LAST UPDATED – August 2026

Wikipedia Editing for Companies: 

Now that AI searches have beome so common, and Wikipedia is one of the top sources for ChatGPT, Claude and other AIs, one of the most common questions we get regarding Wikipedia is whether a company can edit its own page. The short answer is – it’s complicated, and there are important guidelines to follow.

Wikipedia’s Stance on COI – Conflict of Interest

Wikipedia’s purpose is to provide an encyclopedia of impartial knowledge. Content that is promotional, self-serving, or biased will often get flagged or removed by other editors.

Wikipedia’s official policy states:

“You are discouraged from writing articles about yourself or organizations (including their campaigns, clients, products and services) in which you hold a vested interest.”

In essence, editing the Wikipedia page about your own company is discouraged, as Wikipedia aims to ensure its content remains unbiased.

 The Risks of Undisclosed Editing

It’s crucial to understand that:

• Wikipedia editors frown upon and may penalize pages that appear to have been edited by the company without transparency.
• Your IP address is recorded and visible to others. Never attempt to edit anonymously using a company-owned IP address.
• The Wikipedia editor community actively tracks changes. Your edits can trigger alerts for engaged editors, who may swiftly revert or challenge your modifications.

Free Consultation regarding your brand’s Wikipedia challenges (and their impact on AI Models): Contact Us

The Gold Standard: Disclosed Conflict of Interest (COI) Editing

Over the past few years, a new approach to Wikipedia editing has emerged, known as “disclosed conflict of interest” editing. This method is now considered the best practice for companies seeking to improve their Wikipedia presence. Here’s how it works:

1. The company or individual creates a Wikipedia user account.
2. They disclose their connection to the subject of the article on their user page or the article’s talk page.
3. Instead of directly editing the article, they suggest changes on the talk page, providing reliable sources to support their proposals.
4. Independent Wikipedia editors review these suggestions and implement them if they meet Wikipedia’s guidelines.

This approach aligns with Wikipedia’s values of transparency and allows companies to advocate for fair representation while respecting the platform’s rules.

Why Choose Disclosed COI Editing?

• It’s compliant with Wikipedia guidelines, avoiding the risks associated with undisclosed editing.
• It allows for more aggressive advocacy on behalf of your brand, as you’ve already informed the community of your connection.
• It typically leads to better long-term outcomes and a more stable Wikipedia presence.

How We Can Help
At Five Blocks, we specialize in navigating Wikipedia’s complex landscape for our clients. Our services include:

1. Notability Analysis: Determining whether an entity has the required coverage for Wikipedia editors to accept and publish a new article.
2. Current Page Analysis: Reviewing challenges and opportunities with existing content and sources.
3. Content Planning and Drafting: Preparing content and sourcing for potential Wikipedia inclusion.
4. Community Engagement: Working with the Wikipedia editor community to review and submit proposed changes via the appropriate talk pages.
5. Vandalism Monitoring: Utilizing tools to monitor Wiki pages so that swift action can be taken when needed.
6. Foreign Language Pages: Assisting in creating Wikipedia pages in other languages, following the specific guidelines for each.

Free Consultation regarding your brand’s Wikipedia challenge: Contact Us

Important Considerations

• Wikipedia’s editing guidelines are far more intricate than they may appear. The sources, writing style, and editor interaction require significant experience to manage effectively.
• Timing is crucial. Introducing a Wikipedia page in advance of a potential crisis may be beneficial, while doing so during a crisis could backfire.
• Building a positive Wikipedia presence takes time and patience. It’s a long-term strategy that requires consistent effort and adherence to Wikipedia’s principles.

Ready to Improve Your Wikipedia Presence?

If you’re looking to create or improve your company’s Wikipedia page, we offer free consultations to discuss your options and determine the best approach for your specific situation. Our team of experts can guide you through the process of disclosed COI editing, ensuring compliance with Wikipedia’s guidelines while working towards your goals.

Free Consultation regarding your brand’s Wikipedia challenge: Contact Us

Still have questions? See our FAQ

How do I edit an error on my company’s Wikipedia page?

While anyone can edit Wikipedia, it’s best to use the disclosed COI approach.
Best is to work with an experienced firm to suggest changes on the article’s talk page, providing reliable sources to support your corrections.

How do you create a Wikipedia page?

Wikipedia has strict standards for notability, citations, and conflict of interest. We recommend consulting with professionals to navigate these requirements and increase the chances of your page being accepted and maintained.

