# Reputation management by industry: a sector guide Reputation management by industry: what changes for lawyers, doctors, advisers, agents, athletes, creators and founders, and which rules limit each. --- Reputation management by industry means the same core work, controlling what search engines and AI assistants show about a person or business, carried out inside the rules that bind that profession. The core work is the same everywhere: find what people see, correct what is wrong, strengthen what is true. What changes by sector is who judges you, what you are not allowed to say in reply, and which unfavorable facts sit in a public register that no one will remove. That last point is where most sector advice fails. A restaurant owner and a surgeon can both receive a one-star review, but only one of them is constrained by patient confidentiality law when replying. A financial adviser and a content creator can both be named in a forum thread, but only one has a regulator that publishes complaints on a public record. A playbook written for "businesses" treats these as the same case. They are not, and the wrong first move, usually a public reply, is how a small problem becomes a second, worse one. This guide sorts the main sectors by the questions that actually change the plan, then goes through the regulated professions, review-led local businesses, public-facing talent and founders in turn. Platform and regulator rules change, so each rule below is described as the named source said when we read it for this guide. The Zillow, Google, ABA, HHS, SEC, FINRA, FTC, FSMB and Ahpra sources named below were read on their own sites. It is information, not legal or compliance advice: your own counsel or compliance officer decides what you may say.
The short version
$50,000civil money penalty imposed on a dental practice that answered a negative review with a patient's health details
November 4, 2022the date SEC investment adviser marketing rule compliance became mandatory
October 21, 2024the date the US FTC rule on fake reviews and testimonials took effect

Sources: HHS Office for Civil Rights enforcement page for the dental practice case; SEC small business compliance guide on investment adviser marketing; FTC questions and answers on the Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule.

## Why one playbook fails and four questions sort every sector A generic playbook fails because the three things that decide the outcome, your audience, your constraints and your public record, differ by sector. Search results for a name are the shared surface. Everything behind that surface is sector specific. Take the audience first. A patient choosing a clinic reads reviews and the practitioner's own pages. A sponsor assessing an athlete reads news, social history and anything a lawyer would flag. An investor assessing a founder reads the founder's name results, company coverage and, increasingly, an AI summary. The same search produces different decisions, so the same page one needs different proof on it. Then the constraints. Some professions are told by their regulator what they may publish about themselves, and a few limit how they may reply to criticism. Other sectors face rules on how paid relationships are disclosed. These rules are not obstacles to reputation work, they are part of the specification. A reply that breaks them is not a reputation tactic. Finally the record. Some sectors carry a permanent public file. A broker may have customer dispute information on an industry database, a doctor a licensing board entry, a lawyer a disciplinary note, an athlete a sporting body's published sanction. A review platform can sometimes remove a review. Nobody removes a regulator's own record because it is unflattering, and a firm that suggests otherwise is describing something that will fail. ### The four questions to ask first Four questions place any profession on the map, and the answers set the order of work. Ask them before choosing a route, and write the answers down. 1. **Who judges you?** A customer on a review site, a regulator, a client, a sponsor, an investor, a hiring committee, an AI assistant summarizing all of them. 2. **What limits your reply?** Confidentiality duties, advertising or testimonial rules, disclosure rules for paid relationships, contract clauses with sponsors or employers. 3. **What is on a register you do not control?** Licensing boards, regulator databases, court dockets, sporting bodies, company registries. 4. **Which surfaces rank for your name or business?** Review platforms, directories, news, social profiles, your own site. The table below applies those questions to the sectors in this guide. It is a map, not a verdict: the details inside each row are the sections that follow.
