For the 7th Time: Five Blocks Included in Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Companies List 2023
Five Blocks has once again been included on the annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. It is the 7th time the company has received this honor. In the history of the Inc 5000, only 719 companies (1.38 %) have made this prestigious list of fastest growing private companies seven times.
“I am thrilled that Five Blocks has made this list yet again – I credit our team for their dedication, as well as the many PR partners who have been incredibly helpful to us over the years,” says CEO and Founder Sam Michelson.
He continues, “It’s particularly exciting to be recognized now as we approach an exciting inflection point. As the impact of AI is becoming steadily clear, we are thrilled to be integrating new smart capabilities into our IMPACT dashboard and altering our tools to meet this new technology. We are also working on an AI tracking and analysis program for brands – empowering them to see what AI-powered search from ChatGPT, Bing AI Chat, Google Bard, and Google SGE are saying about them. This year promises to be our most exciting one yet!”
Axios on Wikipedia: Featuring our Advice
“Wikipedia is very central to how companies, brands and public figures are seen online,” Sam Michelson, CEO of digital reputation firm Five Blocks, told Axios. “You must have a presence on Wikipedia, and you must be able to correct or update your presence there — which is easier said than done.”
Read more here.
Five Blocks CEO Leads Masterclass in Baku
Veyseloglu Group of Companies organized and held a masterclass in Baku, Azerbaijan given by our CEO, Sam Michelson. The talk was catered for public relations, reputation management, and digital marketing professionals from across all sectors of the economy.
For the 6th time: Five Blocks Included in Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Companies List 2022
Five Blocks has once again been included on the annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies, with three-year revenue growth of 143%.
It is the sixth time the company has received this honor.
“We are honored to be included on this list yet again,” says Five Blocks CEO, Sam Michelson. “It’s a challenge to balance premium, bespoke service and relationship building with relentless tech innovation, but we’ve been doing this a long time, and we seem to keep on hitting that high note.” He adds, “Our focus on technology and data analysis has enabled us to scale our operation while providing excellent results for our clients and partners. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our 50+ PR firm partners, who are a huge part of our continued success.”
Recruiting Great Employees Starts Online: Our Advice on Forbes
How can companies attract (and retain) excellent employees at a time when many seem to be opting out of full-time corporate careers?
Here are our thoughts, on Forbes.
Five Blocks Included in Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Companies List 2021
Five Blocks has been ranked No. 2,243 on the annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies, with three-year revenue growth of 190%.
It is the fifth time the company has received this honor, up more than 1,200 spots since last year.
Why Location Matters to Google (and to Your Brand): Our Advice on Forbes
Google considers several factors when delivering search results. One of these is “likely intent.” This includes where the searcher is located.
How does this impact brands? Read more here.
If you’d like to find out how searchers see you from other locations, try out our free GeoSearch Chrome extension.
Sam Michelson Unpacks Google’s Algorithm on i24 News
Five Blocks CEO, Sam Michelson, explains how Google usually works – weighing searcher intent, a source’s authority, and other considerations.
He talks with Sarah Williamson about when the algorithm breaks its own rules during a crisis like COVID19.
Sam Michelson Discusses Reputation Management on i24News
Our CEO, Sam Michelson, tells Sarah Williamson of i24NEWS Business Weekly about Five Blocks and online reputation management. He also talks about “shelf-life,” and its impact on digital reputation management strategy. Hint: Don’t take your eye off the long-term, it’s really important for search.
Have a look:
Five Blocks included in The Inc. 5000
Five Blocks included in Inc. Magazine Annual List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies – The Inc. 5000
Five Blocks ranks no. 3,427 on the 2020 Inc. 5000 with three-year revenue growth of over 100%
NEW YORK, August 13, 2020 – Inc. magazine revealed yesterday that Five Blocks is No. 3,427 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. It is the fourth time the premium digital reputation management company has received this honor.
Read more here.
Online Crisis: Our Advice, on Forbes
A crisis often begins small; however, online, a minor crisis can grow very quickly.
This is especially true if your brand isn’t sufficiently present online. What’s more, digital results can far outlive the real life event. In this Forbes piece, our CEO, Sam Michelson, shares some of his experience through the lens of digital reputation management.
