Deciding to take control of your online reputation is a daunting task, and you may be tempted just to hire someone to do it for you. Online reputation management companies abound on the Internet--claiming everything from 100 percent success rate (or your money back) to a "special technology" that reorders search results.

Such companies may be worth looking into, but there is no magical way to erase content from the Internet. Once something is uploaded to the Web, it's impossible for you or a third party to remove it without help from the administrator of the Website where it appears.

It's even harder to remove content from search engines (like Google) that cache their results and enable surfers, with the click of the Cached link, to view content that has been "removed." In addition, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine stores records of Websites dating back to the 1990s.

Organizations such as , , and offer business packages to help you take on your online reputation. Essentially, however, these services focus on two tasks: requesting that negative information about you or your company be taken down, and helping you create new content to displace the negative content.