SectorWho judges firstWhat limits your replyWhat you cannot remove
LawyersProspective clients, referrersClient confidentialityDisciplinary and court records
Doctors, dentistsPatients, referrersPatient privacy law, advertising rulesLicensing board entries
Financial advisersProspective clients, regulatorsMarketing and testimonial rulesRegulator database entries
Real estate agentsBuyers and sellers on portalsPlatform review rulesLicensing and complaint records
Athletes, artistsSponsors, labels, fans, pressContract and morality clausesNews of record, sporting sanctions
CreatorsAudience, brands, platformsEndorsement disclosure rulesTheir own past posts, archived copies
Founders, family officesInvestors, partners, banksSecurities and deal confidentialityCompany filings, court records
HospitalityGuests on review platformsFake review rulesGenuine critical reviews
## Lawyers: confidentiality makes the reply the risk For a lawyer, the most dangerous reputation move is a public rebuttal. The American Bar Association's Formal Opinion 496, issued January 13, 2021 and read in full for this guide, treats confidentiality of client information as the main ethical concern when a lawyer answers an online review. Model Rule 1.6(b)(5) lets a lawyer reveal information to establish a claim or defense in a controversy between the lawyer and the client, or to respond to allegations in any proceeding concerning the representation. The opinion concludes that, alone, a negative online review, because of its informal nature, is not a controversy between lawyer and client within the meaning of that rule. The practical consequences are narrower than lawyers expect. The opinion says lawyers should give serious consideration to not responding to negative online reviews in any situation, since a reply can prompt further posts and keep the review visible. If the reviewer is a client or former client, the lawyer may respond directly to that person but may not respond online. Where some public wording is used, the opinion suggests language such as asking the reviewer to call to discuss the concerns, or saying that professional obligations do not allow the lawyer to respond as they would wish. If the poster is not a client, the lawyer may say so, but where the poster is, for example, a client's relative or a former opposing party, even that general statement can reveal involvement and generally needs the client's informed consent first. The opinion also says a lawyer may ask the website host or search engine to remove a post, without disclosing client-related information, and may say a post is not accurate or that the lawyer has not represented the poster, if that is true. These are Model Rule positions from a national body. Each US state, and each country, has its own conduct rules, and the Model Rules do not bind anyone by themselves. Check the rule of the body that licenses you before drafting anything. ### What actually moves a lawyer's results Because the reply is restricted, lawyers win on structure rather than rebuttal. Three things usually matter. - **Owned, specific pages.** A firm site with one biography per lawyer, written in the lawyer's own words, with admissions, practice areas and published work. Search engines tend to rank a clear owned biography for a name when the other results are thin. - **Complete directory profiles.** Bar association listings and recognized legal directories are accurate, hard to dispute and often rank. Claim and complete them rather than creating profiles on every site. - **A disciplinary or court record handled by context.** If a public decision exists, it stays. The work is to make sure the lawyer's own pages are present, factual and current, and that anything inaccurate in a third-party summary is corrected with the publisher. ## Doctors and dentists: patient privacy and advertising rules cut both ways For health professionals, a reply that confirms or describes a patient's care can be a privacy violation, whatever the review says. The US Department of Health and Human Services published an enforcement action against a North Carolina dental practice that disclosed a patient's protected health information on a webpage in response to a negative online review. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) imposed a $50,000 civil money penalty; the page is dated March 28, 2022. The practice had also not responded to OCR's data request or to an administrative subpoena, and did not contest OCR's findings. In a separate December 2022 settlement with a California dental practice, which paid $23,000, the OCR Director stated that providers cannot disclose protected health information of their patients when responding to negative online reviews. In practice, many practices choose a reply that does not confirm the reviewer is a patient, offers an offline channel, and states only general policy. Whether that wording fits your situation is for your privacy officer or counsel. ### The other direction: advertising rules In some countries the rules also limit what a practitioner may show. In Australia, Ahpra's testimonial guidance defines a testimonial as recommendations or positive statements about the clinical aspects of a regulated health service used in