Definition
Monitoring and shaping what shows up about a business online (reviews, star ratings, social mentions, and search results) so the first impression a stranger forms is accurate and current. It covers responding to criticism, encouraging honest feedback, and correcting wrong information across the places customers look.
What it looks like in practice
A dental practice discovers its star rating slipped after a run of one-star reviews, all mentioning the same thing: waiting forty minutes past the appointment time. The office manager replies to each one by name, without arguing, and says what changed: the schedule now blocks a buffer after longer procedures. She fixes the outdated hours on two directory listings and the old address left over from the move. Then she asks patients at checkout to leave a review while the visit is fresh. Three months on, the recent reviews describe the new scheduling, and the complaints about waiting have scrolled down the page.
Why it matters
For a local business, what a stranger reads before calling is the first impression, often the only one you get. That makes reputation the top of your funnel rather than a PR concern, and it moves whether the phone rings at all. Watching reviews and mentions also works as an early warning system: a pattern in the complaints usually points at something real in the operation, and catching it in week two beats finding it in month six. The failure that costs the most is silence. Unanswered criticism reads to the next reader as nobody minding the store, and unlike a bad day, it stays on the page.