Read more here.
WikiAlerts empowers companies to fight vandalism on Wikipedia
Monitoring changes to corporate or executive Wikipedia pages is an essential component of reputation management. WikiAlerts™ by Five Blocks facilitates monitoring by sending real-time email alerts when edits are made to tracked Wikipedia pages.
First launched as a beta last year, WikiAlerts allows users to navigate the confusing history on Wikipedia pages and to monitor activity, changes, and traffic. This “virtual assistant” to communications staff now has a new “Revert Vandalism” feature in the alert emails that enables users to immediately revert an edit in the event they’ve identified it as malicious or destructive. It’s our way of helping users keep their digital reputation fair and vandalism-free.
Five Blocks President Howard Opinsky speaks with PR Week on Bezos’ response to AMI
“We’re not even close to the beginning of the beginning to how information will be wielded as a weapon of war and business,” Opinsky said…
Digital Journal Covers Five Blocks PR Conference Engagements in Chicago & Washington, DC
Five Blocks leaders Sam Michelson and Howard Opinsky will be speaking at two prestigious PR conferences over the next week in Chicago and Washington, DC. They’ll be discussing their latest insights about managing digital reputation and PR crises online.
Read more here: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/3985255
CommPRO – Five Blocks on Corporate Reputation
CommPRO shares some of Five Blocks’ best advice for planning digital reputation management for corporate entities.
Small and large businesses are realizing that far more people walk through the virtual door of their business (the search results page) than walk through their actual front door!
Getting your arms around the process of managing corporate reputation can be a challenge – here’s how we think you should approach it!
Read more here: https://www.commpro.biz/corporate-online-reputation-management-where-do-you-start/
Five Blocks Launches WikiAlerts
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NY, NY, June 26, 2018 – Five Blocks, a leading digital reputation management firm, announced today the beta launch of WikiAlerts – the ‘Google Alerts’ for tracking Wikipedia edits, traffic and trends.
WikiAlerts allows individuals and businesses to get real-time email alerts when the Wikipedia pages they track are edited. As online reputation management becomes increasingly important for companies, Wikipedia has emerged as a valuable resource for searchers and brands alike. WikiAlerts allows users to monitor activity, including vandalism and other edits, to tracked pages. It also enables users to easily navigate the often-confusing history of any Wikipedia page.
As Five Blocks’ CEO, Sam Michelson, explains, “It has never been easier to monitor your Wikipedia page than it is with WikiAlerts. WikiAlerts will transform the way that individuals and organizations follow the conversation about their vital Wikipedia reputation.”
As Julie Waldman, the WikiAlerts product manager said, “We knew WikiAlerts was ready for showtime when our entire content and account management teams began using it for all of their tracking. We see Alerts being adopted by brand managers, CCOs and PR managers as an indispensable tool for tracking Wikipedia.”
About Five Blocks
Five Blocks is a digital consulting and technology firm focused on reputation management. Five Blocks offers proprietary technology solutions and personalized, confidential advisory services to corporations and high-profile individuals who want to build, promote, and defend their reputations. As experts at digital search with over a decade of experience adapting to its ever-evolving parameters, rules, and best practices, Five Blocks includes analysts, technology developers, researchers and advisors. Headquartered in New York City with a development team in Israel, Five Blocks works with clients around the globe.
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If you would like more information about this topic, please call Julie Waldman at (212) 695-0855 or juliew@fiveblocks.com
How to Measure (and Influence) Brand Awareness with Google Search Data
Five Blocks was quoted for a piece on this topic. read more
You probably know how important your Google rankings are in measuring brand awareness — but are you aware of how brand awareness is actually shaped by search?
Because of the way search engines like Google are structured, brand awareness is a viral phenomenon. People’s opinions about your brand are encoded in their searches, and often, Google and other search engines can enforce these opinions.
Agency People News in Brief
New people in new roles at Story Partners, March Communications, Gould+Partners, Five Blocks, Greenough and BML.
NEW YORK — Veteran communications and reputation strategist Howard Opinsky has been named president of Five Blocks, a digital reputation consulting and technology firm. He joins with 15 years of experience as a senior executive at Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Weber Shandwick. Before that, he was a political strategist and communications advisor to candidates and causes including US Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign before that.