advertising. Comments about non-clinical matters such as service or communication are not testimonials. Ahpra says an advertiser is responsible for compliance on its own website and business social media, and may meet that by disabling review functions where removal is not possible. It also says advertisers are not required to remove reviews on third-party platforms they do not control, but should take care about engaging with them, because engagement may be treated as using a testimonial. Selectively editing reviews, such as removing negative comments, may be misleading. That rule is specific to Australia and its National Law. The United States has no equivalent across the board, and other countries differ again, so a clinic operating in more than one place needs one policy per jurisdiction. ### Licensing board records The Federation of State Medical Boards says its DocInfo database is free to the public and lets consumers find disciplinary actions and license history, and that state board profiles at a minimum show licensure status and disciplinary history. Depending on the state they may also show final disciplinary orders, hospital privilege actions, criminal convictions or malpractice payments. Dental boards differ, so check your own board's site to see exactly what it shows about you. The principle holds regardless: a board entry is the regulator's record. The route is to confirm it is accurate and complete, and to make sure the practitioner's own pages state the current facts beside it. ## Financial advisers: marketing rules decide what proof you may show For advisers, the question is not only what people find but which proof the adviser is allowed to put in front of them. The SEC's investment adviser marketing rule, with a compliance date of November 4, 2022 per the SEC's compliance guide, allows testimonials and endorsements in advertisements when the adviser meets conditions. The advertisement must clearly and prominently disclose whether the person giving the testimonial or endorsement is a current client and whether cash or non-cash compensation was provided, with a brief statement of material conflicts of interest. The adviser must have a reasonable basis for believing the testimonial or endorsement complies, and generally a written agreement with the person giving it, with an exception for de minimis compensation of $1,000 or less in the preceding twelve months. Certain disqualified persons may not act as paid promoters. Third-party ratings are prohibited unless the adviser has a reasonable basis for believing any survey behind the rating makes it equally easy to give favorable and unfavorable responses, and clearly discloses the date and period of the rating and who created it, plus any compensation the adviser paid for it (rule text, 17 CFR 275.206(4)-1). This changes the advice. A page of glowing client quotes that is fine for a restaurant is a compliance problem for a registered adviser. The owned page should instead lead with credentials, process, fee structure explained in plain language and published commentary, which are less likely to raise testimonial questions. Whether any given item is an advertisement is a question for the firm's compliance officer. ### Customer dispute information is a different animal FINRA's BrokerCheck shows an individual's employment history, registrations and, in its disclosure section, customer disputes, disciplinary events and certain criminal and financial matters, some of which may involve pending actions not yet resolved or proven. Where a broker has such information on the industry's records, FINRA Regulatory Notice 14-31 explains that expungement follows FINRA Rule 2080 and requires a court order that directs expungement or confirms an arbitration award containing it. FINRA may waive its requirement to be named as a party where the relief rests on an affirmative finding that the claim is factually impossible or clearly erroneous, that the person was not involved, or that it is false. The notice also records that Rule 2081, effective July 30, 2014, prohibits conditioning settlement of a customer dispute on the customer's agreement to consent to, or not oppose, expungement. For a reputation plan, that means two things. A reputation firm cannot remove such an entry, and anyone who offers to is promising something the rule does not allow. And the legal route, if the facts support it, belongs to the adviser's securities counsel. Our part is the page around the record: an accurate owned profile, correct third-party summaries and a monitored name. ## Real estate agents, hotels and local trades: the portals decide Agents and tradespeople are judged on review portals, so the plan is review operations plus the owned page. Real estate is the clearest example because the portals sit in the research path of almost every buyer and seller. Zillow's own page on requesting reviews explains how the mechanics work. An agent can send a general review form to up to 50 email addresses a day, and the page notes that a review may still be moderated before it appears. It does not set out moderation timing, criteria or a removal or dispute process, so we could not describe them here. Check the portal's current review policy