General FAQs | Five Blocks Knowledge Center

How does Five Blocks handle client confidentiality?

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:38:26 +0000

At Five Blocks, confidentiality applies by default rather than on request. It covers four dimensions, each with its own default-on protection, and all four are documented in every Letter of Engagement.

The four dimensions of confidentiality

Existence of the engagement: We do not publicly disclose that a given party is a client without their explicit written permission, even where the engagement is widely known in the press for other reasons.
Work performed: We do not describe specific tactics, deliverables, or outcomes from named engagements in case studies or marketing material without permission.
Client information: Any information we encounter in the course of work (financial details, internal communications, sensitive context) is treated as confidential and is accessed by named team members on a need-to-know basis.
Reporting: Client reports are delivered through agreed channels and are not shared internally beyond the working account team.

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These provisions are written into every Letter of Engagement, so the protection is in place from the start of the relationship.

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Does Five Blocks work with clients outside the United States?

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:38:03 +0000

Yes. International work is a large share of the Five Blocks portfolio, with active client engagements across four regions and the language and geography infrastructure that cross-border reputation work requires.

Where active client work runs

North America: United States, Canada.
Europe: United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Nordics, Italy, Spain, Switzerland.
Middle East: Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia.
Asia: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India.

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The infrastructure behind international work

IMPACT language and country coverage. IMPACT covers 23 languages and 69 countries, with city-level SERP tracking through GeoSearch across 500 locations. The team can see the Google results page as it appears to a stakeholder in a specific market.
Multilingual AIQ monitoring. AIQ monitors the AI engines in several languages. The engines answer the same question differently depending on the language it is asked in.
In-house multilingual capability. The research and content team includes native speakers across the major working languages, plus vetted partner agencies in markets that need local expertise.
Time-zone coverage. The Jerusalem office covers European and Middle Eastern engagements during business hours that overlap with New York.

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How do I contact Five Blocks?

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:37:27 +0000

How you reach Five Blocks depends on who you are and what you need. General inquiries go through the website, email, or the New York office line. Existing clients work through their named principal contact, and each product line has its own path.

General contact channels

Website: Submit inbound inquiries at fiveblocks.com.
Email: Non-client correspondence: info@fiveblocks.com.
Phone: New York office line, open to any caller: +1 212.695.0855.
Existing clients: Work directly through your named principal contact at Five Blocks.

Product-line contacts

AIQ: Questions and self-serve sign-up at aiq.fiveblocks.com.
WikiAlerts™: Visit wikialerts.fiveblocks.com.

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Press and partnership inquiries

Press: Reach Sam Michelson directly through the website.
Partnerships: PR firms, agencies, and law firms can reach the partnership team at info@fiveblocks.com.

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What does a monthly Five Blocks report include?

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:37:25 +0000

A monthly Five Blocks report is a progress document that shows the client where their reputation stands across every layer the program touches and what comes next. It usually runs six sections: search standing, Wikipedia status, AI narratives, competitive benchmarks, work completed, and next steps. Each report is built to the scope of the engagement, so a single-market monitoring program produces a shorter report than a multi-market program that adds peer comparison and Wikipedia work.

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What a monthly report contains

Search standing: A review of search presence for the client’s terms and where they stand against the objectives set at the start of the engagement, drawn from IMPACT™ tracking.
Wikipedia status: The status of any relevant Wikipedia page, its traffic, and any significant edits during the month. These are the same edit, vandalism, and traffic signals Five Blocks’ WikiAlerts™ tool monitors.
AI narratives: Summaries of how the AI engines describe the client, with trend analysis over time. AIQ monitors eight AI engines for this layer: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, AI Overview, Perplexity, Grok, Claude, and Google AI Mode.
Competitive benchmarks: Benchmarking data that places the client’s standing against a relevant peer set rather than in isolation.
Work completed: A summary of the work carried out during the month across the program’s active workstreams.
Next steps: Recommended focus areas and priorities for the next reporting period.

The first four sections report on the current state of the reputation across the search, Wikipedia, AI, and competitive layers; the last two cover what was done and what is recommended next. Every section is scaled to the engagement, and sections tied to services a client is not running are reduced or dropped.

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How does Five Blocks measure success?

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:37:21 +0000

Five Blocks measures success against objectives set at the outset of each engagement rather than against a single fixed scorecard. Reputation goals differ by client – a public company defending a Knowledge Panel has different priorities than an executive correcting an AI narrative – so the specific KPIs are agreed up front and then tracked over the life of the engagement. The quantitative data behind these measurements comes from two proprietary platforms: IMPACT™ for search reputation and AIQ for AI narrative.

Common success metrics

Search prominence: The visibility of preferred content in search results for priority keywords, tracked daily through IMPACT™ across keywords, languages, and locations.
Knowledge Panel status and accuracy: Whether Google displays a Knowledge Panel for the entity and whether its facts are correct. Panel content is generated automatically from Google’s Knowledge Graph – drawing chiefly on Wikipedia and Wikidata – so accuracy is measured at the panel and at the underlying sources that feed it.
AI narrative sentiment and source quality: How AI engines describe the subject and which sources they draw on, monitored through AIQ across eight major AI engines.
Wikipedia stability: The status of the Wikipedia article and whether it stays accurate and stable over time. This matters because the article feeds the Knowledge Panel and is among the most heavily weighted sources AI engines use.
Client satisfaction: The client’s own assessment of whether the engagement met its stated objectives.

