Definition
Monitoring and influencing online perception of a business — reviews, ratings, mentions, search results — to maintain trust and reduce negative impact.
Why it matters
For most local businesses, what strangers read about you online is the first impression that decides whether they call at all, so reputation management is really about protecting the top of your funnel. Staying on top of reviews and mentions lets you catch a problem while it's still fixable instead of discovering a pattern of complaints months later. The failure mode is going silent: unanswered negative reviews signal that no one is minding the store, and they keep working against you long after the customer has moved on.