We have negative listings appearing in google search under our own domain name. These are primarily postings from one prospective client under two different consumer complaint sites. For the record, this client never in fact did business with our company but these sites will let anyone post a complaint, legitimate or not.

We would like to devise a way to push these negatives down. Obviously we can do this by submitting domains with positive feedback. However, we are having difficulty getting above the negative ones which are coming in under #2 and #3 under our direct domain name.

Can anyone suggest an effective strategy to address this problem? Or can anyone recommend someone for hire with demonstrable experience along these lines. This should be relatively simple as it is only our direct domain name, and there is not severe competition (unlike in the case where you are targeting hyper competitive keywords).

Thank you for any assistance that can be offered.

This is called reputation management and essentially, you'd have to increase the rankings of other sites over the negative reputation sites.

There's increasing discussion on reputation management and I think there are some articles here on SEW. You might want to search for "reputation management" to find some articles and specific ideas.

Heres an idea how about you listen to them and act on them.

I do negative listings, and do free SEO for them, all the time for companies that like to screw me over. I lost £4000 to 1 big one in the UK. My negative listing is second on their SERP's page, mainly because I got some good links to it with the right anchor text, at least I know I will cost them more than what they cost me.

Companies only get negative listings if the people who use their service are seriously annoyed at their business.

Take me for example I tried to talk to them reasonably explain that the service was out of date by about 4 years and they just wouldn't have it. They got the bailiff's on to me to pay as I'm refusing so I'm taking them to court as a result.

Sorry but I just cant stand companies who scam their customers I don't so why should they/you.

Ok you may have competitors doing it against you but most of the time when this happens it's customers who have got absolutely annoyed with you. Listen to these complaints and sort them out it's the only way to resolve these, then get good links back.

You may get rid of 1 but another 1 who has more equity than you may just pop up any way, or in my case you may annoy some one who knows a SEO/SEM or some one who is a SEO/SEM.

Sort the issues the company has first and then you wont have to worry about the SERP.

Jaza

bayfront, there are some folks who do undertake, erm, "removing" negative results from SE indexes. Tactics can be a bit questionable and, as always, no guarantees. Plus, the money involved can be considerable. Won't give an recommendations here, but if you do engage a rep manager be sure to thoroughly check his or her rep first.

Like I said before these two complaints are not actual customers. I appreciate the response from cryptblade though thanks.

Hey Jimbeetle,

Yes you do have to check them out first. I did on search on google for reputation defender and look at the results:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=reputation+defender

Classic! :D

We have helped one of our client to remove negative listings on Google.

HOwever the problem was that spammy negative listing website was ranking just below the original domain, and we had hard time to remove that listing.

Ultimately we took help from some of our SEO specialist, and they helped our client in removing those negative listings.

The spammy negative website was copying latest news section, and this resulted in final nail in their coffin.

May Spammy Sites Rest Forever, but not in Peace ;)