Online Reputation Basics: How to Audit What Google Shows About You

If you have not searched your name or business lately, you are probably making decisions with outdated information.

A simple audit shows you what Google surfaces first, what pages actually drive the narrative, and what fixes will have the biggest impact with the least effort.

This guide walks you through a technical friendly audit you can do in under an hour, plus a prioritization method you can reuse anytime.

What you are auditing (and what you are not)

You are auditing what ranks in Google for:

• Your full name (or your brand name)
• Your common variations (nicknames, middle initials, abbreviations)
• Your most common “co-searches” (company, city, job title, industry)

You are not auditing the entire internet. You are auditing the first page and the “high-intent surfaces” that influence decisions fast:

• Top 10 organic results
• “People also ask”
• Knowledge panel (if it exists)
• Top Stories (for brands and public figures)
• Images and Videos tabs
• Autocomplete suggestions

That is where most reputational wins come from.

Before you start: set up a clean search environment

Google personalises results. Your goal is to reduce noise so you can see what a neutral searcher might see.

Do this first:

• Use an incognito or private window.
• Sign out of Google accounts.
• Turn off location services in your browser, or at least note your location.
• Run the audit on both desktop and mobile if you can.
• If your audience is in a different region, repeat using a VPN or a location parameter in Google’s settings (at minimum, note the region you searched from).

You are not trying to get a perfect “true” ranking. You are trying to identify what consistently shows up and what is most likely to be seen.

Step 1: build your search query list

Start with a short set that matches how real people search.

For an individual:

• First Last
• First Last + City
• First Last + Company
• First Last + Job Title
• First M Last
• Last First
• First Last + (industry keyword) like “attorney” or “dentist”

For a business:

• Brand Name
• Brand Name + City
• Brand Name + reviews
• Brand Name + complaints
• Brand Name + scam (yes, check it)
• Brand Name + CEO or founder name

Add two “risk checks” that often surface issues:

• “First Last” (with quotes)
• First Last site:reddit.com
• First Last site:facebook.com or site:linkedin.com (pick the platforms relevant to you)

Keep the list to 10 to 15 queries. More is not better if you do not take notes.

Step 2: capture what Google shows on page one

For each query, capture:

• The top 10 organic results (title, domain, and what it looks like)
• Any special features:
  • Knowledge panel
  • Top Stories
  • People also ask
  • Images pack
  • Video pack
  • Local map pack (for businesses)

Take screenshots. Save URLs. You want a “before” state you can reference later.

What to look for while scanning results

• Are results about you, or about someone else with the same name?
• Are there mismatches (wrong job title, wrong company, old city)?
• Are “aggregator” sites showing up (court record databases, people-search sites, directory profiles)?
• Is there a single negative page that repeats across multiple queries?
• Are strong assets missing (your site, LinkedIn, a press page, your company bio)?

Step 3: check the key tabs that shape perception

Images tab

Searchers often click Images when they want quick confirmation of identity.

Audit:

• Do the images match you or your brand?
• Are there outdated photos or low-quality images ranking?
• Are mugshots, arrest photos, or scraped images showing?

If you see an image that should not rank, note the source page hosting it. Removing or changing the source is usually the lever, not the image itself.

Videos tab

Video results can outrank articles, especially for names.

Audit:

• Do you have a YouTube or Vimeo presence that ranks?
• Are there negative videos, reaction content, or old event clips?

News / Top Stories (if it appears)

This is more common for brands, founders, and anyone tied to public coverage.

Audit:

• Are headlines accurate?
• Are there outdated updates (dismissed cases, corrected stories, old controversies)?
• Are syndicated copies appearing on multiple sites?

If an article is still live and accurate, you are usually looking at suppression, not removal. If it is inaccurate or outdated, removal or correction may be possible.

People also ask

This section can reveal what Google thinks people want to know about you.

Audit:

• Are the questions neutral, positive, or negative?
• Are answers pulled from low-quality sources?

These questions matter because they can shape future searches and reinforce a narrative.

Step 4: run “identity collision” checks

If your name is common, you need to prove to Google (and to humans) which entity is you.

