(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

As she puts it, Christina Parascandola has the bad luck of having an unusual name.

The 37-year-old attorney was mentioned in news reports and blog posts about a heated dispute between residents of her Washington neighborhood and a noisy local bar that hosted some gay-themed events. Ms. Parascandola was worried that she came across in the articles as homophobic, particularly to potential employers.

"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.