Looks like Seth Godin’s Squidoo (also known as spam tool) has taken the big bad smackdown from Google. Techcrunch reports, as found from Jason Calacanis in Twitter just a bit ago.
So this has always been my big question. Would, or could, Google go ahead and smack down a big site like this, and do it publicly, AND get away with it? I’ve always taken the idea that yes they would and could.
Look, if you really look at Google’s plan, they MUST have highly-relevant content to appease their users and the billions of dollars of ads that flow through. It makes 100 percent sense to me that Google would do this. Squidoo was/is being gamed. There is simply no way they could continue to let that happen.
A couple of reports across the net suggest that Seth Godin’s Squidoo is being penalized by Google, most likely due to spam on Squidoo pages.
The reports indicate that some Squidoo pages have seen a 75% drop in traffic, and in other cases have either been removed from high ranking positions on Google, or removed all together.
The service, described last year by Michael Arrington as being Godin’s Purple Albatross, has long been a favorite of black-hat SEO’s looking to drive traffic and gain Google juice for their sites. In more recent times the spam issue has been highlighted by Jason Calacanis, who has written multiple posts on the subject.
Squidoo has recently responded to the issue, however given Google’s crackdown it would appear that Squidoo’s response may be a case of too little, too late. Anyone remotely involved with, or following the SEO community for the last 12-18 months would have been fully aware of the issue (or as some see it, the potential), so if Google is punishing or removing Squidoo pages, Squidoo has no one other than themselves to blame for the situation. Squidoo may also now be on borrowed time; being removed from Google or penalized by Google kills traffic, and Squidoo as a content creator would rely heavily on traffic from Google.
What I was talking about back in February:
“I’ve heard about Squidoo.com a few times. Will read more to see what it’s all about. From just now checking around it seems most of them have affiliate links all over. So I’m thinking Google might love them now but will eventually get zapped and since they allow affiliate links, sooner or later will drown in spam.”
http://forum.abestweb.com/showpost.php?p=667710&postcount=25
Did it to themselves.
No surprise. All the smart black hats have been turning away from squidoo ever since it started becoming next to worthless.
Here’s my take on the issue.
http://www.squidoo.com/blog/?p=158
Awwhhh I’m just starting to really like Squidoo.:( Have only recently been learning about it and making a few lenses of my own. Admit that I thought of it as sort of a way of taking baby steps to making a blog so am using it as more of a learning experience but really enjoy it.
May not be like others but I actually do visit the lenses that are in the emails they send every day and enjoy looking at quite a lot of them and think there’s a lot of information either helpful, entertaining or just some that put a smile on your face.:)
As with anything, there are going to be people who really abuse things but really hope Squidoo doesn’t disappear, I’d really miss it if it did.:(:(
It’s a pretty stupid idea, but there is a niche for everything and there is no doubt that Jon Waraas will make money off of this scheme. Well not a scheme, just a ‘business’ that he won’t have to do any work for because scripts will be doing it all for him.
It only takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel. I hope that Google will see that Squidoo is doing everything it can to promote great content. Spammers are “the bane of our life” causing misery to bloggers, and where ever you go on the net, so it seems.
It looks like their traffic is actually going up and not tanking. All this controversy is probably driving good eyeballs.
Tony, could be. You never know.
I know this, I wouldn’t want to be linking to, or be linked from any Squidoo len’s these days.
If you can penalize, it can probably be passed?
“I know this, I wouldn’t want to be linking to, or be linked from any Squidoo len’s these days.”
I don’t see a problem with that. Your site being linked to from a lens isn’t going to do you any harm. If that was the case, it would be an easy way to take out the competition, just link to them. As far as linking to a lens, I would say the same general linking rules apply. You’re not supposed to link to penalized/banned sites but I’m not sure if there was any actual damage when that happened. You could link to a site one day and it could be fine but down the road they do something that gets them penalized and your site for linking to them when they were good shouldn’t be hurt because of that.
And I’m sure there will be/might be quality lenses that still rank well but the whole site (squidoo) could have a certain devaluing, not sure on that one, how that works. Years ago someone posted in a private (paid forum) what was supposed to be the algo or something like that for MSN or Inktomi I believe it was and it was very interesting to go thru it. I saw things along the lines of – 20% tripod where it looked like certain places just had a sort of devaluing to it. If the place is associated with a lot of spam or crap type pages/sites.
There have been a lot of comments and questions on what really happened with Google & Squidoo
I interviewed Seth Godin on the “Squidoo Slap”