So who is this Ted Leonsis anyway?

Published on December 4th, 2006 by Jeremy Chatfield

Hmm, passion at work over Ted Leonsis, high honcho at AOL. Some US SEO’s are getting frothy over what seem like pretty innocuous remarks made by a CEO to a Washington Post journalist. That article reads to me like a non-techy journalist picking up human interest angle on “this internet thing”, and that Ted Leonsis has, really rather surprisingly for a senior exec, engaged directly with the internet rather than stuffing a room full of experts between him and the world. I think that’s to be respected – his approach might not be right, or perfect, but he is trying to engage.

IMO, SEO is not just about getting listed. It’s about what you get listed and also helping to get a more positive image of the organisation. We’ve advised a few non-search-aware people and organisations on how to counter vilification by an SEO-aware competitor or customer. If someone else slags you off, isn’t it right that you should be able to use the same techniques to respond?

So, there’s now a competition to get rank for positive spin on this kerfuffle. Does it cause me any angst or anxiety? No.

I think it is time that people woke up to the negative consequences of SEO, though. If you find that your own name no longer gives you top listing, but instead someone with a vengeance has displaced you with a series of linked sites with defamatory or at least unpleasant statements, shouldn’t you be able to react, online, without need for lawyers? Who has definitive answers for techniques to handled flocked sites with an angle? What are the ethical limits for attempting to modify rank and snippets? If a snippet is chosen by a piece of software, don’t you have a right to help guide the software to the most flattering rather than the least flattering snippet? So many questions…

I’ll be watching this, to see how it plays and see if my understanding of the issues can be illuminated. Interesting times.

Updates

When you provide a link to the Washington Post, don’t label it a link to the WSJ. Duh.

There’s an interesting set of positive and negative spin articles about Ted Lorensis tagged at Technorati.