Can you edit your own Wikipedia page?

Direct editing is discouraged. Instead, work with an experienced team to ensure you are utilizing the disclosed COI method to suggest changes on the talk page and let independent editors implement them.

Who can edit a Wikipedia page?

Anyone can edit most Wikipedia pages, but it’s important to follow the platform’s guidelines, especially regarding conflict of interest.

Can I see who edited a Wikipedia page?

Yes, go to the ‘View History’ tab at the top right of the Wikipedia page. The username of the editor appears next to each change, along with the date.

Remember, working with Wikipedia requires patience, transparency, and adherence to the platform’s principles. By following these guidelines and best practices, you can work towards achieving a fair and accurate representation of your company on one of the world’s most visited websites.

Free Consultation regarding your brand’s Wikipedia challenge: Contact Us

The post Can you edit your or your company’s Wikipedia page? appeared first on Five Blocks.

The COI Trap

Wikipedia’s conflict of interest (COI) policy exists for an obvious reason: people editing articles about themselves, their companies, or their clients have a personal stake in how those articles read. That stake creates bias, even when the editor genuinely believes they’re being objective.

Wikipedia defines a conflict of interest as any editing where you have a close personal or financial relationship with the subject. Editing your own company’s Wikipedia page is a textbook COI situation. This doesn’t make editing impossible, but it does mean there are specific rules you’re required to follow, rules that most executives aren’t aware of when they make their first edit.

What Actually Happens When You Edit Your Own Page

When a company executive edits their own Wikipedia page without following COI guidelines, several things typically happen:

The edit is flagged. Wikipedia’s sophisticated editor community has automated tools and experienced volunteers specifically trained to detect COI editing. New accounts editing corporate articles, IP addresses that trace back to corporate offices, and editing patterns that match promotional content are all triggers.

The edit is reverted. Once identified as a COI edit made without disclosure, the edit will be reversed. The original content, including whatever problem you were trying to fix, is restored.

The article is flagged. The Wikipedia article itself may be tagged with a COI notice, which tells readers that the article’s neutrality is disputed. This is often worse than whatever you were trying to fix.

Your account may be blocked. Repeated undisclosed COI editing can result in your account being blocked from editing Wikipedia entirely.

The permanent record. Every edit you make is stored forever in Wikipedia’s revision history. If you’re later identified as a COI editor, that history will be scrutinized and any undisclosed COI edits may be used to flag your contributions.

The Approach That Works and How We Can Help

Wikipedia does have a process for interested parties to request changes to articles, and it’s specifically designed for situations like this. It’s called the “edit request” process, and it works through the article’s Talk page.

Five Blocks specializes in disclosed COI Wikipedia work. Our team includes experienced Wikipedia editors who understand both the technical rules and the cultural norms of the Wikipedia editor community. We work transparently, disclosing our client relationships and operating within Wikipedia’s guidelines, because it’s both the right approach and the only approach that produces durable results.

We start with a free assessment of your current Wikipedia situation, identify the highest-priority issues, and outline what a compliant engagement would look like for your specific case.

Get your free Wikipedia page evaluation →

The AI Dimension

The stakes for getting your Wikipedia page right have increased significantly with the rise of AI. Wikipedia is a primary training and reference source for AI language models, Google’s Knowledge Panel, and dozens of other information systems. When someone asks an AI assistant about your company, executive, or brand, the response is often shaped by your Wikipedia page.

This means errors, outdated information, or negative content on your Wikipedia page doesn’t just affect people who visit Wikipedia directly. It propagates into AI responses, search results, and knowledge graphs that reach far more people than your Wikipedia page itself ever would.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it legal to edit your own Wikipedia page?

There’s nothing illegal about it. Wikipedia’s policies are community rules, not laws. But violating those policies has real consequences: reverted edits, flagged articles, and damaged credibility with the Wikipedia editor community.

What if the information on my Wikipedia page is factually wrong?

Even factual errors should be corrected through the Talk page process rather than direct editing, if you have a COI. The proper approach is to post a specific, sourced correction request on the Talk page, this is the compliant way to address even obvious errors.

Can I hire someone to edit my Wikipedia page?

You can hire professional Wikipedia editors, but Wikipedia requires that paid editors disclose their paid status. Any legitimate Wikipedia editing service will operate using disclosed COI methods. Be very cautious about services that claim they can “guarantee” changes or that operate without disclosure, these typically use methods that violate Wikipedia’s terms of service.

