Why do investors Google fund managers before allocating capital?

Allocators run a search before they take a call because the result is deal-relevant intelligence they can get for free. Track record claims, regulatory history, prior-fund controversies, and the quality of the team all appear in branded search and, increasingly, in an AI engine answer the investor reads first. What has changed is the format. A Google search returned links an investor had to interpret; ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity now return a synthesized paragraph that frames the manager before the deck is ever opened. If that paragraph leads with an old enforcement action or a thin, dated bio, the manager starts the conversation on defense. We monitor those answers across the engines with AIQ™ so a manager knows what an LP is reading, and we build the entity and source signals that determine what the engines say.