Use these checks:

• First Last -othercity -othercompany (exclude the common wrong matches)
• First Last + “middle name”
• First Last + “credential” (MD, DDS, CPA, JD)
• First Last + “about”

If the wrong person dominates page one, your fastest win is usually building strong, consistent identity signals (more on that below).

Step 5: classify each result by “fix type”

This is where the audit becomes actionable.

For each page one result, label it:

1. Owned asset
   You control it (your site, your LinkedIn, your company bio page).
2. Friendly third-party asset
   A site you can likely contact and update (podcast bio, association listing, client profile).
3. Unfriendly third-party asset
   A site that is hard to influence (news, forums, review sites, data brokers, court databases).
4. Outdated or removed but still showing
   The page is gone or changed, but Google is still showing a cached snippet or old result.

That label tells you which playbook applies.

Step 6: prioritise what moves the needle fastest

Use this simple scoring method for each result you want to change:

• Visibility: Is it top 3, top 10, or buried?
• Harm: Is it negative, misleading, or just unhelpful?
• Fixability: Can you remove or update it, or is it likely suppression?
• Query coverage: Does it appear for multiple queries?

Here is a quick decision table you can use:

Situation	Highest-leverage fix	Why it works
A page is deleted but still shows in Google	Use Google’s Outdated Content tool after confirming the page is gone	Forces Google to refresh or drop stale results
A page is accurate but unflattering	Suppress with stronger, relevant assets	You usually cannot remove accurate content
A page is inaccurate	Request correction or removal from the publisher, then push Google to recrawl	Fixes the source, which is the durable solution
A directory page has wrong info	Update the listing and standardise your identity data	Reduces confusion and strengthens entity signals
A review page ranks for your brand	Address policy-violating reviews, respond to legit ones, then build review volume	Reviews influence clicks and conversions even if you cannot remove them
Search results show the wrong person	Build a clear identity cluster (site, socials, bios, consistent naming)	Helps Google connect signals to the right entity

The fastest wins (in order)

If you want the 80/20, start here.

1) Fix your owned assets first

These are the easiest to control and they often rank quickly when done right.

Minimum checklist:

• A clean “About” page with your full name, role, and location.
• A short bio that matches how people search for you.
• Consistent naming across your site and profiles.
• A simple schema setup if you have a site (Person or Organisation schema).

For professionals, an optimised LinkedIn profile is often one of the fastest ranking assets.

2) Clean up outdated snippets and dead links

If the source page is removed or significantly changed, use Google’s outdated content removal process to refresh what Google shows.

This is one of the few “quick” Google fixes that can work in days, not months, when the page is truly outdated.

3) Push corrections at the source

If something is wrong, fix the source first:

• Request a correction
• Request a name redaction or anonymisation where appropriate
• Request removal when a site has a policy path

If a publisher agrees to update or remove content, you then focus on getting Google to recrawl and update the result.

4) Suppress what you cannot remove

If content is accurate and the site will not remove it, suppression is often the practical option.

Suppression is not magic. It is basic search competition:

• Publish strong assets that match the same query intent
• Build internal consistency across profiles
• Add supporting content that earns relevance and links over time

Erase.com’s guides on reputation management, content removal, and suppression map to these paths if you want deeper playbooks.

What to document (so the audit stays useful)

Keep a simple log. A spreadsheet works fine.

For each query and result, capture:

• Query
• Ranking position
• URL
• Type label (owned, friendly, unfriendly, outdated)
• Issue (wrong, negative, irrelevant, low quality)
• Next action
• Status and date

Do not overcomplicate it. The point is to track progress and avoid re-doing the same thinking.

Common mistakes that waste time

• Auditing 100 queries instead of fixing the top 10 problems.
• Trying to remove content from Google when the source is still live and unchanged.
• Ignoring Images and People also ask.
• Starting suppression before you fix your owned assets and identity signals.
• Making changes without saving a baseline screenshot and URL list.

A simple “next 30 minutes” plan

If you want a quick start:

1. Run 5 core searches for your name or brand.
2. Screenshot page one for each.
3. List the top 3 problems that appear across multiple queries.
4. Label each problem by fix type.
5. Start with the easiest high-impact fix:
   • Update owned assets, or
   • Correct the source, or
   • Use outdated content removal for dead links

That is enough to create momentum and make your next steps obvious.

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