A client has asked me to create for her vacation rental-related project a Squidoo lens. Up until now, Squidoo hadn't been on my radar screen, so I decided to deep dive to learn more. Here's a New York Times article from about a year ago that helped me wrap my mental tentacles around what Squidoo is and why it's become so popular. And then I found many other doosies -- including some current sea biscuits about how those with sites on the SEO squid giant are being choked by the long arms of the Google law lately.
Check out these gnarly Squidoo be-do-be-doos:
1. Around July 7, Google apparently reached into most of the popular Squidoo lens pages and either severely lowered their page rankings on the Google search results pages, or dropped those Squidoo sites completely from the Google search system. Ouch. Talk about a tsunami. People are just starting to learn what's happened to their page ranks, so the Squidoo chatter -- "panic" in most cases, really-- is nearing a crescendo. Their high traffic counts suddenly have vanished, so their high Google AdSense clicks are slowing to an eerie trickle, it seems.
2. Here's a sample of the reactions some leading affiliate marketing bloggers have gone on record with regarding Google's knuckle-rap of Squidoo-ers:
-- Squidoo-It-Yourself
-- 5 Star Affiliate Programs
-- Calacanis.com
-- Earners Blog
-- Squidoo Blueprint
3. Squidoo's "SquidBlog" on July 5 came clean with a big post about its ferocious problems with:
-- people spamming members' lenses (i.e., their groups and comments sections) to boost their link-backs, which boosts their Google rankings
-- "pseudo-lens" site owners automatically trapping surfers in unwanted, unescable porn site hell.
If you're like me and are on the brink of setting up a Squidoo lens, you should check out the new controls the company is putting in place.
Check out these gnarly Squidoo be-do-be-doos:
1. Around July 7, Google apparently reached into most of the popular Squidoo lens pages and either severely lowered their page rankings on the Google search results pages, or dropped those Squidoo sites completely from the Google search system. Ouch. Talk about a tsunami. People are just starting to learn what's happened to their page ranks, so the Squidoo chatter -- "panic" in most cases, really-- is nearing a crescendo. Their high traffic counts suddenly have vanished, so their high Google AdSense clicks are slowing to an eerie trickle, it seems.
2. Here's a sample of the reactions some leading affiliate marketing bloggers have gone on record with regarding Google's knuckle-rap of Squidoo-ers:
-- Squidoo-It-Yourself
-- 5 Star Affiliate Programs
-- Calacanis.com
-- Earners Blog
-- Squidoo Blueprint
3. Squidoo's "SquidBlog" on July 5 came clean with a big post about its ferocious problems with:
-- people spamming members' lenses (i.e., their groups and comments sections) to boost their link-backs, which boosts their Google rankings
-- "pseudo-lens" site owners automatically trapping surfers in unwanted, unescable porn site hell.
If you're like me and are on the brink of setting up a Squidoo lens, you should check out the new controls the company is putting in place.
4. Last but not least... In case you're wondering why I keep referring to Squidoo as the "giant squid," it's because -- as serendipity would have it -- one of the big stories in the current news cycle (while I was planning this Squidoo post) is about a so-called monster squid that washed up on a shoreline in Australia a day or two ago. Isn't this intriguing? If you're as turned-on by this as I am, perhaps we lived in Atlantis in another life.
So here's a salute about the real giant squid, which is said to be about the size of a bus, with eyes the size of volleyballs, and weighs 550 lbs... Calamari anyone?
Yahoo News: Rare Giant Squid Washes Up In Australia
Technorati: Squidoo Google Giant Squid SEO Page Rank
