Google filters Squidoo Lenses?

Stuart, thanks for copying people on my blog about the issue. HubPages just had to go thru a crackdown too. Not sure they got Google slapped, but they have been tightening up on spam. Durned spammers ruin it for everyone!

Been skeptical about squidoo – love the founder, but have seen some remarks about sketchy practices regarding changing urls of people that own squidoo urls w/o notice. Combine that w/ the overt spamminess of the lenses and maybe it isn’t so bad that G filters out the bad ones leeching off the trust associated with the domain. The ones that are legit resources and get incoming links will and should stay at the top.

I notice that Squidoo is still in the serps for ‘download psp game’.

A better alternative might be oondi (http://oondi.com) which pays 100% of advertisement income to the author instead of 50% or less like Squidoo and HubPages.

Great info. I was a bit late jumping on the Squidoo band wagon. I never really pushed it. Played around with a few lenses to use as authority real estate. Shame that a could-be could service is just pwned by spammers. Anyway, thanks for the heads up!

I’m sure Squidoo will solve the spam problem asap, but I’m not sure that Squidoo lenses will rank high again in Google. It’s just not possible after those spammers ruined what Squidoo was originally.

Just remember that Squidoo is led by a marketing visionary, and a team of awesome, real people who seek to make a remarkable, content driven website.

As your blog post says, the popular lenses seem unaffected. Those that add the most value to the community (and I mean that in the true sense of the word) will not be affected in the long run.

Squidoo has enabled thousands of beginning internet users to make webpages — some for the very first time — without any need to know HTML, scripting languages, etc. And it’s provided hundreds of people to go from unknowns to people with a following, without spending any money on the process of creating those crowds.

It remains my favorite destination on the web, and my top recommendation for generating traffic to your existence as an expert.

i wrote about a really weird email i got from Seth today
http://www.myheadisarocket.com/seth-godin-is-a-genius.html

I think publishing 100 super spammy blog topics and telling me to race over and write one is sort of viral but mostly sad – it would be funny if they were doing it as a honeypot..

I think google should treat lenses as they would a website or blog. If it is new content (not duplicate content whatever the means) and your lens has a constant theme that is providing information for the public it should be viewd highly. I wonder if they will crack down on other social networking/bookmarking sites that are showing up high in the serps. For instance if you do a serch for gadolinium attorney in google, wordpress tags –> pages show up 2nd

Great post. Thank you for the detail -

I had the opportunity to interview Seth Godin on the “Squidoo Slap”

the full Squidoo interview is available here:

http://www.searchingdot.com/2007/07/17/interview-with-seth-godin-on-the-squidoo-slap/

This is due to the spam attack last time. Google’s been filtering squidoo lens since. They are just cautious this time, not clearing their mind for the possibility that the attack may happen again. Its a good thing squidoo has anti-spam features now.

I am glad I took a wait and see approach with the “Squid”. With Seth Godin behind it (best business writer on the planet – love Boot Strap Bible), the popularity of the service, and a short index time, spammers were bound to show up like picnic ants and ruin the party.

So what happens after Google stops slapping Squidoo around? How is it going to tell the difference between spam, and genuine, focused, genuine lenses?

I know it can be done, and they are good at stomping out MFA sites, and SE spam, but, legitimate lenses could get caught up in the mix as well.

What algorythmic concoction will they develop to seperate the truly informational from the “spamtastic”?

Is it really going to be worth it to put the time and effort into Squidoo from now on, and why?

That is the question..

Robert C.

Squidoo’s overall traffic has been cut in half in July by its run-in with Google’s algorithm. I’ve posted a couple of Hitwise graphs here:

http://www.web-cite.com/cited/2007/07/squidoos-google.html

“Going viral” has its risks!

Lordy, just as I was about to get into this squidoo thingy, they slow it down.. Seems i am a day late and a dollar short for just about everything I decide to get hot in. Thanks for the heads up, but I still plan to learn as much as possibl about all these new fangled ways to get traffic..

Still learning…
Tom

May be this is temporary in nature. Anyway Squidoo will overcome all these problems. Other site offering similar or better option to make money from internet will definitely have a hard time establishing there online identity.

great info about squidoo thanks Im looking for free ebooks on how to create a award winning lens from squidoo any info will help