The maximum civil penalty, per violation, for knowingly breaking the FTC’s Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, in force since October 21, 2024. The figure didn’t rise in 2026 because that year’s inflation adjustment was canceled, which is why a lot of pages still quote the older number.
Source: US Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule (16 CFR Part 465) guidanceTop-ranking reputation and review-management pages that name Google’s review policy or the FTC rule at all, including two that describe practices those rules prohibit while claiming to comply with them.
Source: Southern Tide Media teardown of 10 top-ranking provider pages, August 2026The monthly range buyers are quoted for reputation management, with small businesses most often told to expect around $850. Ours starts at $349 and is printed on this page, which is more than four of the five providers we reviewed will do.
Source: NetReputation published reputation-management cost guide, 2026What’s included
Reputation work is a routine, not a rescue. Done every month it adds up: more reviews, better answers, cleaner listings, and a profile the AI engines treat as the safe recommendation.
Focus areas · AI services
Review generation campaigns
Steady, straightforward requests to real customers. Volume and recency are what move a rating.
Response drafting
AI drafts every response; you approve before anything posts. Nothing is ever auto-published.
Listings management
Name, hours, categories and details made to match across the directories that feed search and AI.
Sentiment monitoring
What people actually say, tracked over time, not just the star count.
Rating & velocity reporting
Volume, recency and rating movement, location by location.
Social posting
Profiles kept visibly active at the Pro tier. An abandoned page reads as a closed business.
The AI-visibility loop
AI engines recommend businesses with plenty of consistent reviews and matching details. This service feeds that directly.
Monthly reputation report
Rating, volume and sentiment in plain English, with what we’re doing next. See a sample monthly report →
What a month on your reviews looks like
Eight of the ten pages we reviewed promise a monthly report. None of them shows one, and the most common complaint about this industry is paying for months of “monitoring” with nothing to look at. Here’s every line that lands in yours. See a sample monthly report →
Real customers, asked in neutral words at the right moment, with no filtering by who we think will be kind. How many went out and how many turned into reviews is a number on your report, not a feeling.
Drafts go to you for approval and then post under your name. Anything still waiting on you stays visible on the report with its age on it, rather than quietly disappearing.
Fake reviews, competitor posts and off-topic content get flagged with evidence. When the platform refuses, that shows on your report too. A removal log with no refusals in it has been curated.
Name, address, phone, hours and categories checked against each other and fixed where they’ve drifted. This is the dull half of local visibility and the half that quietly breaks.
What people keep mentioning, counted. Three complaints about the same twenty minutes of your process is an operations finding, and you should hear it from us before you hear it from the rating.
Rating, volume, response rate and response time, what moved, what didn’t, and what next month changes. Written by the person doing the work.
Where your reputation lives
The profiles that decide what a map result, a local listing and an AI answer say about you. We monitor them, answer them and keep them consistent, in accounts that stay in your name.
The reputation platform we license and run this on is our cost, not your line item. You’re buying the work and the accountability. Keeping the tooling underneath it current is our problem.
What a good reply looks like
Four of the ten pages we tore down sell review response as a named service (one claims two hundred thousand responses delivered), and not one shows you a reply. There are dozens of “50 templates” articles online and no examples in the wild. So here are three, for a fictional outfitter, including the hard one: a one-star review with no detail in it at all.
Booked a sunset kayak tour for 5:30, nobody told us it was canceled for weather until we had already driven 40 minutes. Refund took 9 days.
Marcus, you are right on both counts and I am sorry. We should have called you the moment the tour was pulled, and nine days for a refund is not acceptable. Weather cancellations now trigger a text to everyone booked within fifteen minutes of the call, and refunds go out same day. If you would like to come back out on us, I will book it myself — dana@ or the shop line, ask for me.
— Dana R., Store ManagerRude staff. Overpriced. Don't bother.
I am sorry you left feeling that way — that is not the visit we want anyone to have. I would genuinely like to understand what happened so we can fix it. If you are willing, dana@ reaches me directly.
— Dana R., Store ManagerThird year renting boards here. Ellis remembered our sizes before we even asked.
Three years running — thank you, Priya. Ellis will be unbearable about this. See you next summer.
— Dana R., Store ManagerGreat gear, but the online booking system double-charged my card and I have not heard back yet.
- The one-star with no detail is the hard one. There’s nothing to fix and nothing to concede, and the instinct is to defend yourself in public. Short, sorry, and a direct line beats a paragraph explaining why they’re wrong. Future customers read the paragraph as the tell.