How do I know if my Wikipedia page needs work?

Look for outdated information, factual errors, missing context, promotional language that Wikipedia editors have flagged, and content that doesn’t accurately reflect your current business. Five Blocks offers a free assessment that systematically evaluates all of these factors.

This post is part of our series Your Brand on Wikipedia, a practical guide to understanding, editing, and protecting your brand’s presence on Wikipedia.

Next: What Does a Wikipedia Editing Service Actually Do? A Look Inside Professional Wikipedia Management

Previous: How to Edit a Wikipedia Page Without Getting Reverted (or Making Things Worse)

The post Can You Edit Your Own Wikipedia Page? The Conflict of Interest Question Every Executive Asks appeared first on Five Blocks.

Many companies have noticed that searches about them bring up some bizarre and seemingly contrived questions (“Why is X so bad?”). They wonder if there’s anything that they can do about not only the answers, but the appearance of these types of questions themselves. 

The short answer is yes!

But let’s back up for a moment.

People Also Ask: About the Answers

Given that nearly all major companies and CEOs have this feature appear in searches for their name, we’ve recommended in previous articles that brands should own some answers. This means tailoring content, particularly FAQ sections, around real research into what Google typically shows searchers about the company,  individual, or related searches. Providing relevant answers would be a way to capture the sources of the PAA for those questions. 

In late December, JR Oakes wrote an extremely insightful article in Search Engine Land, about his research on the PAA feature. His analysis explores themes, sources, and sentiment in questions about companies, and the article concludes, worryingly, with the observation that “the PAA results seem dissociated with actual user search interest and more driven by the content that is available online.” 

But perhaps therein – with the content – lies opportunity.

PAA Questions, Sliced by Industry 

Five Blocks tracks the search results for tens of thousands of keywords on a daily basis. We wondered whether by analyzing our collected data we might be able to provide additional useful guidance on PAA best practices. Are there specific strategies that brands can use to exert more control over the questions and answers section?

We looked at Fortune 500 companies over the first week in December ’20, as searched in New York.

Over the course of the week, most companies had five to seven different questions showing on the first page of their Google results. The Retail industry had the greatest variety of questions, with 7.5 different questions on average per retail company compared to an average of about 6 for all other industries we studied.

The top five topics included in PAA questions account for about 50% of all questions asked across major industries (Financial, Energy, Retail, Technology, Healthcare.) 

These topics are:

• What is the company known for / what does it do?
• Who owns the company?
• Is the company / service recommended / better than competitors?
• Company facts and stats
• Help with doing (eg: How can I access my bank account?)

There are also industry-specific questions that we see among the top five. 

The Energy sector, which includes companies like American Electric Power and NextEra, has stock questions appearing prominently.

The Technology sector (CDW and Amphenol, for example) elicits questions about what the company name stands for or means (as these names are often “made up words”).

So…what can companies do if unwanted, irrelevant questions pop into the PAA?

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, owning content related to searcher questions is key – since available content online does seem to drive both the questions Google presents and the answers to those questions.

Since owned sites (a company’s corporate website and social media, for example) account for the largest slice of answer sources across industries studied, followed closely by Wikipedia, maximizing the potential of these sources is a good practice for companies. 

Also worth noting:

• Owned content sources that end up in the PAA is most prevalent in the Healthcare industry, and least common in Technology and Retail. In these last sectors, Wikipedia is also less popular as an answer source.
• Answers to questions shown for retail companies like Dillard’s come from a larger variety of sites than in other industries. This is likely because there is a larger assortment of questions shown for retailers than for other types of companies.  
• Interestingly, Quora is a top answer source for both the Technology and Retail sectors, indicating that Google is willing to trust crowdsourced responses as reliable enough to include as answers to these types of questions.  
• Within the Healthcare sector, notable answer sources include both Indeed and Glassdoor, suggesting many of these questions relate to employment.

