Here is a good article from the Annenberg Onling Journalism Review on some wide boy SEO tactics Companies subvert search results to squelch criticism. And you thought I was just a pretty face....
While PR people and SEO companies look for ways to boost search results for their clients, the search engines have to continually fight various dirty tactics. For each new update of the search engine's algorithm, SEO folks go back to the drawing board to see how to rig results again. "The fact is that Black Hats will aggressively look for any hole, and they will attack that hole with everything at their disposal," said Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR. "This means that legitimate ways to gain search visibility are soon exploited by the Black Hats, forcing search engines in many cases to close down legitimate and useful opportunities for both users and advertisers. I love this - like who of us would not optimize for top results if we had the keys (knowlege).
They have an association for Search Engine Spammers. I think it's a parody though.. but who knows. www.aosep.com
It's an impossible job to be working at a search engine. In some ways Negative SEO ends up working in the long run so it's a hard parallel to draw.