By now you have probably heard about what happened to United Airlines. But for those of you who have not heard let me briefly explain what happened. In 2002 the Chicago Tribune newspaper published an on-line article about United Airlines declaring bankruptcy. This should have stayed old news, since this story is now 6 years old, but it did not stay old news. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, whose parent company also owns the Chicago Tribune, reran the article. But the Sentinel had a date of 2008 posted with the article. In no time flat this information ran around the Internet so quickly that investors began dumping their shares. United Airlines stock plummeted from $12 per share to just over $3 per share. Who is to blame here and what can be done?


The blame will have to be sorted out by the courts. I can not imagine that United is going to sit by and allow this to go unpunished. All parties involved are claiming that they had nothing to do it with and it was all an accident. But I am not so sure about that. Someone or some internal system is to blame for this and needs to be corrected. The trading of the United stock was halted that day and the shares ended the day at just over $10 but not before the damage had been done.


This situations is just another example of how powerful information can be and how fast that information can be spread. It is even more important now to have some type of Search Engine Reputation Management policy in place to stop these types of rumors before they cost a company or people their reputation.