Hiring a Reputation Management Company for Your Business
Choosing a reputation management company can be a tough decision.
“Plenty of these companies are perfectly above board, but some reputation management firms employ unethical or even illegal practices that can land their clients in even hotter water if they’re not careful. ”
“It can be difficult to identify shady online reputation management companies,” said Sam Michelson, CEO and founder of digital reputation management firm Five Blocks. “A few telltale signs include the inability to find out who stands behind the company, tactics that include creating a lot of articles, and no clear explanation of the work being done behind the scenes.”
Hill+Knowlton veteran Howard Opinsky joins Five Blocks
The former press secretary for Sen. John McCain was most recently head of the East Coast region for H+K Strategies.
Opinsky said he will work to diversify Five Blocks’ U.S. business beyond its core digital reputation management offering and scale its consulting business, which launched about five years ago.
“Part of my hiring is to build out the consulting side and to build out our presence
in the U.S.,” Opinsky said. “With my background, we can bring Five Blocks to
the corporate community. We will continue to refine the consulting offering to
those clients.”
Five Blocks Listed as One of the Fastest Growing Small Businesses in NYC
Small businesses are the backbone of America and New York City.
Based in Manhattan and offering digital brand management for Fortune 500 companies. Five Blocks launched in 2007, they currently have 26 employees with 127% growth last year. Five Blocks helps you take control of your Brand’s Online Reputation. When your stakeholders search you – are they getting the right picture of your brand? Five Blocks works with Fortune 500 companies whose reputations are often worth Billions. They help protect their reputation while making sure that their online presence reflects their corporate communications and branding plan.
Is Google Judging You Based on a Template?
“Google’s job is to show you what you’re looking for. This can only be done by finding patterns and trends. Behind all the search results are templates that every query needs to fit in to.
When you perform a search in Google, you’re effectively seeing whatever information it wants to show you on that day. It’s a ton of information — but it’s not data. If you’re able to collect all that information and trend it, an unbelievable amount can be learned.”
If You Manage a Hedge Fund, Ignore Glassdoor at Your Own Peril
“It’s shocking that third party, user generated content websites (like Glassdoor) populate at least as much, or more, ‘real estate’ in the search results as the company’s own web assets. It’s true that every company will have disgruntled employees from time to time. What’s new is that never before have these critical voices and personal grievances been so public and proximal to the company’s digital brand.”
What’s The Social Footprint of 100 Most Influential Communicators?
The Holmes Report partnered with Five Blocks to analyze the social media footprint of the Influence 100.
By a large margin, LinkedIn is the most popular network for this group. Twitter shows solid usage as well. Facebook presence, on the other hand, is significantly lower. YouTube came in at last place.
Interestingly enough, 15% of the Influence 100 have no social media results of their own ranking on page 1 of Google.
What CMOs Need To Know About SEO
“Early in 2015 Twitter and Google struck a deal, and as a result you’re likely to see more tweets showing up in Google search results. Exactly how this will play out and how it will impact SEO remains to be seen.” Miriam Hirschman explores the possibilities in a post at Search Engine Land. “What isn’t in doubt is that being active on Twitter is more important than ever.”
Catching Up on Hedge Fund Indifference to Search and Social Media
“From our analysis [of the top 100 hedge funds], hedge funds continue to neglect the value of engaging with and controlling their presence on the web and via basic social media channels,” said Goldman. “Firms that assert even the most basic search and social strategy are poised to reap outsize rewards from a younger generation of clients in the coming years.”
Each of These People Has a Flawless Online Presence [INFOGRAPHIC]
Obviously, a big part of what we do at Five Blocks is research. To that end, we recently conducted a study of the wealthiest One-Percenters to see what could be learned from their digital footprints.
Five Blocks’ research spans topics like Wikipedia page presences, digital karma, and social media savvy for the people listed. This was all compiled into one infographic.
What Signals From Twitter Does Google Care About?
Earlier this year, Google and Twitter struck a deal which once again gave Google access to Twitter’s data stream. Columnist Miriam Hirschman explores how this might play out.
