps.

“Our research indicates that many large organizations in both the public and private sectors have not given adequate consideration to their aerial reputations,” said Edelman chief Richard Edelman. “We think we should be able to scare up a few bucks off of this one.”

As an example of the challenge that could be facing many Fortune 500 corporations, Edelman’s research team provided the following aerial photograph of Exxon Mobil headquarters:

“While Exxon Mobil’s facility, at ground level, is stately and uncontroversial, from the air it bears an uncanny resemblance to a scientific illustration of carbon dioxide,” Edelman said. “Obviously, this could be a bit awkward if not managed properly.”

For a limited time, Edelman will provide a complimentary helicopter consultation with every Aerial Reputation Management Practice engagement — so call today.