I have a close friend who's one of the top jazz bassists for years now, he has a distinguished resume and a myriad of accomplishments, I've also built sites for him. In addition to his music, he owns and operates a successful recording studio, and as a result of that finds himself in the position of buying equipment, selling equipment, doing biz with equipment companies, etc.
Well, long story short, he had a transaction with a person who apparently was unhappy for whatever reason, and this person wrote a very negative review of him on a site called 'ripoffreport'. The upshot of all this for my friend is that the ripoff site is coming up predominately on his search results, it varies but sometime #7 on page 1, last night was #1 on page 2. He said he's also seen it come up #1 over all (which I find hard to believe), and this simply by virtue of searching his name.
I told him the strongest likelihood that this is happening could easily point to the penguin updates via G, based on the time frame he has described seeing these results. His concern is his reputation, and he is determined to try and resolve his rankings. My advice was simply don't worry about it, there is far too much other content surrounding his name and accolades and this one single blemish should not have a significant effect on him or his business. But if he wants to try and have the review removed, there are certainly ways to reach out.
Anyhow, the reason I'm posting this is because he sent me a link that describes companies that are set up to manipulate your search rankings and push back negative articles or other on line personal detail that are less than stellar. At the bottom of the page at the below link you'll find some of the companies that handle this type of business. It impress' me as a dedicated
SEO company, I'm not real certain how they go about manipulating the results, but curious what others thought.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanada...ne-reputation/