Active Online Reputation Management uses the technical skills of search engine optimization (SEO) to displace negative references to a client from search engine results.

Typically a successful Active strategy would be to have any inaccurate references removed through appeal and negotiations while simultaneously working to displace the negative references by increasing the rankings of positive results in Google, and Yahoo-Bing. The negative entries are then removed where possible, or buried deep within the search engines results pages to minimise their exposure.