There are some additional actions that companies can take to “change the conversation”:

• Companies should make a point of knowing what types of questions are asked, not just about them specifically, but about other companies in their industry.
• While the general types of questions by industry are likely to remain stable over time, current and world events can yield opportunities for companies and brands to provide timely answers to relevant new questions as they arise.
• For example, right now we are seeing many questions for retailers asking if they are still around or out of business. This suggests that, during a crisis, retailers may want to remind customers of ways they can do business, even as storefronts are temporarily unavailable. It also means that brands should ask and answer those specific questions explicitly on their website, such as: Yes, we are open 24/7, via our website.
• Although questions related to the legitimacy and trustworthiness of a company are infrequent (we saw these at low levels and only for financial, tech, and retail companies), they can be impactful on a searcher’s perception of a brand. Companies need to regularly monitor the questions Google shows for them and, as mentioned above, leverage content that will negate unfavorable ideas suggested by these questions.
• Note that different searches bring up different questions (“Can I do X” may bring up different questions than “Can you do X”), and that clicking on a question brings up new questions. The best practice is to be aware of the various types of questions and to be sure to have content that asks and answers as many as possible.

The post People Also Ask: Your Answer May Be a Question! appeared first on Five Blocks.

Five Blocks is a digital reputation pioneer, shaping perceptions of companies and individuals through thoughtful planning of their digital footprint — as seen in Google search, Wikipedia, and AI-powered search. Using proprietary technology and data-driven diagnostics, we analyze a brand’s internet presence and map out a more accurate, intentional, and strategic reputation for our clients, together with their communications teams.

Our clients include some of the best-known companies in the world, as well as notable individuals who expect premium standards of service and support.

Responsibilities include: conducting in-depth article research and analysis; leading high-level strategic and collaborative planning; creatively integrating AI tools; building targeted program roadmaps while balancing client-specifications; managing multiple priorities simultaneously; delivering timely client-ready professional documents. 

Our writing team members must think flexibly and communicate intelligently. Writers are expected to incorporate constructive feedback from coworkers and their manager. They must be able to clearly explain their strategic decisions, while pivoting when results fall short. 

What you have:

• Strong online research and investigation skills
• Experience delivering high-quality work under tight deadlines
• A creative approach to problem-solving
• The ability to manage multiple projects with precision
• Working knowledge of AI tools for efficient workflow
• The ability to work both independently and collaboratively
• Strong English writing and interpersonal skills
• Familiarity with Wikipedia (a plus)

What you will gain:

• Skills training in a challenging and fascinating field
• Broad exposure across industries
• Impact on high-visibility online client profiles
• Day-to-day project variety
• A warm workplace with interesting people
• An English language work environment
• Office gym access, subsidized lunches and more

The position is from our offices south of Jerusalem and includes four days/week in-house and one offsite.

To apply, send your CV to jobs@fiveblocks.com or Apply

The post Content Writer & Strategist appeared first on Five Blocks.

Outside of work, you’ll likely find him hiking, reading, or searching for the perfect coffee spot.

Let’s get to know him.

How would you describe your job in a single sentence (or two or three)?

My role really varies week to week depending on what my teams need. I spend a lot of time researching the industry, tracking competitors, and looking for upcoming events and trends, then turning those insights into content or reports. Part of my work is to learn different industries and their specific digital reputation management needs so I can create tailored deliverables for BizDev. I also contribute to Five Blocks’ AIQ, where I help write, test, and improve prompts and user content. Right now, I’m also focused on cleaning up our HubSpot data to make sure everything is organized and accurate.

If your role had a theme song, what would it be?

If my role had a theme song, it would be “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen. Every week I’m diving into new information and getting to know new tools, always learning and moving full speed ahead. (Also I just like that song).

If you could master a skill, what would it be?

I’m a pretty slow reader, it would be cool to get through books faster.

Sweet, salty, or spicy – which snack can you not resist?

Is “all of the above” an option?

What’s your go-to karaoke song (even if you’d never sing it in public)?

I’d have to go with “Don’t Stop Me Now” again. but definitely not in public, for everyone else’s sake. 

What’s the weirdest or most random thing on your desk right now?

The weirdest thing on my home desk right now is a fidget cube I “borrowed” from my brother years ago… and never gave back.

What is your absolute favorite snack?

Anything with peanut butter in it!

Coffee, tea, or something else to start the day?

Filter coffee and a book 

A small thing that always makes your day better:

Going on a walk while listening to music or something interesting.

What is your favorite quote?

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear

Thank you, Moshe! It’s clear that someone who thrives on a good book and a steady cup of filter coffee can handle any challenge with total focus. More spotlights are on the way. And if you are searching for your next great read or some stellar coffee house recommendations, Moshe is definitely worth a conversation.

The post Behind the Scenes at Five Blocks: Moshe appeared first on Five Blocks.

