What questions should you ask a reputation management firm before hiring them?

The right questions force a reputation firm to show whether it does durable, structural work or sells suppression. Six of them cover the ground that matters before you sign a contract.

The six questions, and what a credible firm says

1. How do you measure success?
   A credible answer names search positions, AI narrative quality, and business outcomes rather than vague promises or vanity metrics. A firm that cannot say what it tracks and how it reports has no way to be held to account.
2. What is your Wikipedia methodology?
   A serious firm describes disclosed conflict-of-interest editing and Talk-page work, and declares its relationship to the Wikipedia community as policy requires. An evasive answer, or no answer at all, usually means anonymous direct edits. Those violate the terms of use, get reversed, and can leave the article in worse shape than before.
3. What is your approach to the AI engines?
   The credible answer describes shaping the sources the models draw on: entity signals, authoritative content, structured data. No one edits a model’s output directly. A firm that implies it can tune the model itself, or that conflates AI search optimization with AI narrative management, does not understand the mechanism.
4. What proprietary technology do you use, and can you show it?
   Purpose-built monitoring platforms that track search results and AI engine answers at scale separate the firms that can see what is actually happening from the ones working on assertion. Ask for a demonstration. A firm with real technology will show it.
5. What are your ethical commitments, in concrete terms?
   Concreteness is the test. Disclosed COI editing, not anonymous edits. Legitimate removal channels, not guaranteed suppression. Authoritative content, not fake reviews or link schemes. A vague assurance of “white-hat” practice with no specifics behind it is not a commitment.
6. How do you handle conflicts of interest?
   A firm that serves one sector long enough will eventually face competing clients. Ask how it manages that: whether it declines conflicting work, whether it has Chinese walls, whether it discloses. A clear answer grounded in policy is reassuring. Deflection is not.

How specific a firm is willing to be across all six tells you most of what you need to know before signing. We answer them directly in a first conversation.