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The field of public relations has undergone a major shift in recent years, now focusing on reputation building (most notably online) as an overarching goal. PR’s focus on reputation comes from its focus on who a brand is, beyond what it sells or how it came about.
The changing nature of reputation
Before the advent of mass media, reputation was formed primarily through word of mouth and first-hand experience. But as the world has become more interconnected and complex, we have become interested in companies, brands, and people with whom we may not have personal interactions or judged ourselves. This shift has led to the development of new, more sophisticated ways of assessing reputation.
For decades, traditional media has played a key role in shaping public opinion about brands and individuals, meaning that companies have been able to influence their own reputations by subtly influencing or even buying media coverage, a practice that continues to this day in different forms.
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The Internet Revolution and the Role of Search Engines
The advent of the internet has brought about a major shift in how reputations are formed and managed, creating a multitude of potential sources of information that people can turn to when trying to understand the true nature of a brand or individual.
This digital environment meant that a variety of actors could influence reputation. It also provided many opportunities for brands and individuals to influence what people read and think.
Search engines quickly played a key role in this new digital reputation ecosystem. Early search engines, such as Yahoo, were primarily focused on directing users to specific websites. Over time, and especially since the emergence of Google, search engines have evolved to help users find specific information and answers to their queries.
In recent years, search engines have become increasingly sophisticated, better able to understand user intent and provide more relevant results.
Key developments in the evolution of search:
Traditional search engines (1990s): keyword-based, limited understanding of context. Google dominance (2000s): advanced algorithms, PageRank, more relevant results. Semantic search (2010s): better understanding of user intent and context. AI-powered search (2020s): conversational, context-aware, integrating information from multiple sources.
Google: The Accidental Reputation Snapshot Machine
In an effort to satisfy searchers with a variety of sources, Google has unwittingly created a powerful tool for assessing digital reputation. Understanding an organization’s reputation requires bringing together multiple perspectives: what the organization says about itself, what the media reports, what experts think, what peers are saying, what consumers experience, what the general public believes, etc. These are roughly the same inputs that Google uses to generate search results.
As a result, Google search results have become arguably the most efficient way to get a representative snapshot of a company’s reputation.
Wikipedia elements
Alongside search engines, Wikipedia has emerged as an important source of reputation information. Wikipedia aims to include important topics in its live, crowd-sourced encyclopedia based on facts determined and agreed upon by a community of editors following a set of guidelines. Earned media from trusted sources tends to be the most accepted source for including information on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia’s influence extends beyond its platform: search engines like Google and Bing rely heavily on Wikipedia, and having a Wikipedia page signals high visibility. Wikipedia often appears prominently in Google and Bing search results, including in knowledge panels for branded searches.
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AI Revolution
A new era of reputation management has been ushered in with the emergence of AI models like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini, which can do things that Google alone cannot.
Understand more complex or nuanced queries Read the content of a web page to extract direct answers Integrate information collected from various sources Create responses that directly address the query Provide results in a specific requested format
In an AI-driven world, people will likely ask more complex questions to get directly to the results they want. Google-style search will likely persist alongside smart, AI-driven search, but brands and business leaders will soon realize that their reputations reside both in Google and in the hands of a few highly influential AI “minds.”
As AI’s influence grows, its perceptions of brands and business leaders may become the most influential voice influencing decisions on topics ranging from how well a person can sing to who should become president.
Shaping AI Perception
The best way to determine how AI will perceive you and your brand is to ensure that it is aware of content that is beneficial to your brand. To do this, you must first know what the AI is currently saying. This includes understanding the facts that the AI model presents, the topics that the AI mentions relevant to your organization, and the sources that the AI returns to support its answers. You must also keep track of any objectionable content that is returned.
It’s important to see how this changes over time. Is it the same as before, better, or worse? It’s instructive to compare it to your peers. Are they getting the same treatment? Perhaps the AI doesn’t recognize some of your content or facts, or it’s out of date, or it’s confusing it with another entity with a similar name.
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Where do we go from here?
As the world of search continues to evolve with the rise of AI, brands and individuals need to stay ahead of the curve. By understanding how they are perceived not only by traditional search engines like Google, but also by AI models, as well as traditional media and search, clients can take proactive steps to shape their digital reputation and control their story on this new information front.
