Your profile on a review platform can strengthen your reputation - or create a highly visible space where other people define your company for you.
Being present on review platforms may seem like an obvious step. These profiles can build trust, support purchasing decisions, and provide valuable signals to search engines and AI systems. According to Semrush’s AI Visibility Study (September 2025), “Review platforms like G2 rank as the fourth most-cited source in digital technology (20.04% ChatGPT).” In other words, G2 appeared in roughly one in five ChatGPT answers in this category, while companies’ own websites rarely made it into the list of top sources.
But creating or claiming a profile is an ongoing operational commitment. Before entering another review platform, a company should ask one practical question: Do we have the resources to manage it properly?
An Unmanaged Profile Is Still a Reputation Channel
Once a profile becomes visible, customers can use it whether the company is ready or not. Complaints may come from genuinely dissatisfied clients, users who misunderstood the service, people who contacted the company but never purchased, or accounts with no real customer history. Research published in Communications of the ACM found that “those with extreme ratings (5-star or 1-star) are more likely to express their views” than customers with moderate opinions, who often don’t write a review at all. When the researchers asked every participant to write a review, the ratings formed a roughly normal distribution, with similar numbers of positive and negative assessments. Public review profiles therefore tend to overrepresent the most emotional experiences.
Negative experiences also tend to motivate people to speak publicly more than ordinary, satisfactory ones. Happy customers rarely interrupt their day to describe a transaction that went exactly as expected. Encouraging them to share authentic feedback therefore requires a deliberate and consistent process.
Without active management, a review profile may gradually present a distorted picture: a small number of negative experiences become highly visible, while a much larger group of satisfied customers remains silent.
The problem isn't criticism itself. Criticism is possible when the narrative is available.
Review Platforms Now Influence More Than Customers
Reviews are part of the broader information ecosystem that search engines and generative AI tools use to understand businesses.
Google notes that a Business Profile may display feedback from trusted third-party travel or local review websites, demonstrating how information can move between platforms and become part of a wider search presence. The company also allows verified businesses to respond publicly and flag reviews that violate its policies through its review management tools.
AI search adds another layer. ChatGPT Search, for example, can search the web and provide answers with links to online sources, according to OpenAI’s official guidance. As a result, a visible review profile may become one of the signals shaping how an AI system describes a company.
This creates a clear opportunity – but only if the profile includes current company information, authentic customer experiences, and professional responses.
Review Management Requires Ownership
At Reputation City, we treat review management as part of the company’s digital identity, not an isolated customer-service function.
A sustainable process should include:
- continuous monitoring and early identification of unusual activity;
- professional, on-brand replies to positive and negative feedback;
- ethical invitations encouraging genuine customers to share their experiences;
- internal escalation procedures for complaints requiring operational action;
- evidence collection and communication with platform management when a review appears fabricated, malicious, or unrelated to a genuine experience;
- analysis of sentiment, recurring complaints, and changes across platforms.
The responsible team does not necessarily have to be customer support. Ownership may sit with marketing, communications, or a dedicated reputation team, as long as it has the expertise, authority, and access to respond quickly.
A negative review should not automatically be challenged or removed. Where criticism reflects a real experience, the right response is to acknowledge it, clarify the situation, and show the company is willing to resolve the issue. When content appears fake, however, the company needs documented reasons for disputing it.
For example, Trustpilot’s business guidelines allow companies to flag reviews that breach platform rules, including content that is not based on a genuine experience. At the same time, the platform requires review invitations to be fair, neutral, and non-incentivized. Review generation must therefore be systematic and ethical – never an attempt to manufacture positivity.
What If the Company Is Not Ready?
Not every business needs to open profiles on every available review platform immediately.
If the company cannot support ongoing management, it should first strengthen the rest of its digital ecosystem.
That means checking the accuracy and consistency of information across business directories, industry databases, registries, media publications, and social platforms. The corporate website should also provide clear, structured, and verifiable information that search engines and LLMs can interpret correctly. Google’s guidance on organization structured data explains how companies can help search systems identify important organizational details.
Review profiles create valuable opportunities for visibility, trust, and customer engagement. But they are not passive assets. They require people, processes, and a genuine readiness to engage with both praise and criticism. Before creating the next profile, make sure the company is prepared to manage the conversation it may start.
Reputation signals can influence far more than customer choice – read When Debanking Becomes a Reputation Crisis to explore how digital perception can affect access to essential business services.
Have a questions? Let's get in touch
→ Contact us: hi@reputation.city
