Digital Reputation Management

Reputation is no longer a media problem. It’s an infrastructure problem.

What Google and AI say about your brand is your reputation. We manage it.


 Digital Reputation Management

For most of the last two decades, “reputation” lived inside the communications function. A CCO managed the narrative through earned media, owned channels, and relationships with reporters. The story was the product.

That world still exists. But it now runs on top of a second, deeper layer – one that determines whether the story actually reaches anyone.

When a board member, a regulator, an LP, a journalist, a recruit, or a customer wants to understand a company or an executive, they do not start with a press release.

They typically start with Google, and increasingly, they are moving to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, or Copilot. What those systems return – the ten blue links, the knowledge panel, the AI-generated summary – is the reputation. Everything else is upstream of it.

Most PR firms are not built to manage that layer. We are. It is the only thing we do, and we have been doing it since 2003.

What “Digital Reputation Management” actually means at Five Blocks

The phrase gets used loosely. In our work, it has a precise meaning: the disciplined, ongoing management of every signal that Google and AI models use to construct a picture of a brand or an individual.

That includes, at minimum:

  • Google search results for branded and reputational queries – the first three pages, every SERP feature (knowledge panel, People Also Ask, Top Stories, AI Overviews, sitelinks), and how they shift over time.
  • AI-generated narratives in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, and Google’s AI Mode – what the model says, which sources it draws from, and how the story compares to peers.
  • Wikipedia – the single most influential third-party source on the open web, cited heavily by AI models and surfaced prominently in Google.
  • Knowledge graphs and entity signals – Wikidata, Crunchbase, schema markup, structured data, and the dozens of signals that tell machines who a company or person is.
  • Owned content – corporate sites, executive bios, FAQ pages, leadership content – structured to be readable by both humans and AI.
  • Earned and third-party content – the press, directories, and reference sites that AI treats as authoritative.

Each of these is a discipline. Most firms work in one or two of them. We work in all of them, in-house, and we treat them as a single connected system – because that is how Google and AI treat them.

Why this is different from PR, SEO, or traditional ORM

We get asked this constantly, so it is worth being direct.

We are not a PR firm. We do not pitch reporters, place stories, or manage media relationships. We work alongside the firms that do – including most of the major strategic communications and IR firms in New York, London, and globally. They handle narrative and media. We handle the technical and content infrastructure that determines whether that narrative actually reaches people through Google and AI.

We are not an SEO agency. Traditional SEO optimizes for traffic and conversion – keywords, backlinks, technical performance. Reputation work optimizes for what specific people see when they search a specific name or brand. Different goals, different toolkit, different success metric.

We are not a traditional ORM or “suppression” firm. Most firms in that category fight the algorithm – they build networks of low-quality content, spin up profiles, and try to push negative results down through volume. The work is brittle, often unethical, and increasingly ineffective as Google and AI get better at recognizing manipulation.

We do the opposite. We work with the platforms – studying how Google ranks, how AI models source their answers, what Wikipedia accepts as credible – and we curate a client’s broader digital presence so that the preferred narrative is the one those systems naturally elevate. The work is durable because it is built on the same logic the platforms themselves use.

Our approach

Every engagement starts with the same conviction: you cannot manage what you have not measured, and you cannot fix what you do not understand.

1. We lead with data

Before we recommend anything, we audit. Across Google search results for every reputational query that matters, across all major AI models, across Wikipedia and Wikidata, across knowledge panels and structured data, across third-party citations. We map the full landscape – what is there, where it is coming from, and why the systems are surfacing it.

This produces two things our clients consistently tell us they cannot get elsewhere: a clear, evidence-based picture of the actual problem, and an internal alignment tool that gets stakeholders to agree on what to do.

Our proprietary platforms make this possible at depth:

  • IMPACTâ„¢ tracks Google search results daily across tens of thousands of queries for every client. We have monitored more than 100,000 brand search footprints over the platform’s history. Clients see, in real time, which results dominate, how rankings shift, and where the leverage points are.
  • AIQ is the only platform of its kind built specifically to monitor AI narratives. It tracks how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity, and Grok describe a brand – sentiment, sources cited, peer comparisons, narrative drift over time. Continuously updated.
  • WikiAlerts monitors every relevant Wikipedia page and edit, in real time, across all language editions.
  • GeoSearch tracks how results shift across geographies – critical for multinationals and for executives whose stakeholders are spread across markets.

