While it’s comforting to think you have significant sway over what others think of you, very little of your online reputation is under your control.

In fact, your reputation is mostly determined by what strangers on the internet think and say about you when they find you online.

With each passing day, the online world becomes more and more enmeshed with the rest of our activities. From smartphones to smart TVs, from the “Internet of things” to the self-driving cars of the future—you are living each day increasingly online, even if you never touch a computer.

That means there are more and more ways for you to leave an online mark, positive or negative.

If someone writes something negative about you online, it can put you at a serious disadvantage over the long term—especially if you’re not aware of it.

How much can one negative review cost you? What if it cost you just 1 potential customer? What if it was 1000?

It’s important to keep tabs on what people are saying about you online and then take steps to correct any inaccuracies.

The internet is the ultimate source of information. Whether people want to learn something, do something, or buy something, they turn to Google.

In fact, even offline activities like conversations, watching an ad, or opening a magazine drive people to search engines. And what they find online influences their perception of your brand.

Unfortunately, you may have already experienced just how sticky a negative news story about your brand can be. It’s not because Google has a personal vendetta against a single person or entity. It’s because Google’s algorithm is built to provide searchers with the best, most relevant set of search results for a user’s query. And if a brand or executive is managing a crisis, that content would be highly relevant.

It can be easy to discount what happens online as unimportant and disconnected from your real-world business. But that simply isn’t true anymore. A negative online reputation impacts your personal brand image as well as just about every level of your business.

Think of Google like your digital resume. You’d never submit a resume for a job if the top bullet point read “Fired for lack of performance,” right? Unfortunately, unlike the printable version of your resume, you can’t just remove unwanted search results. Everything you ever said, wrote, or posted online, including what others wrote about you, is discoverable.

What do people find when they Google your name, or your company? If the answer is unfair viral news stories about your personal life, or negative reviews about your products and services, you need to update your virtual resume.

A bad online reputation affects an individual’s career, as well as a company’s ability to hire top talent, generate leads, close deals, expand market share, attract investors, and much more.

The best way to maintain a good reputation is to establish a credible and authoritative online presence in Google by claiming and optimizing, personal websites, blogs, social media and online review websites, as well as securing high-quality backlinks from trustworthy websites.