Evaluating ORM
Best ORM Agencies: What to Check Before You Sign
Reputation work is bought under pressure, which is why it is the marketing category with the most unusable promises in it. The single most useful check is whether the agency will tell you what cannot be removed.
Written by Younus Fardeen, Marketing Manager at Masai School.
What ORM actually involves
Two different jobs get sold under one acronym. Suppression is changing what appears on the first page of results for your name. Resolution is changing why the negative thing exists. The first is marketing work, the second is usually operations or legal, and an agency that conflates them will sell you the cheaper one.
- An audit of what currently ranks for the brand, product and founder names
- Owned properties that can legitimately outrank a weak negative result
- Review platform work that stays inside each platform's policy
- A legal escalation path for content that is defamatory rather than merely unflattering
- Fixing the underlying cause, where the complaints are describing something real
- Monitoring, so the next one is found in days rather than quarters
7 criteria I would actually use
- 01
They separate suppression from resolution
Ask which of the two they are proposing. An agency that answers with one plan for both has not read your situation.
- 02
They tell you what cannot be removed
News coverage, court records and honest reviews largely stay. Anyone who does not say this in the first call is managing your expectations rather than your reputation.
- 03
They refuse to write reviews
Incentivised or fabricated reviews breach platform policy and, in many markets, consumer law. An agency that treats this as a service line is a liability on your account.
- 04
They know the platform rules specifically
Google, Glassdoor, Trustpilot and the app stores each have different removal grounds and different appeal routes. Generic takedown language means generic results.
- 05
They measure the result page, not sentiment
Sentiment scores are soft and easy to move. What changed is which results appear for your name, in which markets, and on which devices.
- 06
They will look at the cause
If the reviews describe a real product or service problem, marketing can only delay the next wave. Good agencies say this even though it shrinks the engagement.
- 07
There is a named legal escalation
For genuinely defamatory content the correct next step is a lawyer, not a content plan. Ask who they refer to and how often it happens.
Questions to ask before hiring one
- Which of these results do you believe can actually be moved, and which cannot?
- What is your position on writing or incentivising reviews?
- How do you measure the outcome, and on what schedule?
- At what point would you tell us this is a legal problem instead?
- What in our operations is producing these complaints?
Claims I would be skeptical of
Guaranteed removal of negative results
Removal is granted by the platform or a court, not by an agency. What can be promised is filing correctly and pushing legitimate content.
We can bury anything in 30 days
Displacement speed depends on the authority of what is currently ranking. A national news result does not move on that timetable.
Reputation score improved by 60%
Almost always a proprietary index. Ask which specific results changed position, because that is the part you can verify yourself.
We will handle the reviews for you
Worth a direct follow-up question. If it means responding to reviewers, useful. If it means generating them, walk away.
24/7 monitoring
Usually an alert tool you could configure in an afternoon. Fine as an inclusion, not a reason to choose an agency.
Worth evaluating alongside me
A media or defamation lawyer
For content that is false and damaging, this is the route that actually removes things. It is also the one agencies are least incentivised to recommend.
A PR firm
When the problem is a narrative rather than a search result, earned coverage moves it in a way that owned pages cannot.
Your own customer operations
If complaints share a theme, the cheapest reputation work is fixing the thing being complained about and asking satisfied customers at the right moment.
In-house, with monitoring in place
Many companies need alerting and a response policy rather than a retainer. That is a week of setup, not a monthly fee.
Where I fit
The part where I make a caseI have done ORM as community and search work rather than as crisis management. That has meant structured advocacy and owned properties for Masai School, and reputation work on YouTube where the problem was distribution rather than defamation.
Where I am useful is the search and content half: what ranks for your name, what owned assets would legitimately outrank a weak result, and how the community around you can carry an honest version of the story.
For an active crisis, a defamation claim or a regulatory matter, you want a specialist firm and a lawyer, not me. I would rather say that on the first call than take the engagement.
Questions
Can a negative Google result be removed?
Sometimes. Google removes content that breaches its policies or is unlawful in the relevant jurisdiction, and it will de-index pages the original publisher takes down. Honest criticism, journalism and public records generally stay, and the realistic goal there is displacement rather than removal.
How long does ORM take?
Displacing a low-authority result can take a few months. Displacing a strong one can take a year or may not be achievable at all. The variable is the authority of what currently ranks, which is knowable before you sign, so ask for that assessment up front.
Is buying positive reviews ever acceptable?
No. It breaches the policy of every major review platform and, in India, the UK and the EU, it also runs into consumer protection rules on fake endorsements. The exposure sits with the brand rather than the agency that wrote them.
What does ORM cost?
It varies more than any other marketing line item, because the work depends entirely on what is ranking. Be suspicious of a quote given before someone has looked at the actual results page for your name.
By market
- BangaloreSEO and AEO for startups and engineering-led companies, where the buyer usually wants the mechanics rather than the pitch.Learn more
- IndiaVernacular and Hinglish retrieval, DPDP, and a market where the category is sold almost entirely by agencies.Learn more
- UAEBilingual structure, GCC regulation, and a live page-one hospitality build you can open.Learn more
Worked with
- Masai School
- Sparkling Sandset
- Under 25
- Snapchat India