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

The right questions to ask a reputation firm before hiring force it to reveal whether it does durable work or sells suppression. How do you measure success – and the answer should be grounded in search positions, AI narrative, and business outcomes, not vague promises. What is your Wikipedia methodology – a serious firm will describe disclosed conflict-of-interest editing and Talk-page work, not direct anonymous edits. What is your approach to the AI engines – the credible answer is shaping the sources the models draw on, since no one edits a model’s output directly. What proprietary technology do you use, and can you show it. What are your ethical commitments, in concrete terms. How and how often do you report. And how do you handle conflicts of interest, since a firm serving a sector will eventually face competing clients. The quality of the answers, and the firm’s willingness to be specific rather than evasive, tells you most of what you need to know. We answer all of these directly in a first conversation.