IP Democracy: Leonsis Cares About His Google Ranking

Even if you have hundreds of millions of dollars, the Google search results that appear when you search on your own name matter. That’s the apparent lesson to be drawn from this Washington Post article on AOL Vice Chairman and sports team mogul Ted Leonsis.

It seems that Leonsis didn’t like the Google results that appeared when searching his name, so he rolled up his sleeves, launched a blog, name-dropped his celebrity contacts shamelessly in his postings (better to generate link love) and ultimately got what he wanted. All of this manipulation boosted his blog, Ted’s Take, to the first page of Google results.

Oh yeah, Leonsis also wanted to dip his toes into the Web 2.0 waters.

“There is something very powerful about self-expression, adding your own voice to the loud choir happening out there,” Leonsis said. Also, he said, he needed to build up his Web 2.0 street cred. “I honestly wanted to have the moral authority with employees and people in industry that I wasn’t just talking about Web 2.0, I was living it.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 13, 2006 5:08 PM to IP Democracy