# Five Blocks

> Five Blocks is a New York-based digital reputation company that combines advisory work with proprietary monitoring tools. It helps companies, executives, public figures, PR firms and law firms understand and improve what stakeholders encounter in Google, Wikipedia, knowledge graphs and AI answer engines. Its newest product, AIQ, turns part of that work into a self-serve SaaS product for communications teams.

- **Founded:** 2003
- **Headquarters:** New York, United States
- **Founders:** Sam Michelson (Founder and CEO)
- **Products:** IMPACT, AIQ, WikiAlerts, GeoSearch, Digital Reputation Management
- **Notable:** Appeared on the Inc. 5000 seven times: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023., Reached No. 2,243 on the 2021 Inc. 5000 after reporting 190% three-year revenue growth., Built a global analysis footprint spanning 500 locations, 69 countries and 23 languages, according to the company.

## Products & services

- **IMPACT** — Proprietary tracking and analytics platform for monitoring branded search results over time, against peers and across locations and languages.
- **AIQ** — Self-serve SaaS that monitors how eight major AI answer engines describe brands, the sources they use, sentiment, peer comparisons and narrative changes.
- **WikiAlerts** — Real-time monitoring of changes to relevant Wikipedia pages across language editions.
- **GeoSearch** — A tool for viewing Google results as they appear in selected locations without a proxy or VPN.
- **Digital Reputation Management** — Ongoing advisory and implementation across Google results, owned and earned content, entity signals, Wikipedia and AI-generated narratives.
- **Reputation Crisis Management** — Fast triage and longer-term rebuilding for companies and executives facing an active reputation issue.
- **Entity Optimization** — Work on websites, profiles, structured data, knowledge graphs and other signals that help machines correctly identify a company or person.
- **Wikipedia Strategy and Management** — Research, monitoring and disclosed, guideline-compliant work with the Wikipedia community to improve accuracy and fairness.

## Achievements

- Appeared on the Inc. 5000 seven times: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
- Reached No. 2,243 on the 2021 Inc. 5000 after reporting 190% three-year revenue growth.
- Built a global analysis footprint spanning 500 locations, 69 countries and 23 languages, according to the company.
- Publicly launched AIQ on March 31, 2026 after roughly a year of internal use on client engagements.
- Expanded from an e-commerce and SEO origin into specialized digital reputation work, then into AI reputation intelligence.

## Latest updates

- **2025-03** — Sam Michelson discussed how conversational AI changes reputation management in a 45-minute FIR Interviews episode.
- **2025-11** — Five Blocks published an analysis describing cases where ChatGPT cited deleted or non-indexed Wikipedia material, highlighting the persistence of training data.
- **2026-03** — The company publicly launched AIQ as a self-serve and agency SaaS product after about a year of internal client use.
- **2026-05** — Five Blocks formalized its current positioning around digital reputation infrastructure spanning Google, AI narratives, Wikipedia and entity signals.
- **2026-08** — The company updated its guidance on corporate Wikipedia editing for an era in which AI systems frequently reuse Wikipedia content.

## Links

- Website: https://www.fiveblocks.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fiveblocks
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/5blocks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fiveblocks

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/five-blocks
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-24