"When you Google my name, it looks like I'm some kind of monster," she says. Ms. Parascandola set out to minimize the bad publicity. She hired a company called ReputationDefender Inc. that promises to help individuals "search and destroy" negative information about them on the Internet. Businesses and others have long employed so-called search-engine-optimization techniques to try to make themselves appear higher in Web-search results. Now services like ReputationDefender and DefendMyName are charging fees that can run into hundreds of dollars to help clients remove or downplay unflattering online information. The companies cite success stories of customers who have buried snippy blog comments, embarrassing photos or critical mentions of their names. But, as Ms. Parascandola found out, the services can't wipe everything off the Internet, and their efforts can backfire. ReputationDefender sent a letter to political blog Positive Liberty asking it to remove Ms. Parascandola's name from a critical entry on the grounds the post was "outdated and invasive." Blogger Jason Kuznicki refused, and posted a new entry mocking the request. He says he "had a good laugh over it." Michael Fertik, a 28-year-old Harvard Law graduate who founded ReputationDefender in October, said misfires represent a "tiny percentage" of the company's efforts to fight the "permanent and public" nature of negative online content. For fees starting at $10 a month, the 10-person Louisville, Ky.-based company scours blogs, photo-sharing sites and social networks for information about a client, then charges $30 for each item the user instructs it to try to correct or remove. The service won't say how many customers it has. He declined to say how many times ReputationDefender has succeeded in having content removed. He cited recent examples including a man whose ex-lover posted revealing photos to a Web site; an identity-theft victim who had his personal information published on a blog and a medical student who had discussed his own clinical depression in an old newsgroup that he didn't know was public. Mr. Fertik declined to identify those clients. Janel Lee, a mortgage loan closer in Minong, Wis., sought ReputationDefender out after her ex-boyfriend began posting her work and cellphone numbers in response to several questions on Yahoo Answers, including "What is 50 Cent's phone number?" She got 15 to 20 calls a day, sometimes as late as 3 a.m. One after-hours voicemail, presumably intended for the rapper, was a lengthy rap performance. "I sing blues, jazz and rock. This was painful," said Ms. Lee. Ms. Lee said she contacted Yahoo Inc. directly but was unable to get most of the information taken down. So she paid ReputationDefender about $240 for a two-year membership, plus about $150 for the posts that the company, over three months, got removed. "It was quite a great relief knowing that someone was working on it for me," she said. Mr. Fertik said Yahoo removed the information after being contacted by ReputationDefender.