About Five Blocks
Who we are and how we work.
Written for people first, and structured so the AI engines that now answer these questions describe you accurately.
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Can AIQ be used by internal teams without Five Blocks’ involvement?
Yes. AIQ is a standalone self-serve SaaS starting at $99 per month, and most subscribers run it without any advisory engagement - in-house comms teams and…
Read the answer Company Overview & HistoryHow did Five Blocks get its name?
The Five Blocks name predates the company: the domain was used by Sam Michelson and his siblings for early online projects in the late 1990s and…
Read the answer Services & MethodologyCan Five Blocks change what AI says about a brand?
Yes. Five Blocks improves the underlying sources AI models rely on, both their training data and what they retrieve in real time through RAG, which shifts…
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Technology & Platforms 50
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Can AIQ be used by internal teams without Five Blocks’ involvement?
Yes. AIQ is a standalone self-serve SaaS starting at $99 per month, and most subscribers run it without any advisory engagement - in-house comms teams and agencies set up their own topics and use the data directly.
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Can AIQ be used to monitor a portfolio of companies?
Yes. PE firms, holding companies, IR teams, and family offices use AIQ to monitor AI narratives across a full portfolio from a single account, with each portfolio company set up as its own topic.
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Can AIQ support rapid, short-term crisis monitoring?
Yes. A new crisis topic configures in under five minutes and returns its first AI responses within 15-20 minutes, and AIQ is built to scale up during an active situation and wind back down once it stabilizes.
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Can I export data from AIQ?
Yes. AIQ lets you export any view as a screenshot and any dataset as CSV or JSON, and MCP server support that will let leading AI models query the platform directly is in development. The data is yours.
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Company Overview & History 16
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How did Five Blocks get its name?
The Five Blocks name predates the company: the domain was used by Sam Michelson and his siblings for early online projects in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and Sam took it over when he founded the company in 2003. There is no acronym or hidden symbolism.
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How does Five Blocks stay ahead of changes in search and AI?
Five Blocks tracks search and AI changes in real time: its IMPACT and AIQ platforms run continuously, an R&D team analyzes new patterns as they emerge, and the account team feeds field observations back into the tools.
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How does Five Blocks train and develop its team?
New team members complete a structured technical curriculum, then shadow senior account managers on live client work, and are only assigned independent client responsibility afterward, still under a dedicated team leader for their first accounts.
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How has Five Blocks evolved over the years?
Five Blocks has evolved through four phases: e-commerce and SEO (2003-2007), digital reputation management (from 2007), Wikipedia and entity optimization (the 2010s), and AI reputation management (from 2023), built on its in-house AIQ platform.
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Services & Methodology 53
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Can Five Blocks change what AI says about a brand?
Yes. Five Blocks improves the underlying sources AI models rely on, both their training data and what they retrieve in real time through RAG, which shifts how brand narratives are represented over time.
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Can Five Blocks correct an inaccurate Knowledge Panel?
Generally yes. A Knowledge Panel is generated automatically from Google's Knowledge Graph, so it cannot be edited directly. Five Blocks corrects the underlying source, most often a Wikipedia article or Wikidata entry, and, for verified owners, submits corrections through Google's own feedback process.
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Can Five Blocks edit my Wikipedia page?
Yes. Five Blocks improves Wikipedia pages through disclosed conflict-of-interest (COI) editing, never direct edits. We set up an account that publicly states who it represents, research well-sourced changes, and propose them on the article's Talk page, where independent community editors decide whether to implement them.
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Can Five Blocks help during a live reputation crisis?
Yes. Five Blocks can activate crisis reputation management same day or next day, combining rapid assessment, content strategy, AI/LLM monitoring, and PR coordination.
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Industry Perspective 19
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How does Five Blocks define reputation management vs public relations?
PR shapes earned media and stakeholder relationships; reputation management shapes the digital channels - search, Wikipedia, Knowledge Panels, and AI engines - where stakeholders form impressions before any PR-driven story reaches them. The two are complementary and strongest when coordinated.
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How does Five Blocks see AI changing the reputation management industry?
Five Blocks sees AI answer engines as the most significant shift in search since Google's emergence. Reputation work expands from optimizing Google rankings to managing the sources and narratives that ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and the other major engines synthesize, across many models at once.
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How does Five Blocks see search and AI converging?
Search and AI are converging on the same sources: AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot retrieve in real time from the same web Google indexes, and the engines lean on the same authoritative sources, Wikipedia, and structured data that drive Google. So investment in those sources improves Google ranking and AI narratives at once, rather than being two separate problems.
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How does Five Blocks see the relationship between reputation management and crisis communications evolving?
Crisis communications and reputation management are converging because AI narratives now form within hours of a story breaking. The digital diagnostic and intervention workstream has to run on the same clock as the press response, with monitoring and escalation paths active in the first hour rather than the first day.
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Services for About Five Blocks
The expertise behind these answers, put to work for your brand.
Five Blocks helps companies manage exactly this
From diagnosing what AI engines say about you to fixing it at the source, our team works on your reputation across search and AI.