before filing anything. Google's contribution policy matters in every local sector. It prohibits content that is not based on a genuine experience, reviews paid for directly or in kind, content based on a conflict of interest and incentives for reviews or for removing negative reviews. It says merchants may solicit genuine reviews without incentives or attempts to influence rating or content, and it prohibits unsubstantiated allegations of unethical or criminal behavior. That last line is the legitimate hook for a dispute: not that a review is harsh, but that it makes an accusation the platform's own policy forbids. ### What the agent's name results look like An agent's page one is often portals, brokerage pages and social profiles, none of which the agent fully controls. The fix is an owned profile page that states license number where the local rules call for it, service areas, closed sales the agent can lawfully describe and a contact route. If the brokerage page ranks above everything, ask whether it names the agent correctly and links to the personal page. ### Restaurants and hotels: volume and fake reviews shape the result Hospitality is the sector where review volume, not any single review, drives the result, and where fake reviews are the most common abuse in both directions. The US FTC rule that took effect October 21, 2024 bars writing or selling fake or false reviews and testimonials, buying reviews, offering compensation that depends on a particular sentiment, disseminating insider reviews without clear disclosure, and using intimidation or unfounded legal threats to stop a consumer posting a review or to get one removed. The FTC page says the rule exempts a business that merely hosts consumer reviews, but not one that wrote or bought fake reviews, and that organizing reviews is not suppressing them under the rule, though a sort that makes negative reviews hard to find could still raise an issue under the FTC Act. Two practical points follow. A venue that pressures a guest, however politely, to delete a review is on the wrong side of the suppression provision, and a competitor or former employee who posts a false review is on the wrong side of the platform's policy. The right response to a harsh genuine review is a short public reply that acknowledges the point, states what changed if anything did, and moves the rest offline. The right response to a review that breaks platform policy is a report, with the policy line quoted. ## Athletes, artists, actors and models: sponsors read the file you cannot rewrite For public-facing talent, the audience is a short list of decision makers, sponsors, labels, agencies, casting directors, and their legal teams, who read search results as a risk memo. They look for what is unfavorable, how old it is, and whether the person has handled it well. Our athletes page explains how we work with that group, and the sector logic is this. - **News of record stays.** Accurate reporting of a sanction, arrest or dispute is lawful and in the public interest more often than not. The plan for that material is not removal. It is making sure that newer, accurate content about the person's work, charity, results and projects is present and credible, so that old coverage is one result among many. - **Contracts drive the order of work.** Sponsorship and representation contracts may include clauses on conduct and public statements. Before any public reply to anything, the person's agent or lawyer should read those clauses. A reply that breaches a clause can cost more than the original story. - **Fan-made and leaked material is a separate track.** Deepfakes, leaked private images and impersonation accounts are handled through platform reporting and legal routes, written from the protective side and without public amplification. A public statement often spreads them further. - **Profiles carry the weight.** A governing body or league profile, a verified social account, an official site and a knowledge panel where the person is eligible all tell an AI assistant who the person is. Same-name confusion is common for athletes and artists and is solved with consistent facts across those pages. ### Creators: disclosure is the reputation rule For creators, the FTC's endorsement guidance is a reputation matter, because undisclosed paid relationships become the story. The FTC's Q&A says an influencer must disclose a material connection when the audience would not expect it and it could affect how they weigh the endorsement. Connections include payment, free products, free trips, affiliate commissions and employment. The FTC says disclosure should be clear and conspicuous and as close to the recommendation as possible, and calls disclosures in comments or behind a hyperlinked button easily avoidable and so not adequate. It also says consumers may miss a disclosure at the bottom of a page. It calls "gifted", "ambassador", "partner" and "affiliate link" used alone ambiguous or unclear, and says each post that needs a disclosure must carry its own, because viewers may not see multiple posts. A creator with consistent disclosure habits has a stronger position when criticism arrives, because the one accusation that sticks, hidden payment, has no basis. The reverse is also true: a gap in disclosure is the most likely thing a critic, a journalist or a brand's lawyer will find. ## Founders, family offices and consultants: due diligence is the audience For founders and family offices, the reader is doing diligence, so the question is whether the name results hold up under a deliberate search. Investors, banks and counterparties search the individual, the company and the associated names, and they read forums and court listings as well as news. Our executives page covers that audience in more detail, and the sector rules are as follows. 