Brand Entity SEO – AI Driven Online Reputation Management

James Dooley: Brand entity SEO in 2026. This is episode number 10 in an 11p part playlist series with Jason Barard from Cali Cube. So today is about online reputation management in the age of AI. So things have changed quite a lot now from just people searching within Google to searching within the LLMs like ChatGpt and stuff like that. So Jason, traditional methods of reputation management all talk about burying negative search results. You've said that that approach of burying search results is dead. With 27 years experience optimi optimizing for algorithms and tracking what AI says about 70 million brands, what does reputation management actually mean in 2026?

Jason Barnard: Yeah, it's a lovely question. I mean, reputation management just got a lot more complicated because the machines understand. If they understand who you are and they understand what you've done or what you've been accused of doing and you have a reputation problem, it's really difficult to stop them saying exactly what they've understood. And whereas in the past with Google, you could just say, well, I can drown it by putting more content on. It will disappear off page one, off page one, out of sight, out of mind. problem now is of course the AI looks at different aspects of your life and will summarize that by using different chunks of content that it finds online that could be on page five could be on page six could be on page seven of the results and famously people like Samrush and Ahref are saying the results that are appearing in the in the AI are not the results that are appearing on page one of Google. So in order to drown bad press today, it's I mean I would say impossible but certainly significantly more difficult than it used to be.

James Dooley: So with regards to that then obviously online reputation management is huge. Um let's say a business owner's been arrested and they want to try and sync that onto page two or page three. That was the old school methodology. Nowadays, especially now with query fan out, it's become 10 times if not more harder because now one of the terms might pop up with name and have lawsuit or complaints and then that might specifically bring that branded SER up about yes, these have been arrested and people had previously typed in lawsuit or has this person been arrested but now with query find out this is what's happening. So on to that, when someone looks at a brand in Google and they're asking the question in chat GBT, why is that so different? Can you expand upon why it's different in the LLM to why it's different with Google?

Jason Barnard: Right. Well, the Google results are going to show you the 10 top pages. An AI result will tell will will number one, sorry, I'll come back. Google search result will tell you the 10 top pages for that specific query and that's it. With query fan out, cascading queries, whatever you want to call it, the AI is looking at 15, 20, I mean, I've seen it looking at 70 or 80 different queries when it spins through to get the whole picture. Then it's looking at the the the passages from multiple pages all the way down to let's say the hundth position. That's a huge amount that you need to manage. 100 positions for up to 70 queries. That's not drownable.

James Dooley: So, so what is the question? What is it that you do? If you can't drown it, how do you someone comes to you and says, "I want OM services. I want online reputation management in 2026." If you can't drown it, how do you try and help that client not have that negative stigma, negative sentiment being shown in the LLMs?

Jason Barnard: Right. Well, actually, all of our online reputation management clients who come to us come to us having spent money on trying to drown the content. So, we haven't had one single client come come to us without first having had tried the drowning. Um, the way to do it is to change the perception of the machine. So when that piece of news comes up, it's part of your story and you can't deny it. You can't remove it from history. You can't scrub it from their memory. What you can do is change their perception of the importance of that piece of information so they no longer mention it or change their perception of the story by reframing it and they will reframe it the way you want if you can educate them that that reframing makes sense to your audience. So it it's double. It's can I make the piece of information less important in the minds of the machines and can I reframe it to my to so that it damages me less or even potentially to my advantage.

James Dooley: So I'm getting kind of two vibes here. I'm getting the vibe of claim frame prove type of scenario where you reframe something and then you prove the reframe being out there third party sources that and then in one of the other episodes you spoke about the authorized biographer, right? Could that then come into play with how you can change the perception, the legacy, everything about that person when you're refraraming something for online reputation management.

Jason Barnard: Yeah, I love that. It shows you were listening all the way through the episode. And and actually, that's a really good way of framing our strategy for online reputation management. If we can turn the machine into your authorized biographer, you have control. And all you need to do to do that is obviously with your real authorized biographer as a human being, you just tell them to write what you want them to write. Very simple. You actually have to educate the machines so they understand what you want them to write through the internet. So there's there's a step between you and them. So you have a double step. Number one, I need to put my or recreate my digital footprint so it ensures the machines understand what story I want them to tell. I get them to tell that story that they tell to the human being on the other side. And that's a lovely way of putting it.

James Dooley: So if someone's watching this and they have got a bad story or the brand's got a bad story, they want to sink some negative sentiment. It could be removing a mug shot. It could be just trying to what they would seem as being sinking an article onto page two. The old school methodology way. They want to get rid of bad press. someone watching this, what's their next steps if they're worried about it? What are you telling them right now? What they should do first?

Jason Barnard: Um, well, if I were them, I'd contact Cali Cube, to be honest, because it's a really, really difficult job to pull off. When you're trying to retrain an algorithm to not tell a negative story that it thinks is important and is true, it's a huge undertaking because it's not just I tell it my story and it will repeat it. I need to tell it my story and as you said frame it in the way that makes sense to me and prove it. And that means number one, you have to find the proof that corroborates your framing of the story that exists hopefully. Avoid uh promoting or or or pointing to the the framing that doesn't make sense to you and create the proof that does support it. and that claim frame and prove that last part is look for things that don't yet exist that you can create or have created where you can place your framing on an authoritative source. That's the big big big chunk of work and it takes a long time and it takes a lot of effort and that's that's the key as well with with drowning techniques that used to work. You could say in a few months it will probably be gone. But with this because you're retraining an algorithm and the timelines of the different algorithms are um against you, you have to be patient. You have to understand that the training data for the LLMs is going to be updated in 8, 10, 12 months. And you need it to be able to say what you want it to say right off the top of its head. Talked about that in another episode. If it can't do that, you're always in danger. But if it can if you can get it to tell your story your way with your framing off the top of its head, you've won the game. But that's a year away at best.

James Dooley: Yeah. I suppose I've never really thought of it this way, but Cali Cub's obviously billions of data points and everything that's out there of what you can use to reframe certain stuff. Even without online reputation management, you're doing this and reframing people where in one of the other episodes we spoke about if there was an entrepreneur that was a plumber and they bought a roofing company and they were like now we want to be multifaceted. We want to kind of not be as prominent of this and more prominent of this. This is what online reputation management is. It's just completely sinking this to now beyond this. I suppose from an online reputation management point of view or a knowledge graph optimization point of view. If you sold a business and you now don't want to be connected to that and now you want to be connected to a new business, it's the same process. Now you need to get that framing now to be this is who you are and also get the third party cooperation on trusted sources to try and build that up. But it's just for online reputation management if there is some negative kind of sentiment that's out there.

Jason Barnard: Exactly. And you've made a great point is everything we've talked about throughout this entire series is the CDQ process is the solution. CQ Pro has the data. Caliq Pro has the approach. Whatever you're doing in digital marketing within the search and AI space, for me, it's always the same answer. And as you said, it's understandability, credibility, deliverability, claim, reframe, and prove. Whether it's online reputation management, building my career, uh distancing myself from a company I no wonder no longer want to be associated with, which is a job we just did for a client, whether it's pivoting my career, creating my legacy, cementing my legacy, it's all the same process. reframe what the machines understand about you, who you serve, what you can offer, why you're the best.

James Dooley: Yeah. So, we hope you like episode number 10 of the 11p part series with Jason Barard. Obviously, this was on AI reputation management or LLM online reputation management. If you think we missed anything, leave a comment in the comment section. And Jason, thanks again.

Jason Barnard: Thanks, James. Brilliant.