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The web is becoming increasingly social and part of that involves people sharing their opinions about businesses on various review sites. There are tons of review sites out there that people might be talking about you on and if someone gets angry, your reputation could be at stake on sites you've never heard of before.

In general, if the bad reviews don't show up for a Google search of your name or business name, they aren't too big a concern. If they do, you should take action. There are 2 types of bad reviews:

1. The kind that are, unfortunately, true.
2. The kind that are libelous and untrue.

If your bad review is the first kind, you should go to each site it shows up on and respond to it. When responding, remember to remain calm and not point fingers. Apologize for the way the person was treated and welcome them to come back to resolve the problem. Assure anyone who reads it that you are doing everything you can to make sure whatever happened doesn't happen again.

If your bad review is the second kind, you have a few options. You will, however, need some kind of proof that the statements the reviewer made were untrue and libelous. For example, if someone says you've been investigated by a board - you will need documentation from that board that you have not been investigated.

Then, you can contact the owners of each review site and ask that the review be removed due to untrue content. You will have to provide the documentation to each one. Keep in mind that some of these sites still will not remove the review and they don't have to.

A final resort can be getting a court order and sending that court order to the actual search engines. They will then remove the page with the bad review from their index so it no longer shows up in search results. Read more about this option on the Search Engine Land blog.

A final note: a bad review is not always a bad thing! Having one 2 star review amongst ten 5 star ones is only going to show people that you have mostly happy customers. Everyone has bad days, reviewers and businesses alike. The vast majority of consumers are not going to skip you over a single unhappy customer. But, if the review is truly damaging or untrue, or if the reviewer has posted it on 12 different review sites - you do have options.