Okay, so you've found some negative reviews of your company or products.  What now?

  There are those that advocate an aggressive approach - letters from your lawyer, contact their hosting provider, hit them where it hurts by contacting their advertisers.  Unfortunately, this approach can and often will backfire on you. 

  Case in point, the company ReputationDefender which proposes to help individuals remove online content.  Check out their google results and right near the top you will see just what they propose to prevent... negative listings claiming they were bullied by that company  (and saying they refuse to remove the content)

  The reason for this is that bloggers and a large population of internet users are fierce individualists and believers in free speech.  If bloggers see what they consider to be a heavy handed approach you can bet they will get the word out and your situation will be worse than it began.

  At Rep-Protect we advocate a pro-active approach, in which you keep your online reputation finely tuned before a problem begins.  If we do find negative reviews or comments, you should engage the complainant online and try to resolve the problem in a reasonable way.  More often than not, the complainant has what they perceive to be a legitimate beef.  Reply to their blog, join the message forum, engage them and present your side of the story (without letting it degrade into a flame-war)

  An example is the Ebay seller / buyer review system.  Usually when a seller receives a poor review from a buyer, they reply publicly, and try to help the buyer see their side of the issue, and resolve it if possible.  In many cases you will see a follow-up post from the complaining buyer reversing their earlier position.

  So, unless you are truly being targetted by unwarranted attacks, keep an open mind and try the nice approach first.