Social sites (especially forums) do get prominence - partly because they are regularly updated and the content is deemed relevent.

Yes, this can cause a problem as the content on them unregulated. There are different ways of dealing with this.

1. Approach the site's managers and insist any negative comments are removed. This isn't going to work without a hefty (and expensive) legal threat and certainly wouldn't apply to most forum postings. This option wouldn't be recommended except where libellous or offensive content is posted as it's a really good way to get a bad reputation!

2. Post on the forums, replying to threads about your company and using this as an opportunity to highlight your company's good points. This can be a good strategy and you might make some forum friends. However, by replying to posts you keep them updated and therefore they are more likely to get high search engine rankings.

3. Generate more results for your brand name by publishing news about your company online. Online PR is incredibly effective for building and managing online reputations! I keep showing people this example of a search for The Canopy Channel who launched 9 months ago with virtually no online profile and a company name shared with a Motorola product. Now, through online news distribtion, positive listings on several sites dominate the search results.

Sorry for the reaaaaaaaally long rely