 

2. We work every layer that matters, in-house

Five Blocks does not outsource. Every piece of work, Wikipedia research and editing, technical structured data implementation, AI content strategy, owned content development, entity optimization, is executed by our own team, in our offices in New York and Jerusalem.

Our staff averages well over a decade of experience in digital reputation. We have 10+ people dedicated exclusively to Wikipedia, with a depth of platform knowledge that is not matched anywhere in the industry. Our turnover is low. The senior practitioner assigned to a client in month one is the same one accountable in month twelve.

This matters because reputation work, done correctly, is highly contextual. There is no playbook that substitutes for someone who knows the case, the industry, the personalities, and the platforms intimately. We build that institutional knowledge inside the engagement, and we keep it there.

3. We use peer analysis as a methodology, not a sales pitch

One of our operating principles: do not reinvent the wheel. In every engagement, we study what is working for a client’s peers and competitors – which content AI models are citing, which Wikipedia structures are most defensible, which third-party sources are driving positive narratives, which owned content is breaking through.

Our AIQ platform makes this systematic. We can tell a client, with data, which sources are shaping how they are described in ChatGPT versus how a peer is described – and what to do about the gap. It accelerates results and grounds every recommendation in what is actually working in that competitive context.

4. We build for durability, not for the dashboard

There is a temptation in this industry to optimize for what looks good in a monthly report. We optimize for what holds up six, twelve, twenty-four months out – through algorithm changes, news cycles, and the rapid evolution of AI models.

That means investing in the structural assets that compound: a strong Wikipedia presence, well-architected owned content, accurate entity data, durable third-party citations. The work is slower than vanity tactics. It is also why our client relationships average many years.

What ongoing digital reputation management looks like

Most of our engagements are not crisis work. They are ongoing programs designed to keep a brand or an executive in a strong position – so that when something does happen, the foundation is already there.

A typical program includes:

Continuous monitoring. IMPACTâ„¢ and AIQ run daily. Clients have real-time visibility into where they stand in Google and across AI models. Anomalies, ranking shifts, narrative drift, new negative content – we see it as it happens, often before the client does.

Active curation of search results. We work the queries that matter, branded searches, executive names, reputational queries, industry-specific terms – and we manage what surfaces on them. That means strengthening preferred content, building new assets where gaps exist, and addressing problematic results through the structural levers that actually move rankings.

Wikipedia stewardship. For clients with Wikipedia presence (or who should have one), we manage notability, accuracy, sourcing, and the ongoing editorial process – transparently, with disclosed conflict-of-interest editing per Wikipedia’s terms of service. For clients without a Wikipedia page, we assess whether one is appropriate and, if so, build it correctly the first time.

AI narrative management. We monitor how each major AI model describes the client, identify the sources driving the narrative, and shape those sources – corporate site content, Wikipedia, earned media, structured data – so that the AI-generated story is accurate, complete, and favorable. This is the newest discipline in reputation, and the one most firms have not figured out.

Entity optimization. Wikidata entries, Google Knowledge Graph signals, schema markup on the corporate site, executive entity hygiene across the open web. The unglamorous infrastructure that determines whether AI and search engines correctly understand who the client is.

Owned content development and optimization. We help clients build the kind of content, executive bios, leadership pages, FAQ structures, thought leadership architecture, that performs in both human search and AI synthesis. Often this is the highest-leverage work we do.

Reporting and review. Formal monthly reports, weekly check-ins where appropriate, ad-hoc updates as activity warrants, and continuous platform access through IMPACTâ„¢ and AIQ. Clients are never guessing where they stand.

How we work with PR and communications partners

The majority of our engagements involve a PR or strategic communications firm working alongside us. That is by design. PR teams shape narrative; we shape the infrastructure that determines whether the narrative is what people actually find.