Ever since news of the Google-Twitter deal broke in early February 2015, there has essentially been radio silence. We know that the deal gives the search giant access to Twitter’s “firehose” of live tweet data; but, thus far, there has been no information released on what search results will look like once the deal is implemented “in the first half of this year“ (which itself is already half over). Read More
Has Google Gone Too Far with the Bias Toward Its Own Content?
Since the beginning of SEO time, practitioners have been trying to crack the Google algorithm. Every once in a while, the industry gets a glimpse into how the search giant works and we have an opportunity to deconstruct it. We don’t get many of these opportunities, but when we do — assuming we spot them in time — we try to take advantage of them so we can “fix the Internet.” Read More
Should PR People Pay More Attention To Glassdoor?
‘Get Hired, Love Your Job’ proclaims the tagline of Glassdoor, yet a review of the site’s infamous anonymous reviews section suggests it might be more popular with people who actually hate their jobs.
This may be one reason why PR firms often overlook Glassdoor in favor of other careers sites, notably LinkedIn. New research from digital firm Five Blocks, conducted exclusively for the Holmes Report, suggests they are wrong to do so. Read More
Five Blocks Listed as One of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies
Five Blocks, Inc., a technology and digital consulting company focused on Digital Reputation Management and Brand Management, today announced it has been ranked in the top 60th percentile in the 33rd annual Inc. 500|5000. This is an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies.
With a three-year sales growth of 110% from 2010 to 2013, Five Blocks also increased staff by 50%, adding significant technology and research resources as well as expanding the firms client and partner service management team. Read More
What ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Means For PR Agency Clients
What is the “Right to be Forgotten” ruling?
Back in May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the highest court in the European Union, issued a ruling upholding a law which has since been labeled the “Right to be Forgotten” (RTBF). The RTBF ruling allows EU citizens to request links [search results] that show up in their personal search results to be removed by Google and other applicable search engines. Read more
Hedge Funds, Google, and the “Right to be Forgotten”
Weighing the risks and rewards of using the “Right to be Forgotten” (RTBF) ruling for hedge fund managers.
As many readers may already be aware, the EU’s Court of Justice (EUCJ) has recently issued a ruling on the right to be forgotten that allows for private EU citizens to request certain links (search results) be taken down if they meet the court’s criteria. As many as 70,000 – 80,000 requests have been submitted already and the story is constantly developing as Google and the media affected by the ruling have begun reacting to it. Read more
The Missing ‘Link’ for Digital Reputation of Hedge Funds
Manage your online reputation or the world will manage it for you.
There was a time when protecting your reputation online was one item on a list of priorities for a hedge fund’s management team, usually near the bottom. When considering a hedge fund’s costs and shifting priorities, repairing or improving their online image tended to fall by the wayside until a crisis occurred. Read more
Facebook’s Flawed News Feed Bumping & The Rebirth Of Bad Content
What Facebook is trying to achieve is actually not a bad thing. I miss content all the time. It happens. So if that piece is popular among my friends, then, truth be told, I do probably want to see it. That being said, story bumping in its current form is majorly flawed. Why?
How Google’s ‘In-Depth Articles’ Feature Could Affect PR
Google recently introduced a new feature on some of its search pages that spells big changes in the way companies manage their online reputations and public relations strategies.
The feature, which Google calls “In-Depth Articles,” offers up links to a set of three long-form articles, usually at the bottom of the search results page. The articles are usually detailed profiles and exposés on companies and their leadership. Companies and high-profile individuals should take notice of this development and understand that it presents a number of opportunities, as well as some perils. Read more
Why Hedge Funds Should Care About Google Search Results
Ignore the internet at your own peril.
Hedge fund managers are notoriously reticent when it comes to talking about themselves publicly and, save for a few, they’ve always had a bias against speaking to the media. Regulatory barriers, including the ban on general solicitation, have sometimes stood in the way. But those walls are close to coming down. Still, many managers wonder why they should even care about their online reputations. After all, most hedge fund investments are born from private placements. Marketing has not been high on the list of a fund’s priorities and many want to maintain an air of exclusivity that negates any need for mass advertising. Read more
