Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM), which is a component of ORM is a small industry. There are no official estimates of this Industry. We use built an estimate model based on known variables in the Industry. We know for example that SEO firms charge about the same for an SEO project as they do for a SERM project.
Using this dollar value we can superimpose it with SEO interest and come up with market size estimates. We use a reliable market estimates data from Forester Research. You can see in the figure below that the US SEO industry is only 10% of the Search PPC business. It is estimated that agencies will charge $3.5 Billion in SEO fees in 2016.
The next thing we need is the differential value of people who search specific services in SEO versus services in ORM. At this point, most people looking for SERM services will be looking for ORM services, we expect this to change in the furutre.
Doing a comparison on search volume using data from SEMRush we can see the following differences:
SEO Services 6,600 searches
Online Reputation Management Services 480
So we can make a broad assumption that these industries have a 15-fold differential. Therefore, we can estimate that the US Search Engine Reputation Management Industry in 2016 in $345Million. Judging by our own internal data, the International market is at least that big (accounting for just over half the business volume). That means this portion of reputation management industry is worth $700MM.