In practice this looks like:

  • Joint stakeholder mapping. Comms identifies the audiences and moments that matter; we identify the queries, platforms, and signals that audience will actually encounter.
  • Coordinated content strategy. When the comms team places earned media, we ensure the placements are structured to be discoverable and citable by AI. When we recommend owned content, the comms team owns voice and message; we own architecture and discoverability.
  • Crisis preparation, not just response. We map vulnerabilities before they become incidents, exposed search queries, weak entity data, Wikipedia risk, AI narrative gaps – and the PR partner builds the messaging playbook against that map.
  • Clear lines. No turf wars. We do not pitch reporters; PR partners do not edit Wikipedia. The collaboration works because the disciplines do not overlap.

Why this matters now

Two things have changed in the last twenty-four months.

First, AI-generated answers are rapidly replacing the search query as the primary way people get information about brands and individuals. The narrative those models produce is built from a specific set of sources – Wikipedia, corporate websites, earned media, structured data – and it is being formed right now, whether the subject is paying attention or not.

Second, the cost of getting it wrong has gone up. A flawed AI summary that gets cited by a journalist, repeated by an analyst, or surfaced to a board member becomes the working version of the story. Correcting it after the fact is far harder than shaping it correctly in the first place.

Five Blocks has spent twenty-plus years working on exactly the building blocks AI models now read. We were doing this work before AI made it urgent. The firms that figure out the AI layer will be the firms that already understood the search and Wikipedia layers – because they are the same problem, in a new wrapper.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Five Blocks different from a traditional ORM or “suppression” firm? Traditional ORM fights the algorithm – building low-quality content networks to push results down. We work with the platforms. We study how Google and AI models source and prioritize content, and we curate a client’s broader digital presence so the preferred narrative is the one those systems naturally surface. The work is durable because it is built on the same logic the platforms use.

How is Five Blocks different from a PR firm doing digital reputation? PR firms manage narrative and media relationships. We manage the technical and content infrastructure that determines what Google and AI actually return. Different skills, different tools, different success metric. Most major PR firms partner with us rather than compete with us.

Do you outsource any work? No. All Five Blocks work is done in-house, by our team. No white-label vendors, no offshore execution.

How long do engagements typically last? Most clients work with us on an ongoing basis. Reputation infrastructure is not a one-time project – search results shift, AI models evolve, news cycles change, executives transition. Programs are designed to maintain and strengthen the foundation over time. Crisis-only engagements are usually two to six months; broader programs run for years.

Can Five Blocks actually change what AI models say about a client? Yes – through structural means. We improve the sources AI models read: Wikipedia, corporate website content, earned media, entity signals. When those sources improve, the AI-generated narrative improves. Our AIQ platform measures the change directly. This is not a workaround; it is how AI reputation management works.

Does Five Blocks remove negative content? Where it is possible and appropriate, yes – through direct outreach, factual correction requests, legal angles where they exist, and in some cases acquiring defunct sites that host defamatory content. Removal is not always feasible, which is why our broader methodology focuses on shaping what surfaces in Google and AI regardless of whether any individual piece comes down.

How do you report to clients? Formal monthly reports, weekly check-ins where the engagement warrants, ad-hoc updates as activity requires, and continuous real-time access to IMPACTâ„¢ (search) and AIQ (AI). Clients are never guessing where they stand.

Do you work confidentially through PR partners? Yes. Many of our engagements run through strategic communications and PR firms. We also work directly with end-clients. Either model is standard.

How much does an engagement cost? Programs are structured as monthly retainers, scoped to the work required. Crisis engagements typically run $15,000 to $30,000 per month. Ongoing programs vary based on scale – a single executive looks different from a multi-brand corporate mandate. We will scope and price transparently after an initial audit.

Do you work outside the United States? Yes. We work across many languages and geographies. 

Is the work confidential? Always. No exceptions.

Where to start

The right entry point for almost every prospective client is the same: a Digital Brand Audit. It is fast, it is concrete, and it produces a clear, evidence-based picture of where the client stands across Google, AI models, Wikipedia, and entity signals – along with a prioritized roadmap for what to do about it.

For active situations, we begin a crisis engagement within 24 to 48 hours.

For ongoing programs, we typically scope, audit, and launch within two to three weeks of engagement.

Contact us to discuss your situation – whether you are evaluating partners, building defenses before a crisis, or already in one.