AI may have just changed reputation management - and most businesses haven’t realised it yet

For years, online reputation management has followed a predictable rule:
control what ranks on page one of Google, and you control the narrative.

If a business had outdated or unflattering content floating around, the fix was obvious - publish stronger, newer material and push the old stuff down the search results. Out of sight, out of mind.

That strategy no longer works.

AI doesn’t care what ranks on page one

When someone asks an AI tool about a business, a sector, or a comparison, the model doesn’t think in terms of pages or rankings.
It scans everything it has ever seen that is semantically relevant - no matter how old, obscure or out-of-date.

A forgotten listing from 2013.
A half-baked directory entry.
An old blog post.
A review that never ranked.

AI treats it all as equally valid context.

The old reputation playbook breaks down

Traditional SEO-based reputation management relied on:

• fresh content
• new service pages
• new PR
• updated reviews
• pushing older material down the rankings

AI bypasses all of this.
It doesn’t privilege freshness.
It doesn’t follow Google’s ranking logic.
It doesn’t know what you want the world to forget.

It simply pulls whatever content best matches the meaning of the question - regardless of age or accuracy.

This creates a new risk that leaders haven’t seen yet

Most companies assume their legacy content “doesn’t matter anymore” because it no longer appears in search results.

In an AI-driven world, that assumption is wrong.

Old content now has a new life.
Anything the AI has crawled can reappear when someone asks about your market, your sector, your competitors, or your credibility.

Leaders need to rethink “digital footprint”

It’s no longer about managing page one.
It’s about managing every page ever published.

Questions to ask now:

• What outdated information still exists about us online?
• Which directories or profiles have we forgotten to update?
• Are there old descriptions or inaccuracies we no longer control?
• Could historic content resurface in an AI-generated answer?

Most organisations don’t know - and haven’t looked.

The new reality

Your historical content is now part of your present reputation.
AI doesn’t bury information.
It resurrects it.

If a piece of content still exists, AI can find it.
If AI can find it, it can present it.
If it can present it, it becomes part of your brand.

Reputation management just got harder - and most businesses are still operating under the old rules.