- No discount codes in a public reply. Offering money to make a review go away is exactly the conduct the platforms and the FTC’s rule are aimed at. The apology is public. The remedy moves to a phone call.
- The fourth card isn’t answered. Anything touching someone’s money goes to the owner before it posts. A queue with nothing pending in it is a screenshot, not a workflow. See the report this queue feeds →
And the part nobody checks: whether your details are even right
Four of the ten pages sell listings management. None of them shows a listing. This is the panel behind that line item: the same five facts about a business, checked across the directories that feed maps, voice assistants and AI answers. Note the score. A business that needed no help wouldn’t need us.
| Where you appear | Name | Address | Phone | Hours | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Verified Aug 6 |
| Apple Maps | ✓ | ! | ✓ | ✓ | Old suite number — correction submitted Aug 4, pending review |
| Bing Places | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ! | Still showing winter hours in August — fix submitted Aug 6 |
| Yelp | ✓ | ✓ | ! | ✓ | Pre-2024 phone number, still forwarding to a disconnected line |
| ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Verified Aug 6 | |
| TripAdvisor | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Verified Aug 5 |
| Nextdoor | — | — | — | — | Never claimed — claim started Aug 7, postcard verification in transit |
| Foursquare | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Verified Aug 5 |
| Waze | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Verified Aug 5 |
| Chamber directory | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Verified Aug 3 |
- Seventy-nine percent, not a hundred. Every business we’ve ever onboarded had at least one directory carrying a dead phone number or an old address. A clean sheet here would be the least believable thing on this page.
- The disconnected phone number is the expensive one. A wrong number on a directory isn’t a tidiness problem. It’s a customer who called, got nothing, and went to a competitor. Nobody ever tells you it happened.
- This is what AI answers read. When an assistant is asked who to call for kayak rentals near the point, it’s drawing on exactly these profiles: the details, the reviews and whether they agree with each other. That’s why this service and AI Visibility are two ends of the same machine.
Us vs. the typical reputation company
Every line on the left is a pattern we found on the ten top-ranking social and reputation pages we tore down in August 2026, including two that contradict themselves on the central promise of their own service.
The typical reputation company
- “We remove negative reviews” on the page, and “genuine reviews can’t be removed” in the FAQ
- Happy customers routed to Google, unhappy ones filtered into a private form
- Compliance claimed in general terms, with no rule ever named
- No price, just a form that sorts you by how urgently you need help
- Nothing about who owns your profiles or the customer list you hand over
- Review response sold, with no indication of how fast
- A monthly report promised on the page and shown by nobody
Southern Tide Media
- What can and can’t be removed, stated the same way in both places
- Everyone asked, in neutral words, because selective asking breaks Google’s rules
- The actual rules named, dated and linked to what they do and don’t cover
- $349 and $599, printed on this page
- Your profiles, your reviews, your customer list, in your name, in writing
- Response time measured and reported, whether or not it flatters us
- A written report every month, and a sample of it on this page
Where it starts
$349/moCore — most popularNever miss a review again: review generation and monitoring, response drafting for your approval, and the monthly reputation report.
How pricing worksWhich problem do you have?
This is the common one, and it’s a volume and recency problem, not a rating problem. Asking every customer, every month, in a way that doesn’t break the platform rules, is most of the fix. That’s what Core does.
Unanswered reviews read as a business that stopped paying attention, and replying is itself associated with getting more reviews. Drafted responses for your approval is the whole service here, and it’s cheaper than the alternative.
Old phone numbers, moved addresses, holiday hours from two years ago. This is listings work, it’s in the Pro tier, and it’s the thing that quietly costs you calls you never knew about.
Then this isn’t your service. That’s search-result suppression and crisis work, a specialist field priced in the thousands per month, and it takes many months because it means outranking a page rather than deleting it. We’ll tell you that on the first call rather than sell you a review plan and hope.
The first three are what this service is built for, and most local businesses have at least two of them at once. The fourth is a different profession, and we’d rather point you at it than take the retainer.
How pricing works
Two published tiers, and a place in the biggest bundle. No per-review pricing, no contracts that outlive their usefulness. Worth knowing what that’s being compared against: of the five reputation providers we tore down in August 2026, exactly one publishes a price at all. The guides buyers are shown quote $500 to $3,000 a month, with most small businesses landing near $850, and the industry’s own lead forms sort people into brackets starting below $250 and running past $1,000. We’d rather just print the number.
