Last updated · reviewed by the Essentras editorial team
Reputation monitoring
The short answer
Online reputation monitoring means checking what Google page 1, reviews, news, Reddit, social posts and AI assistants say about your name or brand, on a schedule. Start free: Google Alerts, Results about you, Search Console and review site notifications. Pay for a tool when alerts outgrow 1 inbox, and for a service when something must be removed or outranked.
Checked on 3 Nov 2026 against Google’s help pages, each review site’s pages and the pricing page of every tool listedWritten by the Essentras editorial team
Essentras makes the AI Visibility Tracker listed here and sells reputation management. It does not sell social listening or review software; every other tool is shown with the price on its own page.
Free decision table
Pick what you want to know. Each row gives the free setup, how often to check, and what to buy only if the free setup is not enough.
| What you want to know | Free setup | How often | Paid upgrade | Steps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| When news sites or blogs mention you | Google Alerts (News, Blogs) and Talkwalker Alerts | As it happens, or daily | A listening tool | Free setup |
| What Google shows for your name | A signed-out search for your exact name, saved | Monthly | A reputation service, if page 1 has a problem | What to monitor |
| Whether your phone, address or email shows in Google | Results about you, with notifications | Notifications | Personal information removal | Free setup |
| How your own site shows for your brand | Search Console, branded queries filter | Monthly | An SEO suite | Free setup |
| New reviews | Google Business Profile, Yelp for Business and Trustpilot notifications | As they arrive | Review software | Review tools |
| Reddit threads about you | F5Bot; Google Alerts set to Discussions | Daily | A listening tool | Free setup |
| Social posts | Each platform’s search; Talkwalker Alerts for X | Weekly | A social media suite with listening | Paid tools |
| What AI assistants say about you | Ask and save monthly; the free tracker covers 3 suggested questions for your website | Monthly | Tracker Pro, $49 a month, your own questions | AI answers |
Each free tool as its provider describes it on 3 Nov 2026.
Alerts catch pages, not what ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude tell someone who asks. The free AI Visibility Tracker starts from your website and asks 7 assistants 3 suggested buyer questions every month, keeping every answer word for word. Free dashboards are public; Pro ($49 a month) is private and asks up to 25 questions in your own words every week.
Start the free trackerAn alert tells you something exists. Removing it needs a platform rule or the law; outranking it needs accurate pages and time. Buy the cheapest setup that catches what matters, and spend the rest on the response.
Google Alerts lets you set How often (As-it-happens, At most once a day or At most once a week), the sources (including News, Blogs and Discussions), language, region, and Only the best results or All results.
Results about you notifies you when results show your phone, home address or email: Google says the first notification comes within a few hours, then a new one when new results appear.
Search Console keeps up to 16 months of Performance data, and its branded queries filter, available to all eligible sites since 11 Mar 2026, splits branded from non-branded queries.
Google Business Profile sends customer activity alerts when customers leave new reviews or add photos, by email, in Search or in Maps.
Awario’s lowest plan, Starter, is $29 a month billed annually ($49 monthly) for 3 topics and 30,000 new mentions a month.
Meltwater’s pricing page shows no price: every plan says Contact Sales. Mention, Brandwatch, Talkwalker, Birdeye, Podium and Chatmeter show none either.
The Essentras AI Visibility Tracker starts from a website and asks 7 assistants: free for 3 suggested questions a month with a public dashboard, or $49 a month for up to 25 of your own every week, private.
What to watch
Monitoring covers 7 surfaces. Each has a free way to watch it and a sign that tells you to act.
| Surface | What to check | Free tool | How often | Act when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google page 1 | The 10 results for your exact name in quotes, and for your brand | A signed-out search, saved | Monthly | A negative or false result enters the top 10 |
| Reviews | New reviews on Google, Yelp, Trustpilot and your industry’s sites | Each site’s notifications | As they arrive | A review breaks the site’s rules, or many arrive at once |
| News and blogs | Articles that name you, your company or your executives | Google Alerts; Talkwalker Alerts | Daily | A story states a fact you can show is false |
| Reddit and forums | Threads and comments that name you | F5Bot; Google Alerts (Discussions) | Daily | A thread shares personal information or ranks for your name |
| Social posts | Posts that name or tag you | Platform search; Talkwalker Alerts for X | Weekly | A post spreads fast, impersonates you or threatens someone |
| AI answers | What assistants say when asked about you | Ask and save; the free tracker | Monthly | An answer repeats a false claim or names a rival for your own name |
| Your contact details | Your phone, home address and email in Google | Results about you | Notifications | A result shows your contact details |
For most people and small businesses, a short monthly routine is enough: the same searches and the same AI questions, saved with the date, so each month compares with the last. A paid tool earns its price when alerts arrive faster than 1 person can read them, or when you manage several locations or brands.
