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.
