What Is Online Reputation Management? A Plain-English Guide

Online reputation management (ORM) is the practice of shaping what people find when they search your name or your business. That includes search results, reviews, news coverage, social profiles, and increasingly, what AI assistants say about you.

The core of ORM is simple: promote accurate, positive content so it outranks or replaces harmful, outdated, or false content. In practice that means a mix of content strategy, SEO, review management, and — when necessary — removal requests.

Most people only think about their reputation after something goes wrong. The smarter move is to build a strong foundation of owned content before you need it, so a single bad headline can't define your first page.

If your search results already contain something damaging, don't panic. With the right strategy, even entrenched negative results can be suppressed or removed. The key is acting deliberately, not reactively.