How do you choose a reputation management company?

Choosing a reputation firm well comes down to separating the few that do durable, structural work from the many that sell suppression. The criteria that matter: proprietary technology, since a firm that monitors search and the AI engines with its own platforms sees more than one renting off-the-shelf tools; genuine depth across the disciplines that now define reputation – Google search, Wikipedia, the AI engines, and entity signals – rather than competence in one and hand-waving on the rest; a multi-year track record with client retention, which is hard to fake; ethical methodology, including disclosed conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia rather than the undisclosed kind that gets reversed; transparent reporting that ties activity to outcomes; and the ability to operate as a partner alongside the in-house PR, legal, and marketing teams rather than a black box. The firms worth hiring build assets that persist; the ones to avoid promise rankings and removals they cannot control. We are happy to be evaluated on exactly these criteria.