Google tops reputation rankings

Google, Cadburys and Kelloggs have topped a league table of Ireland’s most reputable companies.

An Post was the Irish-owned company that came highest in the list, followed by Smyths, the toy retailers.

It is the second year in a row that Google has topped the annual RepTrak study, the most comprehensive survey of corporate reputations.

The results were announced today by chief executive of Corporate Reputations Niamh Boyle at an event in Dublin which was also addressed by the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamon Gilmore.

The study ranks the largest organisations in Ireland including indigenous, multinational and semi-state bodies and rates how highly these organisations are held in esteem, how much they are admired and trusted and how the general public feels about them.

It also studied how an organisation rates across seven key dimensions of reputation: performance, innovation, leadership, products and services, governance, workplace and citizenship.

It forms part of an international exercise the results for which have not yet been published. Henrik Stroier, the managing director of Denmark’s Reputation Institute, told the event that Ireland was an “outlier” in having only two indigenous companies in its ten most reputable companies. In Denmark eight of the top ten were Danish companies.

Other high performing Irish companies in the top twenty include Easons, Arnotts, Dairygold, and the Irish Dairy Board.

The Irish Times was ranked 40th of the 100 top companies. It scored 69.7, a drop from the 78.65 score it achieved in 2010.

Anglo Irish Bank was once again at the bottom of the rankings, finishing last out of the 119 organisations included in the survey. John Player and Sons, NTR, Irish Nationwide Building Society and AIB also ranked in the bottom five.

AIB suffered the greatest drop in reputation of the 119 organisations studied, falling more than 16 points to a score of 32.04 in 2011.

Iarnród Éireann received the biggest boost in reputation, gaining 11.55 points to put them at 66.48 points.