1. **Search the way a diligence analyst does.** Name plus company, name plus prior company, name plus "lawsuit", name plus "complaint". Note what ranks for each, not only the plain name. 2. **Treat company filings and court records as fixed.** They are public by design. Accurate ones stay, and the owned pages should state the facts in the person's own words. 3. **Keep family and address data out of the same search.** For family offices the larger exposure is often personal data: addresses, relatives and property records. Reducing that exposure is a privacy task that runs beside reputation work, not inside it. 4. **Separate the person from the vehicle.** A founder whose name is tied to a failed venture benefits from a clear account of what each venture was and what the person did, so a search does not collapse two companies into one story. ### Crypto and web3 founders Onchain actors have a distinct problem: pseudonymous handles, wallet addresses and contract deployments are public and permanent, and a single accusation on a forum or social platform can travel faster than any correction. The rule for this sector is that accurate onchain facts are not a removal case. The work is to publish a clear, verifiable account of who the person is, which wallets and contracts are theirs and what the project does, so that accusations can be checked against something. The privacy side, such as links between an identity and a wallet, deserves care before anything is published. ### Consultants and independent experts For consultants the audience is a buyer reading a short list, so the owned bio and two or three specific proof points carry most of the weight. The common failure is an out-of-date profile on a directory that outranks the person's own site. Updating or removing a profile the person controls is faster than any other fix. ## Which route fits which sector problem The route depends on the problem and the sector together, and the table below is the order we check them. A route that fits one sector can be a violation in another.
ProblemUsual routeSector cautionSpeed
Harsh genuine reviewShort reply, offline contactNo client or patient detail in any replyDays
Review breaking platform policyPlatform report quoting the policy lineDo not offer incentives for removalDays to weeks
Regulator or licensing recordAccuracy check, owned page beside itOnly a formal route changes itRule-bound
Inaccurate news summaryCorrection request to the publisherContract clauses for talentWeeks
Leaked or fake mediaPlatform report, legal letter if neededNo public amplificationHours to weeks
Outdated directory profileClaim, update or request removalTestimonial rules for advisers and clinicsDays
Wrong AI answerCorrect sources, then provider reportRegulated claims need review firstWeeks to months
Speeds are what we usually see, not promises. A platform can refuse a report, a publisher can decline a correction, and an AI assistant can repeat an error for weeks after the source is fixed. ## A realistic ninety days for a regulated professional The order below is the same for most regulated professionals, with the sector rules from earlier setting the details of each step. It is an invented scenario with generic parties, to show sequence rather than results. Assume a solo practitioner in a regulated profession who searches their own name and finds three problems: a harsh review that names a treatment or service, an outdated directory listing with a wrong address, and a third-party summary of a regulator decision that omits that it was resolved. The practitioner has no owned page.
Ninety days for a regulated professional
  1. Days 1 to 7: record and read the rulesCapture what ranks for the name and the practice, in a private window. Read the profession's confidentiality and advertising rules, and write down what a reply may and may not contain. Take no public action yet.
  2. Days 8 to 21: fix what the practitioner controlsCorrect the directory listing, claim missing profiles and publish a plain owned page with qualifications, services and the current facts. Add the professional's license details where local rules call for them.
  3. Days 22 to 45: handle the third partiesSend a factual correction request to the publisher that omitted the resolution. Report the review only if it breaks a platform policy, quoting the policy line. Post a short offline-contact reply if the rules allow one.
  4. Days 46 to 75: let accurate content settleAdd specific, true pages and profiles. Ask all clients or patients in the same neutral way for reviews, without incentives, where the rules allow it. Do not chase individual results.