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

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:

• IMPACT™ 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. IMPACT™ 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 IMPACT™ 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 IMPACT™ (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.

The post Digital Reputation Management appeared first on Five Blocks.

Let’s get to know her.

If you could instantly master a new skill, what would it be?

I wish I were a master at cleaning and organizing quickly at home. It’s not my strong point, and I wish I could download that quality for instantaneous results. I’d also appreciate having instant access to a new language or two.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Be your biggest and best advocate.

What’s your favorite weekend ritual?

Not sure if it’s a ritual, and doesn’t always fall out on the weekend, but always fun when you hit that elusive “I see the bottom of the laundry basket” moment!

What food best matches your work style?

If my work style were a food, it would be a home-cooked meal prepared by a personal chef, thoughtfully tailored to individual needs, made with high-quality ingredients, and delivered with a personal touch.

What’s your “controversial” food opinion?

I will NEVER mix ketchup with cheese – now, I love pizza, and any combination of tomato sauce and cheese, but ketchup is VERY different from tomato sauce and has no business coming anywhere near cheese. I appreciate ketchup with other foods, mainly meats. NOT with cheese. I’ll also never mix ketchup with eggs, but I wouldn’t mix tomato sauce with eggs either. Actual tomatoes with eggs are just fine.

What’s a small thing that always makes your day better?

A kind word or gesture of appreciation always makes me feel good. And a greeting with a genuine smile.

If you could have dinner with any historical or fictional character, who would it be?

Ideally, I would love to sit down for a meal with my late grandparents, both of those I was fortunate enough to know and the grandfather I’m named after. It would be incredibly meaningful to interact with them as an adult.

What makes you laugh the hardest?

I’ve gotten to the sweet spot where my Instagram Reels algorithm has gotten to know me to a T, and if I’m scrolling in the evening hours, it will show me exactly what will have me crying tears of laughter – sometimes VR fails and funny memes of all kinds…

What are you currently learning about (either professionally or personally)?

I’m currently re-learning first-grade math and reading skills… It’s a trip!

Thank you, Gavi! It is clear that someone who has navigated six continents on her own can handle just about anything a client throws at her. More spotlights are on the way. And if you are mapping out your next adventure anywhere in the world, Antarctica excluded, Gavi is probably worth a conversation.

The post Behind the Scenes at Five Blocks: Gavi appeared first on Five Blocks.

The Scale of the Problem

Wikipedia processes millions of edits every month. Most are legitimate improvements made by good-faith volunteer editors. But some aren’t, and the categories of problematic edits range from straightforward vandalism to sophisticated targeted campaigns by competitors, disgruntled former employees, or activist investors.

For publicly traded companies, Wikipedia activity spikes around earnings announcements, executive changes, and product launches. For consumer brands, Wikipedia pages attract edits during controversies and product issues. For financial firms, edits during regulatory proceedings are common. The patterns are consistent, and companies without monitoring systems consistently discover problems too late.

The mechanics of the problem are simple: anyone can edit a Wikipedia page in minutes, changes go live immediately, and there is no notification system for article subjects. The only way to know your Wikipedia page has been changed is to check it yourself, or to have a monitoring system do it for you.

The Google and AI Connection

The stakes of Wikipedia changes have expanded significantly with Google’s integration of Wikipedia content and the rise of AI language models. When your Wikipedia page is changed, that change propagates to:

Google’s Knowledge Panel. The information boxes that appear in Google searches for branded queries are largely populated from Wikipedia. Changes to Wikipedia flow into Knowledge Panels quickly, sometimes within hours.

AI-generated responses. Systems including ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overview, Microsoft Copilot, and others use Wikipedia as a primary reference source. When someone asks an AI assistant about your company, the answer is often shaped by what’s currently on your Wikipedia page.

Other aggregators. Dozens of services, from financial data platforms to news aggregators to business directories, pull data from Wikipedia. A change to your Wikipedia page ripples through all of these downstream systems.

This means that the consequences of an undetected Wikipedia edit extend far beyond the people who visit wikipedia.org. The reach of Wikipedia content has expanded to include everyone who interacts with AI systems and Google search.

What Effective Monitoring Looks Like

Professional Wikipedia monitoring involves several components that work together to provide comprehensive coverage:

Real-time edit tracking. Every edit to a monitored article is identified and reviewed as it happens. This allows rapid response when problematic edits appear before they propagate to Google and AI systems.

