Over the course of nine years I bootstrapped and built a company that resulted in 90 terrific employees, >$12M in revenues and tens of thousands of clients happily served.<p>However, two clients that did not leave happy have made it almost impossible for me to continue. Why? Because they posted their experience (80% untrue), on blogs and now whenever somebody google's my name these terrible comments are in the 1 and 2 spot.<p>I am an MBA not a technologist, please tell me is there anything I can do to fight this and re-claim my good name?
Normally, the only effective <i>legal</i> remedy for this precise problem is to file a lawsuit for libel and seek injunctive relief, asking a court to order that the items be taken down.<p>This is usually a tough case, and expensive to pursue. If the items are clearly defamatory, however, then either (1) any injunctive order you might get or (2) any fear of a large money judgment you might instill in the persons propagating the lies might get you the relief you seek.<p>A strong demand letter from an attorney might also shake them up and get some action.<p>There is also a measure of gamesmanship that claimants sometimes use in such matters. For example, a well-known "patent troll" sued an in-house lawyer from Cisco in a recent much-publicized libel case for blog postings to the effect that the troll had conspired with court clerks to alter the filing date of a complaint where such filing date was critical to the outcome of a case. Owing to liberal jurisdictional rules, the parties involved (including Cisco) were forced to defend the case in a remote forum (in
Texas) where sympathies were strong in favor of the claimant.<p>All this turns on the specific facts. If the statements have a color of truth about them and constitute a customer's exercise of free speech rights, you may have an uphill fight in getting formal legal relief.<p>Of course, there may well be steps you can take here besides the purely legal but I assume you will consider these as well.
You want SEO (search engine optimization). Basically, it's getting your website to rank highly on Google. I don't have any experience there, so I can't give you names of who to talk to.<p>Basically, I'd recommend a few things:
1. Get a website (yourcompanyname.com). You can't rank higher than they do if you have no site.
2. Make it useful. This will encourage people to link to your site. The more links you have, the higher you'll rank.
Technically, Google isn't the one ruining your business...<p>Though I agree with the other commenters. Get a lawyer and go after the blog postings. If what they are saying is really "80% untrue" and it's causing you a loss of business, they may be guilty of libel.
I'm not a lawyer; but it's possible to charge someone for defamation. This may help: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation</a>