The cost of finding out late
Almost every expensive reputation problem we handle was cheap to fix at the beginning. A mugshot on one site before it was scraped by nine. A single complaint post before it was picked up by three aggregators. A review campaign in its first day rather than its second week.
What makes them expensive is time. Content spreads, gets copied, accumulates links and settles into search results. Monitoring is not about anxiety, it is about catching things while they are still one page on one site.
Most people find out from a customer
The usual discovery route is somebody telling you. A client mentions it awkwardly, a candidate asks about it in an interview, or a friend sends a link. By that point it has been indexed for weeks and whoever found it was not the first.
Setting up a free alert on your own name is genuinely worth doing today, and we will tell you how without charging for it. What free tools do not cover is the majority of what actually causes problems: review sites, complaint boards, mugshot networks, court aggregators and image results.
What we watch
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Search results for your name
Not just whether something new appeared, but whether the order changed. A result climbing from page two matters as much as a new one arriving.
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Review platforms
Every site you have a presence on, so a cluster of ratings in one day is caught while the pattern is still provable.
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Complaint and scam sites
Where posts get syndicated fast and are hardest to remove once they have spread.
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Records and background sites
Aggregators refresh from public sources, so a record removed once can return under a new brand.
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Image results
Routinely ignored and frequently where the most damaging material sits.
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Social platforms
Impersonation accounts in particular, which do their damage in the first days.
An alert is not the service
What you should get
- Someone who reads the alerts and decides what matters
- Notification of things that need action, not everything
- An assessment of whether it is removable
- Action started before you have replied
- Watching for removed content returning
- Coverage of the sites free tools miss
What is not worth paying for
- A dashboard you have to check yourself
- A daily digest of every mention of a common word
- Sentiment scores with no action attached
- Alerts that arrive faster than anyone reads them
The value is in the judgment, not the alerting. Anybody can send you a notification. The useful part is somebody knowing which three of this week’s forty mentions need doing something about.
What it costs
Monthly, and it is the least expensive thing we do. It is also the only service here that reliably reduces what you spend with us later, because problems caught early are cheaper to fix.
For clients who have been through a removal, monitoring is usually the sensible follow-on. Content that was removed once tends to reappear when a source is re-scraped, and knowing within days rather than months is the difference between a quick refile and starting over.
How it runs
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We work out what to watch
Your name and its variations, your business, key staff, and the specific sites that have been a problem before.
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We baseline the current results
So a change is measurable rather than a matter of impression.
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We filter
Somebody reads what comes in. You hear about what matters and not about the rest.
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We tell you with a recommendation attached
What appeared, whether it is removable, what it would take and whether it is worth doing.
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We watch for returns
Anything previously removed, because aggregators refresh and networks re-scrape.
Choosing a monitoring service
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A person reads the alerts
Otherwise you have bought a more expensive version of a free tool.
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They cover the sites that matter
Review platforms, complaint boards, record aggregators and image results, not just news and blogs.
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They can act immediately
Being told about a problem by a company that then has to quote you for it wastes the advantage.
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They watch for re-appearance
Removal is not always permanent, and knowing quickly is most of the value.
What good looks like
You hear about things from us rather than from a customer, usually within days, and usually with the answer already attached. Most weeks there is nothing to report, which is the point.