Online Reputation Glossary: AI Update
These are the terms that shape how people and organizations appear online today, from search rankings and social media to the AI platforms that now answer the question “Who is this person?”
Glossary A–Z
AI Hallucination. When an AI platform presents false or invented information as fact, such as a fabricated quote, lawsuit, or job title attributed to a real person.
AI Overviews. AI-generated summaries that Google displays above traditional search results, drawn from several websites at once. What they say about a person or company may be the first, and only, thing a searcher reads.
Algorithm. The set of rules a platform uses to decide what to show and in what order. Search engines use algorithms to rank results, social media platforms use them to curate feeds, and AI platforms use them to choose which sources to draw on.
Answer Engine. An AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot, that responds to questions with a written answer rather than a list of links.
Astroturfing. Creating the false impression of grassroots support or opposition through fake reviews, comments, posts or accounts. It is increasingly done at scale with AI-generated content. In the U.S., an FTC rule finalized in 2024 bans buying or selling fake reviews.
Authenticity. The quality of being genuine. Audiences, journalists and online communities value content that is consistent, verifiable and clearly attributable to its real author.
Black Hat SEO. Manipulative tactics that violate search engines’ guidelines in order to boost rankings. Examples include link farms (networks of sites created only to link to one another), keyword stuffing, hidden text and paid link schemes. Search engines penalize sites caught using them, often by demoting or removing them from results.
Brand SERP. The search engine results page that appears when someone searches your name or your organization’s name. It is often your first impression, which is why online reputation management focuses on what appears on page one.
Branded Content. Content that promotes and cultivates a rapport between a targeted audience and a brand’s products and/or services.
Cheapfake. Manipulated media made with simple editing rather than AI, such as slowing down a video, cropping a photo, or splicing audio out of context.
Content. Information delivered in any medium, whether text, video, podcasts or images. When two or more media are combined, it is described as “multimedia content.”
Content Aggregator. A platform or app that collects and republishes content from many sources, such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts and videos. AI answer engines act as a new kind of aggregator, summarizing sources rather than listing them.
Content Credentials. Embedded information that records where a piece of digital content came from and how it was edited. Also called content provenance, it helps verify authenticity in an era of synthetic media.
Content Farms. Operations that mass-produce low-quality content designed to rank highly in search results. Many now use AI to generate thousands of pages, sometimes including inaccurate information about real people.
Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior. Networks of fake or linked accounts working together to mislead audiences about who is behind a message or how widely it is supported.
Data Broker. A company that collects personal information, such as addresses, phone numbers, relatives and property records, from public and commercial sources and sells it.
Deepfake. AI-generated or AI-altered video, audio or images that realistically depict a person saying or doing something they never did.
Defamation. A false statement presented as fact, communicated to others, that harms the reputation of a person or organization. Written or published defamation is libel; spoken defamation is slander. Opinions and substantially true statements generally are not defamatory.
Digital Assets. The online content a person or organization owns and controls, such as websites, bios, images, videos and articles, which can be used to shape their online presence. The term is also used for cryptocurrency, which is a different meaning.
Digital Footprint. The total trail of information about a person online, including both content they created and content others have published about them.
Disinformation. False information spread deliberately to deceive. See also Misinformation.
Domain Squatting. Also known as cybersquatting. Registering or using a domain name to profit from the goodwill of someone else’s name or trademark, often by offering to sell it to the rightful owner at an inflated price.
Doxxing. Gathering information about an individual from online sources, then publishing their private information with malicious intent.
E-E-A-T. Short for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the qualities Google’s search quality guidelines use to assess content. Strong E-E-A-T signals help credible content perform well in search.
Entity. A person, company, place or concept that search engines and AI platforms recognize as a distinct “thing” with associated facts, rather than just a string of keywords.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Shaping online content so that AI platforms find it, trust it and cite it accurately when answering questions. Also called answer engine optimization (AEO).
Knowledge Panel. The information box Google displays beside search results for well-known people and organizations. It draws on sources such as Wikipedia, Wikidata and official websites.
Large Language Model (LLM). The type of AI system behind chatbots like ChatGPT, trained on vast amounts of text to generate human-like responses.
Link. A clickable connection from one web page to another. The number and quality of links pointing to a page (“inbound links” or “backlinks”) is one of many signals search engines use to rank it.
Misinformation. False information shared without intent to mislead. See also Disinformation.
Online Audit. An assessment of how a person or organization appears online, across search results, social media, news, review sites and AI answer engines.
Online Communities. Online spaces where people with shared interests hold discussions, including forums, Reddit communities, Discord servers, Facebook groups and comment sections. Also called “virtual communities.” Their discussions are often surfaced by search engines and cited by AI platforms.
Online Monitoring. Real-time tracking of the information available about a person, business or topic across the Internet, including social media, news, review sites and AI-generated answers.
Online Reputation Management (ORM). Establishing, improving, monitoring and protecting the publicly available information about a person or organization, in search results, on social media and in the answers AI platforms generate.
Review Gating. Soliciting reviews only from customers expected to leave positive ones. The FTC has warned that the practice can be deceptive.
Right of Publicity. The legal right to control commercial use of your name, image and likeness, and in some jurisdictions your voice.
Right to Be Forgotten. A legal right, recognized in the European Union and some other jurisdictions but not broadly in the U.S., to request the removal of certain outdated or irrelevant personal information from search results.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Improving a website or page so search engines can find, understand and rank it, attracting more visitors. See also White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO and Generative Engine Optimization.
Section 230. The U.S. law, part of the Communications Decency Act, that generally shields websites and platforms from liability for content posted by their users.
Sentiment Analysis. Software that classifies online mentions as positive, negative or neutral, used to monitor reputation at scale.
Social Media. Platforms where people create, share and interact with content, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, YouTube and Reddit. A person’s connections on these platforms form their social network.
Sock Puppet. A fake online identity, such as an email, social media, review or forum account, used to praise oneself, attack others, or create the illusion of independent support. See also Astroturfing.
Synthetic Identity. A fabricated persona built from a mix of real and invented details, used for fraud or impersonation.
Synthetic Media. Any image, video, audio or text generated or substantially altered by AI. Deepfakes and voice clones are types of synthetic media.
Training Data. The text, images and other material used to build an AI model. Information about you in that data can shape what AI platforms “know” about you.
Transparency. Openness and honesty in online communications, including disclosing who is behind content and any paid relationships.
Troll. A person who sows discord online by posting inflammatory, provocative or off-topic messages.
Viral Content. Content that spreads rapidly as people share it across social networks and messaging apps, gaining wide visibility within hours or days. Virality can help or harm a reputation, and is difficult to reverse.
Voice Cloning. Using AI to replicate a person’s voice from short audio samples. It is increasingly used in executive impersonation and wire-fraud schemes.
White Hat SEO. Search engine optimization that follows search engines’ guidelines and relies on quality content and legitimate techniques rather than deception.
Zero-Click Search. A search in which the user gets an answer directly on the results page, from a snippet, Knowledge Panel or AI Overview, without clicking through to any website.
For more in-depth information, read The Essentials: Online Reputation Management FAQs.
