We have a brand crisis that traditional reputation management can’t solve.
When anyone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity about our product category, they get information about us that’s either completely wrong, outdated by 2+ years, or confused with a competitor with a similar name.
What we’re dealing with:
Impact:
What we’ve tried:
How do you actually protect your brand when AI is telling lies about you?
I deal with this daily. Here’s the reality: AI systems learn from patterns across the web, not just your website. Your site is one signal among thousands.
The Entity Consistency Framework:
AI systems build understanding of your brand as an “entity” by finding consistent information across multiple authoritative sources. If your info is inconsistent, AI gets confused.
Priority 1: Core entity platforms
Priority 2: Ensure identical information everywhere:
Priority 3: Differentiation signals
The competitor confusion issue specifically? Create content that explicitly addresses the difference. “Unlike [competitor], we offer [feature]” - this explicit contrast helps AI systems distinguish entities.
This entity consistency approach saved us.
We had the exact same problem - AI was confusing us with another company. When we audited our entity presence:
Took us 2 weeks to fix everything. Within 6 weeks, AI confusion dropped from 45% to under 10%. The Wikidata update was the biggest single impact.
Traditional reputation management principles still apply, but the tactics are different.
What works for AI brand protection:
Create the content AI needs to cite
Flood authoritative sources with accurate info
Build a monitoring system
Address source content
The key insight: AI learns from the web ecosystem, not your press releases. You need to fix the ecosystem.
We had the outdated pricing problem. Here’s what actually fixed it:
The Freshness Strategy:
AI systems favor recent content. We created a “living” pricing page that:
Then we:
Within 8 weeks, AI responses started citing our current pricing. The combination of freshness signals and authoritative mentions did it.
You can’t protect what you don’t measure.
Set up systematic monitoring:
Tools like Am I Cited automate this, but you can start manually with a spreadsheet.
What to track:
This monitoring reveals:
We had the competitor confusion problem for 8 months. Here’s exactly what fixed it:
Problem: Our name is “TechFlow” and competitor is “FlowTech.” AI mixed us up constantly.
Solution 1: Explicit differentiation content Created a page: “TechFlow vs FlowTech: Understanding the Difference”
Solution 2: Consistent naming with context Changed all mentions from “TechFlow” to “TechFlow (the [specific descriptor] platform)”
Solution 3: Unique entity signals
Result: Confusion dropped from 40% to 5% over 12 weeks. The explicit “vs” page was the single biggest factor.
Wikipedia is hugely important for AI brand protection. It’s a primary training source for many LLMs.
If you have a Wikipedia page:
If you don’t have a Wikipedia page but should:
Common Wikipedia mistakes:
The key is working within Wikipedia’s guidelines while ensuring accurate information is represented. It’s a long game but high impact.
Reddit is cited heavily by AI systems. If there are wrong discussions about your brand, you need to address them.
Authentic Reddit brand protection:
Find relevant discussions
Participate genuinely
Create accurate content opportunities
Don’t do this:
Reddit users and AI systems can both detect inauthenticity. The goal is authentic presence that provides accurate information.
Legal perspective on AI brand misrepresentation:
Current options are limited:
What you can do:
Emerging regulations to watch:
For now, practical brand protection through content and entity management is more effective than legal approaches. But document everything - regulations are coming.
Enterprise perspective on AI brand protection:
We track AI brand representation as a key metric now, alongside NPS and brand awareness.
Our monitoring stack:
Our response protocol:
What we’ve learned:
Budget recommendation: If you’re spending $X on traditional reputation management, allocate at least 20% to AI-specific monitoring and protection.
Running an agency focused on this, here’s the complete protection strategy:
Layer 1: Entity Foundation
Layer 2: Content Authority
Layer 3: External Validation
Layer 4: Monitoring & Response
Most companies only think about Layer 2 (their website). But AI learns from the entire ecosystem. You need all four layers working together.
This thread is exactly what I needed. Here’s our action plan:
Week 1: Entity Audit
Week 2: Differentiation Content
Week 3-4: External Validation
Ongoing: Monitoring
Key insight: Our website updates weren’t working because we were ignoring the broader ecosystem. AI learns from everywhere, not just our domain.
Thank you all - this gives us a real path forward.
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Track how AI systems represent your brand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI. Get alerts when inaccurate information appears and monitor your brand protection efforts.
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