What is a digital reputation audit, and what should it reveal?

A full reputation audit answers a small number of questions clearly, and the deliverable is a written report with the underlying data attached and a recommended scope. It is the diagnostic that turns a vague sense of how a brand or executive is perceived into a defensible read of the current state and a prioritized plan.

The questions a reputation audit answers

• What does the branded SERP actually look like? The page-one and priority-query results for the brand or executive, including AI Overviews and the Knowledge Panel.
• Where does the entity sit in Wikipedia, Wikidata, and the Knowledge Graph – and is the data accurate? These are the primary sources that populate the Knowledge Panel and that AI engines weight heavily, so their accuracy carries through to everything downstream.
• How do the major AI engines describe the brand or executive, and which sources drive each answer? AIQ covers eight major AI engines – ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode – and surfaces which sources each engine is drawing on.
• How does all of this compare to named peers and competitors? The same picture, run against a defined peer set, so absolute findings become a competitive position.
• Where are the entity signals weak or missing? Schema markup, structured data, and sameAs links – the connected web of references that identifies the entity to search and AI engines.
• What content gaps exist, and which would have outsize impact if filled? The places where new authoritative content would move the most.

The deliverable

The audit produces a written report with the underlying data attached and a recommended scope. It typically runs two to four weeks and yields something usable internally even if no further engagement follows – a defensible read of the current state and a prioritized list of interventions.