How to Check What AI Says About You
Dil Phagura, Co-Founder and CEO of AI Reputation An executive called me three weeks before a close. He had not found a new article, and nothing on page one of his name had changed in a...
Dil Phagura
I work on what the internet says about a person: what ranks for their name, what data brokers hold about them, and how search engines and AI systems describe them. Most of that work is for executives, founders and professionals whose names get looked up before they are ever met.
CEO and cofounder, AI Reputation, Inc.
What this work actually is
It is almost never about deleting things
People assume reputation work means making something disappear. It rarely does. Most of it is building something better and giving search engines and language models a stronger, more coherent account of a person to prefer, until the thing that was defining them is no longer the first thing anyone sees.
I came up in this industry when the playbook was slow and manual, and I stayed because the problem kept getting more interesting. Search stopped being a list of links and became an answer, and the answer is now assembled by systems that summarise a person from whatever they can find.
What I work on
Four areas, and they are rarely separate
Online reputation
Building assets strong enough to compete with what you want gone, and durable enough to hold the position once they get there.
Personal branding
Building the profiles, the writing and the pages that should rank for a name and simply do not exist yet.
Privacy and data removal
Pulling personal records off data broker sites, then going back, because the records return.
Search and AI systems
Understanding what an answer engine says about a name, where it drew that from, and what can realistically change it.
Writing
Published under my own name
I publish on Medium, WordPress and Blogger. Newest first, and every link goes to the original.
The Difference Between a Search Problem and a Trust Problem
Two people with nearly identical search results almost never need the same work, and knowing which is which is the whole job. How bad is this, on a scale of one to ten. I get some version...
Your Name Is a Search Query Now
Before most first meetings now, somebody types your name. What comes back is assembled by structure rather than by accuracy, and it is being read as an interface.
Most of this is easier before it is urgent
If a search for your name is already costing you something, the conversation is worth having early.