Communications teams measure coverage at the moment it publishes: reach, share of voice, sentiment in the first week. Almost nobody measures what that coverage is doing a year later, which is when most of the people who matter will encounter it.
How people actually check a company
An investor doing diligence, a candidate considering an offer, a journalist deciding whether to take a call — all of them search the company name. What they see is not this week’s campaign. It is an accumulated set of results assembled by an algorithm from years of material.
That result set is the real reputation surface, and it is largely unmanaged.
Not all coverage ages equally
A piece in a well-established title with strong domain authority continues to rank for years. An identical story in a low-authority outlet disappears from view within months. When those two placements are counted as equivalent in a coverage report, the report is measuring the wrong thing.
What actually persists
The durable assets are usually the least glamorous: substantive bylined pieces, an accurate encyclopaedic record where one is warranted, properly structured company information, and coverage in titles that rank. None of these produce a spike. All of them keep working.
A practical suggestion
Repeat the search you did at the start of the programme, twelve months on, in an incognito window and from the market you care about. Compare the first page to what you would want a serious buyer to see.
That comparison is a more honest performance review than any coverage report.
Ganesh Sharma