Edit quality analysis. Not every edit requires a response. Professional monitoring distinguishes between routine good-faith edits, edits that require review, and edits that require immediate action. This filtering is essential to avoid unnecessary interventions that could create friction with Wikipedia’s volunteer community.

Response protocols. When a problematic edit is identified, there are established protocols for response: reverting vandalism, requesting corrections through the Talk page, escalating issues that require more significant intervention. Having these protocols in place allows for fast, effective response.

Trend analysis. Periodic review of edit patterns can identify developing situations, like a coordinated editing campaign, before they become acute problems. It can also identify gaps in an article that should be addressed proactively.

Find Out Where You Stand

The first step is understanding your current situation. When was your Wikipedia page last edited? Who made the changes? What did it say before, and what does it say now? Are there any ongoing issues in the article’s Talk page that indicate potential future problems?

Five Blocks offers a free Wikipedia risk assessment that answers these questions and gives you a clear picture of your Wikipedia exposure. There’s no obligation, and the assessment itself has value regardless of whether you decide to engage further.

Request your free Wikipedia risk assessment →

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I set up my own Wikipedia monitoring?

You can. Wikipedia has built-in watchlist functionality that notifies registered users of changes to articles they’re watching. However, this approach has limitations: it requires a Wikipedia account, it only tells you that a change was made (not whether it’s a problem), and it doesn’t provide the context or response capabilities that professional monitoring offers.

How quickly do Wikipedia changes affect Google?

Google indexes Wikipedia changes quickly, often within hours. The specific timeline varies, but companies should assume that significant changes to their Wikipedia page will be reflected in Google searches within 24-48 hours.

What’s the most common type of problematic Wikipedia edit?

For corporate articles, the most common issues are: vandalism (often temporary but sometimes persistent), the addition of unsourced negative claims, promotional editing that triggers Wikipedia cleanup tags, and removal of important context. The most strategically dangerous edits are usually the subtle ones that don’t look like vandalism.

Does Five Blocks monitor Wikipedia articles we didn’t create?

Yes. Many of our clients come to us with existing Wikipedia articles that they didn’t create and haven’t managed. Monitoring is article-specific, it doesn’t matter who created the article.

This post is the final blog of our series Your Brand on Wikipedia, a practical guide to understanding, editing, and protecting your brand’s presence on Wikipedia.

Previous: What Does a Wikipedia Editing Service Actually Do? A Look Inside Professional Wikipedia Management

The post Wikipedia Page Monitoring: What Changes When No One Is Watching? appeared first on Five Blocks.

The Wikipedia Services Landscape: A Buyer’s Guide

The Wikipedia editing services market exists because Wikipedia matters more than ever, and navigating it professionally requires expertise that most organizations don’t have internally. But the market is unregulated, and the range of quality and ethical standards is enormous.

At one end are services that use sockpuppet accounts, undisclosed paid editing, and other methods that directly violate Wikipedia’s terms of service. These services often claim to “guarantee” article creation or content changes. They typically work until Wikipedia catches them, and Wikipedia has become increasingly sophisticated at identifying and blocking these operations. When they get caught, the damage to the client can be significant: articles deleted, accounts blocked, and the whole episode permanently recorded in Wikipedia’s public editing logs.

At the other end are legitimate professional services that work within Wikipedia’s framework using disclosed COI editing methods. These services can’t guarantee specific outcomes because Wikipedia is ultimately governed by its volunteer editor community, but they produce durable results that survive Wikipedia’s scrutiny.

What a Typical Engagement Looks Like

A legitimate Wikipedia engagement with a company like Five Blocks typically follows this structure:

Initial Assessment. A thorough review of the existing Wikipedia article (or assessment of notability if no article exists). This includes evaluating current content against Wikipedia’s policies, identifying gaps, errors, outdated information, and sourcing issues, and reviewing the existing edit history for previous issues.

Source Research. Wikipedia content must be sourced from independent, reliable sources. A professional service researches what coverage exists for the company, identifies which sources meet Wikipedia’s reliability standards, and maps available sources to potential content improvements.

Content Development. Based on available sourcing, content is drafted that meets Wikipedia’s neutral point of view standards. This is a disciplined writing process, not writing to sound good, but writing to meet a specific encyclopedic standard.

Disclosed Submission. The content is submitted through appropriate channels: either through the Talk page edit request process for articles where COI editing is a concern, or through direct editing for straightforward factual corrections with strong sourcing.