  5. Days 76 to 90: check search and AI answersRepeat the first search, then ask several AI assistants who the practitioner is and what they offer. Record differences, fix sources and set a monthly check.
Most files move in the pattern the steps imply: owned and corrected pages settle within weeks, third-party corrections take longer and depend on the publisher, and a regulator record does not move unless a formal process says so. Nothing in the sequence promises that a harsh review disappears. ## What AI answers add in every sector AI assistants now sit between your audience and your pages, so every sector needs a check of what they say, and the check is more sensitive in regulated fields. An assistant may summarize a license status, a complaint or a rating without the context that a human reader would find on the source page. In a regulated profession that summary can sound like a statement about qualifications or fitness to practice, which is why the practitioner's compliance reviewer should see any correction before it is published. The method is the same for every sector. Ask several assistants who the person or business is, what services they offer, whether there are complaints, and who competes with them. Record the answers with the date. Then trace each wrong or thin claim to its source, since assistants largely repeat what they can find. Fix the source: the owned page, the directory, the publisher. Report to the provider only when a statement about a named person is false and fixing sources has not worked. Our reputation monitoring page describes how the recurring check is run for clients. Two cautions apply. First, do not write content for an assistant that you would not publish for a person: claims that fail the regulator's advertising rules fail them whether a human or a model reads them. Second, do not treat one assistant's answer as the whole picture, because different assistants draw on different sources and the same question can produce different answers on different days. ## How to start in your sector Start by running the four questions on yourself, writing down what binds you and what is on a register, then fix the pages you control before you contact anyone else. That order protects you from the common mistake of replying in public before you know what you are allowed to say.
If this is happening to you now

If a review, article or record is already circulating, hold your public reply until you have read your sector's rules, and keep screenshots with dates. A private audit lays out what ranks for your name, which items are removable, which are not, and what order fits your profession. Start with the private audit.

Reputation Partners works with individuals and businesses in several of these sectors, and the first conversation is usually about constraints rather than tactics. We say plainly when a record cannot be changed and when a reply would make things worse, because telling a client what will not work early saves them months. ## Questions people ask ### Is reputation management different for regulated professions? Yes. The techniques are the same, owned pages, corrected sources and accurate profiles, but the limits differ. Lawyers, doctors and advisers face confidentiality, privacy or advertising rules that can make a public reply or a testimonial a violation. The first step is reading the rules of the body that licenses you, then deciding what to publish. ### Can I get a regulator or licensing board entry removed from search results? Usually not, if it is an accurate official record. A board or regulator publishes it deliberately, and a reputation firm cannot change it. What you can do is confirm the entry is correct, ask for corrections where it is not, and publish your own accurate pages so the record is one result among others. ### Should a professional reply to every negative review? No. Where confidentiality or privacy duties apply, a reply can create a worse problem than the review. Some ethics guidance suggests considering silence. When you do reply, keep it general, avoid confirming that the person was a client or patient, and move the conversation offline. Check your profession's rules first. ### Do creators and athletes need different handling from businesses? Yes, because their audience is specific people, sponsors, brands and fans, and their contracts and disclosure duties shape what they can say. For creators, clear paid-relationship disclosure is part of reputation. For athletes and artists, representation and sponsorship contracts should be read before any public reply. ### Does industry affect how AI assistants describe me? It can. Assistants draw on whatever sources exist for your name and field, so a regulated professional may be summarized from a directory or a regulator page. Check several assistants, trace each claim to its source and correct the source. Reporting to the provider is a later step, for statements about a named person that are false. ### Can a reputation firm remove a genuine bad review for my sector? Not if the review is a genuine, lawful opinion from a real customer. Platforms remove reviews that break their policies, such as fake content, conflicts of interest or unsubstantiated accusations. A harsh but honest review stays, and the better response is a calm reply, an improvement and a steady flow of genuine new reviews.