Fix what people find when they search your name.

Sometimes, and the honest answer depends on which of two things it is. Online defamation is treated as a criminal matter here under Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021 on Combatting Rumours and Cybercrimes, which means a false and damaging statement of fact has a route in the UAE that does not exist in many markets. That route belongs to a lawyer, not to an agency, and we will refer it rather than take it on. An unflattering opinion is a different object and is not removable by any route, so the work there is to answer it well and to put it in context. Most engagements turn out to be the second kind.

A negative review is not illegal. Somebody saying your service was slow, expensive or disappointing is stating an opinion, and it stays up whatever you think of it. What the law reaches is a false statement of fact presented as true and damaging to a person or a company, which is a different thing and a narrower one. The practical distinction is whether a claim could be checked and shown to be untrue. It is worth knowing that the same law reaches your own replies too, which is one reason a public response is drafted carefully rather than typed in the moment.

Ask, yes, and it is the whole method. Incentivise, no. An unconditional request sent at the right moment is the single most effective thing available and every platform permits it. Offering something in exchange, or asking only the customers you expect to be happy, breaks platform policy and is also a poor idea here for a second reason: promotional content published online sits under a permitting regime that reaches promotion whether or not anyone was paid, so a seeded review is not simply a platform risk. The permit regime itself is set out on digital marketing in Dubai.

Both, and most UAE companies have only ever audited one of them. Customers search the brand name; banks, procurement teams, portals and anyone running a check search the name on the licence. That gives you two first pages with different contents, and the licensed-name page is usually the neglected one because nobody internally ever types it. The fix is not to pick a winner: it is to make sure each page returns something you would want a stranger to read, with the profiles, the site and the directory listings pointing at the right one in each case.

Google and your Business Profile for everyone, and after that it is entirely category-dependent. Food is judged inside the delivery marketplaces, property on the listing portals, services on Trustpilot and on Google, and employer brand on the job sites where candidates check before they apply. The mistake we see most often is a global template that monitors Google and social and nothing else, while the rating that actually decides revenue sits on a marketplace the business does not control. We build the watch list from your category before switching any monitoring on.

Weeks to move something, quarters to hold it, and some of it never moves at all. Profiles you control can be corrected in days. Ratings shift with volume, so a low average recovers at the speed you can earn genuine recent reviews rather than at the speed you would like. A well-established news item or a high-authority page usually stays where it is, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling removal. What does change reliably is everything around it: the more of the ten results you legitimately occupy, the less of the page belongs to somebody else.

The state of the first page sets it before anything else does. Four things move the number: how many locations and surfaces are in scope, whether one name or two has to be worked, how much review volume the response service level has to cover, and whether there is a specific item to work around or only a thin page to fill. A standing programme for a single-location business is a materially smaller job than a multi-emirate group with a split name and an active complaint. What a full marketing programme costs, rather than this one service, is answered on digital marketing services.