Community Engagement. Professional Wikipedia work often involves ongoing engagement with Wikipedia’s editor community, responding to questions, providing additional sources, working through disputed content in accordance with Wikipedia’s dispute resolution processes.

The Monitoring Layer

For companies with established Wikipedia pages, ongoing monitoring is often the most valuable service. Wikipedia is edited continuously, sometimes helpfully, sometimes not. Without monitoring, a company may not discover for months that significant changes have been made to their page.

Effective monitoring includes tracking all edits to the article in real time, analyzing whether changes are policy-compliant, identifying vandalism or biased editing, and flagging content that requires a response.

Why AI Has Changed the Calculus

The rise of AI language models has significantly increased the stakes of Wikipedia accuracy. Wikipedia is a primary training and reference source for AI systems including ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overview, and dozens of other platforms. This means that errors or outdated content on a Wikipedia page propagate almost immediately into AI-generated responses about the company.

Companies that previously considered Wikipedia monitoring optional now find it essential. The reach of Wikipedia content has expanded beyond anyone who visits wikipedia.org, it now includes everyone who asks an AI assistant about the company.

How to Get Started

The first step for any company is an honest assessment of their current Wikipedia situation. What exists? What’s accurate? What sourcing supports what changes? Five Blocks offers a free Wikipedia evaluation that answers these questions and outlines what a compliant path forward would look like.

Request your free Wikipedia evaluation →

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if a Wikipedia editing service is legitimate?

Red flags include: guarantees of specific outcomes, claims of “secret” methods, no mention of COI disclosure, suspiciously low prices, and no verifiable track record. Legitimate services acknowledge that Wikipedia is ultimately controlled by its volunteer community and work transparently within that system.

What does a professional Wikipedia engagement typically cost?

Professional Wikipedia services range widely depending on scope. A one-time article improvement project might run a few thousand dollars. Ongoing monitoring and management is typically a monthly retainer. The cost should reflect the complexity of the work and the expertise required.

How long does a Wikipedia project take?

Timelines depend on the nature of the work and how the Wikipedia editor community responds. Simple factual corrections with strong sourcing can sometimes be addressed within days. Complex article work or article creation for marginally notable subjects can take months. Legitimate services don’t promise quick timelines.

Can Five Blocks create a new Wikipedia page for my company?

We can assess whether your company meets Wikipedia’s notability criteria and, if it does, work toward creating an article through the appropriate channels. We can’t guarantee article creation because Wikipedia’s community ultimately decides what articles to keep, but our notability assessment will give you an honest picture of where you stand.

This post is part of our series Your Brand on Wikipedia, a practical guide to understanding, editing, and protecting your brand’s presence on Wikipedia.

Next: Wikipedia Page Monitoring: What Changes When No One Is Watching?

Previous: Can You Edit Your Own Wikipedia Page? The Conflict of Interest Question Every Executive Asks

The post What Does a Wikipedia Editing Service Actually Do? A Look Inside Professional Wikipedia Management appeared first on Five Blocks.

The Seven Reasons Your Wikipedia Edit Will Get Reverted

1. You Edited Without Disclosing Your Conflict of Interest

Wikipedia’s conflict of interest (COI) policy requires that anyone editing an article about their own company, employer, or clients must disclose that relationship. If you edit your own company’s Wikipedia page without disclosure, experienced editors will identify you, often through IP address lookup or account history, and revert your changes. The edit won’t just be removed; it may be flagged, and future edits from your account or IP may face extra scrutiny.

2. Your Source Doesn’t Meet Wikipedia’s Notability Standards

Wikipedia’s verifiability policy requires that content be supported by reliable, independent, secondary sources. A press release doesn’t count. Your company blog doesn’t count. Even a well-written article on your own website doesn’t count. The sources need to be from publications that are independent from the subject, newspapers, industry journals, academic publications, and established online media with editorial standards. If your source fails this test, the content will be removed regardless of how accurate it is.

3. The Tone Was Promotional

Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy prohibits promotional language. Phrases like “industry-leading,” “best-in-class,” “award-winning,” or “pioneering” will trigger an immediate revert. So will superlatives, subjective claims, and anything that reads like marketing copy. Wikipedia editors are trained to spot promotional language, and they remove it systematically. Even factually accurate content can be reverted if the framing is promotional.