Free
Each step uses the provider’s own options, read on 3 Nov 2026. Together they cover news, Reddit, your contact details, your own site and your reviews.
Then put 1 date a month in your calendar for the signed-out search and the AI questions. Everything else arrives by email.
Alert queries that do not drown you
When to use it: Google Alerts. Replace the brackets; Talkwalker Alerts and F5Bot have their own filters.
Queries, 1 alert each
"[Full name]" "[Full name]" [company name] "[Company name]" -[common word that shares the name] "[Company name]" review "[Company name]" complaint "[Product name]" "[CEO name]" "[company name]"
Quotes, the minus sign and site: are documented on Google’s own help page about search operators.
When to use it: Every month, and every day during a crisis.
Log columns
Date | Surface (Google, reviews, news, Reddit, social, AI) | Query or question | Result (URL or answer, 1 line) | Position or rating | New since last month? | True, false or opinion | Breaks a rule? (which) | Action (none, reply, correct, report, escalate) | Owner
When to use it: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and the assistants your customers use.
Questions
Who is [your name or company]? Is [company] legit? What do customers say about [company]? [Company] reviews and complaints Best [your category] in [your city or market] [Company] vs [main competitor]
Save each answer with the date and the sources it cites; the sources are what you can correct.
The source pages:Google Alerts helpGoogle search operatorsTalkwalker AlertsF5BotSearch Console Performance reportYelp for Business notificationsTrustpilot: the Free plan (8 May 2024)
Paid tools
Every price comes from the vendor’s own pricing page on 3 Nov 2026, in US dollars. Where a vendor shows no price, the table says so: it sells through a demo or a quote. Prices change; check before you buy.
| Tool | Lowest published price | What it buys | Higher plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awario | $29 a month billed annually ($49 monthly) | Starter: 3 topics, 30,000 new mentions a month | Pro $89 (15 topics), Enterprise $249 (100 topics), annual |
| Brand24 | $199 a month billed annually ($249 monthly) | Individual: 3 keywords, 2,000 mentions a month, updates every 12 hours | Team $299, Pro $399, Business $599, annual; Enterprise from $1,499 |
| Hootsuite | From $99 (Standard), per its plans page FAQ | Social media management with social listening included | Professional $199, Advanced up to $399; Enterprise custom, with advanced listening and review monitoring |
| Sprout Social | $199 per seat a month, billed annually (Standard) | Social media management with keyword and location monitoring | Professional $299, Advanced $399 per seat; Listening is an add-on sold by demo, no price shown |
| YouScan | $499 a month, billed annually | Starter 3: 3 topics, up to 15,000 mentions a month | Unlimited plans by demo |
| Mention | No price shown | Company plan; the button books a demo | Quote |
| Brandwatch | No price shown | Each product links to “See it in action” | Quote |
| Talkwalker | No price shown | “Pick your plan to get a custom quote” | Quote |
| Meltwater | No price shown | Every plan says Contact Sales | Quote |
| Tool | Lowest published price | What it buys | Higher plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| BrightLocal | $49 a month billed annually, 1 location (Grow; $65 monthly) | Monitor and respond to reviews across multiple sites; review requests | Track $31 and Manage $40 cover local search; review monitoring starts at Grow |
| GatherUp | $99 a month billed annually, 1 location | Review monitoring across 100+ sites, review requests, surveys | $60 per location a month for 2 to 10 locations; Review Defense from $45 |
| Reputation.com | $80 per location a month (Rep Core) | Reviews, review requests, AI responses and listings | With Pulse listening $115, with Surveys $150; custom from 125 locations |
| Trustpilot | Free plan | 50 review invitations a month, review notifications | Plus from $319, Premium from $799 a month per domain, billed annually; Enterprise by quote |
| Birdeye | No price shown | A GET PRICING form that asks for your locations and phone | Quote |
| Podium | No price shown | Its page says “talk to our sales team for details” | Quote |
| Chatmeter | No price shown | A “customized proposal” | Quote |
| Tool | Lowest published price | What it buys | Higher plans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentras AI Visibility Tracker | Free | 3 suggested questions to 7 assistants every month; public dashboard; runs while you sign in every 14 days | Pro $49 a month: up to 25 questions of your own every week, private; each extra domain $29 |
| Otterly.ai | $29 a month ($25 billed annually) | Lite: 15 prompts across 4 AI search engines | Standard $189 (100 prompts), Premium $489 (400 prompts) |
| Semrush | $199 a month, Starter ($165.17 billed annually) | 50 prompts tracked daily for 1 domain, with its SEO toolkit | Pro+ $299 (100 prompts); a free plan with limits |
| Ahrefs | $129 a month (Lite) | 5 tracked AI prompts, with its SEO toolkit | Standard $249 (10), Advanced $449 (20), Enterprise $1,499; Brand Radar AI alone from $199 |
Essentras makes the AI Visibility Tracker. The best AI visibility tools page compares more of them.