Never miss a review again: review generation and monitoring, response drafting for your approval, and the monthly reputation report.
Reputation as a growth lever: everything in Core, plus listings management, sentiment and rating reporting, and social posting.
Reputation management is included in every Full Stack plan, alongside email, Managed CRM and the rest of the engine.
Bundling is cheaper than buying the pieces.
See plans & pricingHow long it takes
What to expect
A rating is a running average, so it moves at the speed averages move. Here’s what the first year usually looks like.
Locations and profiles connected, and a baseline read on rating, volume and sentiment.
Review requests going out, responses drafted for your approval, listings made to match across the directories.
Review flow kept up, sentiment watched, and the monthly report keeping score. Recent reviews are a ranking signal too.
Who we help
Reviews decide different things in each of these categories, but they decide something in all of them.
Hospitality & Resort
The review score is the booking decision, and the booking sites know it.
Explore →E-commerce & DTC
Product and seller ratings that protect conversion and the buy box.
Explore →Medical & Med Spa
The highest-stakes reviews there are, answered with care and inside the rules.
Explore →Outdoor & Recreation
Buyers read reviews like spec sheets. Recent ones sell.
Home Services & B2B
The trades live and die on the local review profile.
Legal & Professional
One thoughtful response to a hard review wins more clients than ten stars.
Chambers & Nonprofits
Community trust, visible in public, and worth tending.
Restricted categories
When ads are limited, the review profile does the advertising.
Don’t take our word for it
“The Southern Tide Media team has smartly positioned itself as partners, versus “vendors.” Each step along the strategic path, I feel as if they are “all in” and have our best interests at heart.”
“Southern Tide Media increased our conversion rates on our SEO campaigns by 60% in short time… Brandon takes the worry out of all the technical jargon and translates that into workable applications you can understand as a business owner.”
“In every dealing I have ever had with Brandon Evans, he has been knowledgeable, fair, and has responded quickly. I would highly recommend using him for any of your business’s marketing or advertising needs!”
Questions, answered
Will responses post automatically?
Never. AI drafts them, you approve them, then they post. Your name goes on every reply, so you keep the final word.
How do you generate more reviews?
Steady, straightforward requests to real customers at the right moment. No fake reviews, no incentives, nothing that breaks platform rules. Volume and recency do the work.
Which platforms do you cover?
Google first, because it feeds search, maps and AI answers, plus the platforms your buyers actually check in your category.
What happens when we get a bad review?
You hear about it fast, get a drafted response worth sending, and, where there’s a pattern, a note on what the operation could fix. We don’t bury, suppress or argue.
What do reviews have to do with AI?
AI engines lean on businesses with plenty of consistent reviews when deciding who to recommend. Reputation and AI Visibility are two ends of the same machine, which is why they sit in the same pillar.
Reviews are covered — what about ads on our name?
Reviews are one half of brand defense. Who’s paying to show up on searches for your name is the other. Our Brand Protection Monitoring service watches that daily across four ad platforms, with evidence attached to every alert.
Can you get a bad review removed?
Sometimes, and you deserve the straight version rather than the sales version. Only the platform can remove a review, and it will only do so when the review breaks a published policy: it’s fake or from someone who was never a customer, it’s spam or a duplicate, it’s off-topic, it contains personal information, it’s hateful or harassing, or it comes from a competitor or a former employee. We find those, flag them with evidence and follow up, and the first request is often refused before a second one succeeds. What can’t be removed is a genuine review from a real customer who had a bad time, however unfair or exaggerated it feels. Not by us, not by anyone, not for any fee. Anyone guaranteeing removal of a legitimate review is selling you either a coincidence or a policy violation. What we do instead is answer it well and outweigh it with volume and recency, which is what moves the score.
Can we just ask our happy customers, and skip asking the unhappy ones?
No, and this is the question the industry gets loudly wrong. The practice is called review gating, and you’ll find pages that say the Federal Trade Commission bans it. It doesn’t. The FTC’s own published guidance says its rule contains no specific prohibition on asking only the customers you believe are satisfied. What does prohibit it is Google’s own review policy, which bars discouraging negative reviews or selectively asking for positive ones. The distinction matters because the platform penalty is worse than the fine: reviews get stripped, ratings can be blocked, and profiles can be suspended. We ask everybody, in neutral words, and we take the average that comes back.