4. You Added Content That Lacks Independent Verification

This catches companies off guard. You know your own history better than anyone, but Wikipedia doesn’t accept your account of events as authoritative. If a fact about your company isn’t reported in an independent source, it can’t appear on your Wikipedia page, even if it’s completely true. Many companies try to add significant milestones, product launches, or leadership information only to have it removed because the event was never covered in qualifying external media.

5. The Edit Was Made by a New or Suspicious Account

Wikipedia’s editor community has developed sophisticated pattern recognition for detecting COI editing. A new account making significant changes to a corporate article is an immediate red flag. So is an account with no other editing history. So is an account that was clearly created specifically to edit one article. Automated bots and experienced human editors will flag and often revert these edits automatically.

6. You Removed Negative Information

Attempting to remove properly sourced negative information is one of the most common, and most quickly reversed, edits companies make. If there’s a documented controversy, legal issue, or negative coverage that’s been reported in reliable sources, that information belongs on the Wikipedia page. Removing it will be flagged as a clear COI edit, the information will be restored, and your attempted edit will be permanently recorded in the article’s history.

7. You Used Wikipedia’s “Edit” Button Rather Than the Talk Page

For anyone with a conflict of interest, the correct process is to request edits through the article’s Talk page rather than making direct edits. This is called the “edit request” process. When you bypass it and edit directly, you’re not just making a tactical error, you’re violating Wikipedia’s COI editing guidelines. The Talk page approach is slower, but it’s the only compliant method for interested parties.

Why This Matters Beyond Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s influence has expanded dramatically in the AI era. When someone asks an AI assistant about your company, the response is often grounded in your Wikipedia article. When Google displays a Knowledge Panel, the data comes largely from Wikipedia. When journalists research your company, Wikipedia is frequently their starting point.

A failed edit attempt that gets reverted and logged creates a permanent record. More importantly, it doesn’t solve the underlying problem, your Wikipedia page continues to say whatever it says, and that content continues to feed into every downstream platform that relies on Wikipedia as a data source.

The Professional Alternative

The disclosed COI approach is the only Wikipedia-sanctioned method for companies to engage with their own articles. It involves:

• Creating an account with disclosed affiliation
• Using the Talk page to request specific, sourced edits
• Engaging with the Wikipedia editor community transparently
• Building a record of good-faith participation

This approach works, but it requires understanding Wikipedia’s culture, policies, and the specific dynamics of your article. Companies that try to shortcut this process consistently fail. Companies that work within it consistently succeed.

What Should You Do Right Now?

Start with an honest assessment of your Wikipedia page. What does it currently say? What’s accurate, what’s outdated, and what’s missing? What sources exist that could support an update?

Five Blocks offers a free Wikipedia page assessment that evaluates your current page against Wikipedia’s standards, identifies the highest-priority issues, and outlines a compliant path forward. There’s no obligation, and the assessment itself gives you a clearer picture of where you stand.

Request your free Wikipedia assessment →

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I fix my Wikipedia page if it has errors?

Yes, but the process requires following Wikipedia’s COI guidelines. The safest approach is to use the Talk page to request corrections, citing reliable independent sources for each change you’re requesting.

What happens if my edit gets reverted?

The reversion is permanent in the edit history. Repeated reverted edits can lead to your account being flagged or blocked, and can make the article more closely watched by editors, making future compliant edits harder.

Can I create a Wikipedia account and not disclose my affiliation?

You can, but Wikipedia’s terms of use require disclosure for paid editing. Undisclosed paid editing violates Wikipedia’s policies and can result in account bans. More practically, experienced editors often identify COI editors through editing patterns even without disclosure.

How long does the Talk page process take?

It varies. Simple factual corrections with strong sourcing can sometimes be addressed within days. More complex changes may take weeks. Having a professional Wikipedia editor manage the process can significantly accelerate it.

Does Five Blocks make the edits directly?

Our approach is based on disclosed COI editing, we work transparently within Wikipedia’s system, not around it. This means requesting edits through proper channels rather than making direct edits that could be interpreted as undisclosed COI editing.

This post is part of our series Your Brand on Wikipedia, a practical guide to understanding, editing, and protecting your brand’s presence on Wikipedia.

Next: Can You Edit Your Own Wikipedia Page? The Conflict of Interest Question Every Executive Asks

Previous: Can Anyone Edit Wikipedia? Yes, and That’s Exactly the Problem for Your Brand

The post How to Edit a Wikipedia Page Without Getting Reverted (or Making Things Worse) appeared first on Five Blocks.