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Why the metrics connect

These measures are not independent. A stable, accurate Wikipedia article tends to improve Knowledge Panel accuracy, which then shapes how AI engines describe the subject – so movement on one KPI often shows up in the others. Tracking them together, with IMPACT™ and AIQ supplying the numbers, is what lets an engagement show progress against the objectives set at the start.

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Does Five Blocks guarantee results?

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:26:30 +0000

No. Five Blocks does not guarantee results, and we are skeptical of any firm that does. Search engines, Wikipedia, and AI platforms each run on their own policies and algorithms, which sit outside any vendor’s control and change without notice. A promise to “guarantee” a ranking or a deletion is a promise to control a system you do not own.

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What we offer instead

A rigorous, transparent approach that has produced measurable results for clients across many industries and situations.
Continuous tracking. Our proprietary technology monitors progress over time rather than relying on one-off snapshots.
Honest reporting. We report candidly on what is working and what is not, instead of surfacing only the favorable signals.

Why a guarantee is the wrong promise

Google’s ranking algorithm weights authority and shifts through ongoing updates, Wikipedia is governed by community policy and consensus, and AI answer engines are proprietary systems whose outputs no outside party can set on demand. Lasting improvement comes from working with how those systems actually behave, not from promising an outcome they alone decide.

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How does Five Blocks handle conflicts of interest between clients?

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:23:50 +0000

Five Blocks manages conflicts from intake through the life of each engagement. At intake, we screen every prospective client against the active client list to find any direct competitive overlap or other conflict before proceeding.

How a potential conflict is resolved

What happens next depends on whether the overlap is direct or adjacent:

Direct conflict → decline. Where a head-to-head conflict exists, such as two firms competing for the same investor capital, two executives competing for the same board seat, or two companies in active litigation against each other, we usually decline the new engagement.
Adjacent overlap → information barriers + dual approval. Where the overlap is adjacent rather than direct, such as two firms in the same sector with different positioning, or two professionals in the same field with different client bases, we may proceed under information-barrier protocols with explicit approval from both clients.

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What an information barrier involves

Named-team-only access, so client information reaches only the people working the account.
Separate account leadership where appropriate, so the two engagements run independently.
Structured monitoring so no information flows across the two engagements.

Ongoing review

The screen is not a one-time gate. We keep watching for conflicts across the life of each engagement, because new client relationships and changing circumstances can create overlap that did not exist at intake. It is a discipline we will lose business over.

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Is Five Blocks’ work confidential?

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:23:45 +0000

Yes. Confidentiality is built into every Five Blocks engagement, not added on request. Our standard Letter of Engagement includes confidentiality provisions that cover the existence of the engagement, the work performed, and any client information we encounter during the work.

What this means in practice

We do not list clients on our website, and we do not display client logos.
We do not seek case-study permission as part of standard intake.
Internal access to client information is on a need-to-know basis, limited to named team members rather than the full firm.

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When we acknowledge a relationship

Where clients give explicit written permission to acknowledge the relationship, we do so within the limits they set. We do not pressure clients for that permission, and most prefer not to give it. This costs us some marketing visibility, and we treat it as non-negotiable.

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How does Five Blocks price its services?

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:23:12 +0000

Five Blocks bills engagements as monthly retainers with a fixed scope, charged in advance and priced to the program’s complexity rather than to hours worked. Integrated programs that combine multiple service lines are priced as one coordinated workstream, not as the sum of their parts, and specific pricing is set in each proposal against the diagnostic findings and the agreed scope.

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How pricing is set

Monthly retainer, fixed scope, billed in advance. Engagements run on a recurring retainer rather than project or hourly billing.
Set by complexity, not hours. A program that requires a Wikipedia article build under disclosed conflict-of-interest (COI) rules, executive Knowledge Panel work, multi-market IMPACT™ coverage, AIQ monitoring across the major AI engines with peer comparison, and crisis-readiness on-call costs more than a single-market monitoring engagement.
Integrated programs priced as one engagement. When multiple service lines are combined, they are priced as a single coordinated workstream because the methodology is unified and the work compounds across layers, not as the sum of separate components.
Specifics live in the proposal. Exact pricing is set in each proposal against the diagnostic findings and the agreed scope.

Standard engagement terms

Standard terms are 6 or 12 months. Five Blocks treats reputation work as running on the search and AI engines’ own timeline, where authority signals and entity data can take weeks to crawl and months to propagate and stabilize, rather than on a 30-day cycle.

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What is Five Blocks’ approach to ethical reputation management?

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:22:52 +0000

Five Blocks works strictly within the terms of search engines, Wikipedia, and the platforms where reputations live. We will not use any tactic that could not survive a journalist or regulator asking how the work was done.

What we do not do

Fake reviews or review manipulation
Undisclosed paid Wikipedia editing
Content farms
Link schemes and cloaking
Platform-policy violations of any kind
Fabricated press coverage

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Why ethical work is also the durable choice

The ethical posture is also the practical one. Platforms increasingly detect and reverse tactics that break their policies, and the reputation damage from a public reversal is worse than the original problem. Clients who hire Five Blocks generally do so because they want work that survives scrutiny.

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