Compare by what you would watch, not by the headline price. Brand24 counts keywords and Awario counts topics; review software prices per location, so 10 locations multiply the per-location price; social media suites price per seat. Annual billing lowers most figures above.
AI answers
Google Alerts and review notifications do not cover AI answers, and the answers change over time. You have to ask, by hand or with a tracker.
It asks ChatGPT, Meta AI, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek and Grok the same questions on a schedule and keeps every answer word for word.
Free
Starts from your website: 3 questions picked from suggestions built from Google search volume, asked every month. The dashboard is public, and tracking pauses if you do not sign in for 14 days.
Pro, $49 a month
Up to 25 questions in your own words, such as “Is [company] legit?”, asked every Monday, with a private dashboard and a Monday report. Each extra domain $29 a month.
When an answer is wrong
What changes an answer over time is what the assistant reads: your own pages, the pages it cites, and accurate coverage. The AI Visibility Baseline ($97) reads what AI says about you and walks through the first fixes. Nobody controls what an assistant says.
Escalation ladder
Most alerts need nothing. The ladder matches each finding to the cheapest response that fits, and shows when it is time to pay someone.
| Level | What you found | Response | Who | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Log it | A neutral or fair mention | Note it in the log | You | Free |
| 2. Reply | A genuine complaint or negative review | Reply calmly, with a fix or a contact | You | Free |
| 3. Correct | A false fact in an article, listing or AI answer | Ask the publisher or site owner for a correction, with documents | You | Free |
| 4. Report | Personal information, threats, impersonation or a fake review | Report it through the platform’s or Google’s own form | You, or a service | Free; Google review removal from $499 |
| 5. Remove or outrank | A page 1 result you cannot fix from your own account | Official removal routes, then accurate pages that outrank what remains | A reputation management service | Name removal $1,650; 1 article $2,200; Reddit $1,250 |
| 6. Crisis | Reporters calling, legal exposure or a regulator | A 72-hour plan, 1 spokesperson and a lawyer | A crisis PR firm and counsel | Rarely published; see the crisis guide |
Essentras prices are from its checkout on the read date; Google, the platforms and the publishers decide every removal.
If it is already a crisis
The first 72 hours have their own plan: facts, a holding statement, 1 spokesperson, and what can and cannot be removed.
Tool or service
Searches for a “reputation monitoring service” usually mean 1 of 4 things, each with a different price.
| Option | What you get | What it does not do | Prices on 3 Nov 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free alerts | Emails when something new appears | No history, no sentiment, no AI answers | $0 |
| A listening tool | Mentions in 1 dashboard, with history, sentiment and reports | It does not reply, report or remove anything | From $29 to $1,499 or more a month; many quote only |
| Review software | Reviews from many sites in 1 inbox, replies, review requests | It removes nothing: the review site decides | From $49 a month for 1 location; $80 to $150 per location |
| A reputation management service | People who act on findings: removal requests, corrections, accurate pages, placements | Nobody controls Google’s ranking or a platform’s decision | Per item at Essentras: name removal $1,650, 1 article $2,200, Reddit $1,250, Google reviews from $499 |
For a person, free alerts, Results about you and a monthly signed-out search cover most needs. For a local business, the review sites’ own notifications come first, and review software pays off across several locations. For a brand with press attention, a listening tool earns its price. When page 1 already has a problem, fix it first; monitoring keeps it fixed.
