How many people actually Google a company or person before doing business?

The behavioral pattern is now consistent across every stakeholder category we work with. B2B buyer surveys consistently put a large majority of decision-makers researching vendors online before any sales contact. Journalist workflow studies show near-universal pre-interview searching. Senior candidate behavior surveys show similar patterns before accepting interviews. Investor due-diligence practice has searched executives and companies for over a decade. The implication is structural: by the time any direct interaction begins, the other party has already formed a digital first impression, and that first impression is the SERP (the Google results page) and the AI synthesis on top of it. Reputation work is not optional in this environment; it is the infrastructure that determines whether stakeholders show up to interactions with accurate context or with someone else’s framing.