The NY Times just posted a really interesting story about how some bad publicity helped one mans business so much that it became his calling card. I don’t really recommend this approach and Google has already responded to the issue claiming that they have made changes to their algorithm in response to this type of Google gaming.
From the Google blog:
“We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html