Optional
Optional. Everything in the free setup works without these.
Optional
Start with the free steps.
FAQ
Checking, on a schedule, what is said about your name or brand: Google page 1, reviews, news, Reddit, social posts and AI answers. Monitoring finds things; it does not fix them. Removal needs a platform rule or the law, and outranking needs accurate pages and time.
Create a Google Alert for your company name in quotes, set How often to As-it-happens or At most once a day, and add Talkwalker Alerts, which also cover forums and X. Add F5Bot for Reddit, and turn on notifications in Google Business Profile, Yelp for Business and Trustpilot. All are free.
For news and blogs it is a good free start. It does not gather reviews in 1 place, show where you rank on Google, or read AI answers. Add Results about you for your contact details, review notifications, F5Bot for Reddit, and a monthly signed-out search for your name.
It depends on what you watch. For mentions, Awario starts at $29 a month and Brand24 at $199, billed annually; for reviews, BrightLocal’s Grow plan is $49 a month for 1 location and Reputation.com $80 to $150 per location; for AI answers, the free AI Visibility Tracker. Meltwater, Brandwatch and Talkwalker quote only.
$0 for the free setup on this page. On 3 Nov 2026, listening tools ran from $29 a month (Awario, annual) to $1,499 or more (Brand24 Enterprise), review software from $49 a month for 1 location, and AI tracking from free to $49 a month at Essentras. Several vendors only quote.
Neither publishes a price: on 3 Nov 2026, Birdeye’s pricing page is a form and Podium’s says to talk to sales. Compare your 2 quotes on contract length and the review sites you need. BrightLocal, GatherUp and Reputation.com publish their prices, which makes them easier to compare.
Ask it the questions a customer would ask, every month, and save the answers with their sources. To automate it, the Essentras AI Visibility Tracker starts from your website and asks 7 assistants, ChatGPT included: 3 suggested questions a month free (public dashboard), or up to 25 of your own every week for $49 a month (private).
Tracker Pro at $49 a month asks 7 assistants, those 3 included, up to 25 questions every week. Otterly’s Standard plan is $189 for 100 prompts across 4 engines, and Semrush’s Starter $199 with 50 daily prompts. Getting mentioned more depends on what assistants read; AI SEO work is scoped after a free assessment.
Every month, search your exact name in quotes while signed out, save the top 10 results with their positions, and compare with the month before. Turn on Results about you for your phone, home address and email. If a new result is false or breaks a rule, follow the escalation ladder on this page.
When monitoring finds something you cannot fix from your own account: a page 1 result for your name, a removal request you do not want to run alone, or problems on several sites at once. A tool tells you; a service acts, through official channels. A crisis with reporters calling needs a crisis PR firm and a lawyer.
Essentras makes the AI Visibility Tracker, free for 3 questions a month or $49 a month for Pro. It does not sell social listening or review software. When monitoring finds something, its online reputation management works the official removal routes and accurate pages, priced after a free assessment.
Sources and method
Checked on 3 Nov 2026
Free tools are described from their providers’ own pages. Every paid price is a list price from the vendor’s own pricing page, read the same day; where none is shown, the page says so and never estimates. Essentras prices come from its checkout.
What we could not read, so this page does not claim it
Spotted a price that changed? Tell us and we will check the vendor’s page. Report an error
Vendor prices are list prices as each vendor showed them on 3 Nov 2026, in US dollars; they change, so check before you buy. Essentras makes the AI Visibility Tracker; every other tool is listed from its own pages. Platforms and Google decide every removal; nobody can promise an outcome.
Adds us as a preferred source, so our guides surface for you in Search and AI answers. One click, and you can undo it any time.
Free tool · Authority Audit
Before you fix one piece, see the whole picture. A free Authority Audit scores your presence across Google, AI, Wikipedia, reviews, and press, and shows you exactly where to start.