I have been consulting on internet marketing for over a decade. In my career I have seen many unethical things, from Fortune 500 companies performing many questionable actions, to observing sales agents selling on a fundamentally wrong foundation.

A bit of rant here – I know the whole ethics debate is tired and most people don’t want to read about it these days but I gotta throw in a word or two about it.

I just did a freebie consultancy for a small business – the lady who runs it on her own is completely bewildered by SEO, and having seen her so passionate about her business I gave her a call and straightened a few things out, offering a free basic consultancy (which tbh, is all the site needs – it’s not a competitive market).

What a topic for a debate! This took place at the University of Westminster in London last Tuesday:

Leading figures of the UK PR world are to hold a debate at the University of Westminster on whether ‘PR has a duty to tell the truth’.

The result? According to Martin Moore who was there:

I have noted a couple of times before that Nokia sent out phones and internet tablets in the past to some bloggers.

PR Week UK has a full-page feature on page 18 of this week’s edition (Jan 12 cover date) about the Edelman/Microsoft Vista blogger relations kerfuffle entitled “Are freebies a blogosphere taboo?”

Business ethics deserve much more attention than they usually receive in operating a company.

Arab TV network Al Jazeera launched an English-language service yesterday that, inevitably, attracted criticisms in the US and elsewhere where some see the station purely as a mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden.

My entry on the “independent” vendor comparison hosted by Citrix’s German marketing firm has stimulated a fair amount of interest. A couple of German bloggers seemed to have similar takes on the apparent conflict of interest and hidden sponsorship of the comparison site. I’ve had lots of hits on the article since WebProNews ran it on their site.

Influential bloggers are taking a harsh stance against services that offer payment to blog posters in return for product reviews, bringing the question of “blogosphere ethics” to the forefront of the blogging community.

Search engine optimization (SEO) ethics are often discussed, but rarely defined in any meaningful ways. Website owners often hear about the so-called “white hat” and “black hat” SEO professionals. A few webmasters are even aware of some undefined “grey hat” SEO techniques, and their practitioners as well.

Business ethics are one of those topics that receives much discussion, but sadly, not always enough action.

MSN, Yahoo, Google, and networking company Cisco all sent staffers to be part of a House Subcommittee hearing on their business practices in China.