Squidoo gets the Google Slap and Cracks Down

[Linda Buquet]

If you are a member of Squidoo you probably got this email from Seth.
In case you didnt see it....

FYI check out the list of 100 dream topics below. Could be some good niche ideas.

This is the first time I've been able to send a thank you letter to 70,000 people at the same time, and despite the mass nature of it, I hope you can understand how sincere I am in writing to you.

Since we went live with Squidoo just over a year ago, we (okay YOU) have done some amazing things:
* We've built more than 100,000 helpful pages, pages that make it easy for people to learn about new stuff online.
* We've raised a bunch of money for charity. We've built a school in Cambodia, funded scholarships for inner-city kids and done research on juvenile diabetes.
* We've built a community of really cool, extremely smart people who spend most of their time helping each other.

I couldn't be more proud of it.

Last week, a few dozen spammers exploited Squidoo and drove the rest of the Web crazy. They spammed tens of thousands of blogs and built thousands of worthless lenses, violating our Terms of Service with reckless abandon. One spammer in La Paz, Bolivia built more than 400 lenses in one day on exactly the same topic. Sheesh.

Since then, search traffic to Squidoo was also impacted, as was our ability to post on blog comments or some social networking sites.

Here's the great news: thanks to terrific work by Gil, Corey and Megan, we've eliminated the tools that bad actors used to damage the rest of us. We've also added a squadron of people who hand review lenses, and we’ve made it easier for you (and anyone else) to report spam.

I'm confident that as the web sees that the problem is solved, we'll be back on track, and searchers online will continue to discover your good lenses.

In the meantime, the very best thing we can do is what we've always done: build great lenses (by hand) and promote them (by hand) to people who want to hear about them.

Thanks again for the great work, for the enthusiasm and for your desire to help.

Seth and the SquidTeam


P.S. Feel like building a new lens? Here's a list Megan and I put together of 100 dream topics.

A Thousand Splendid Suns
Adrianna Costa
Akon
All Natural Vintage Oolong Tea
Authority
Back to Black, by Amy Winehouse
Bebo
Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans
Bon Jovi
Can Stress Turn Your Hair White?
Canon Digital Rebel XTi
Canon PowerShot A550
Canon PowerShot Pro Series
Carrie Fisher
Christopher Hitchens (Author)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Cloverfield
Conn Iggulden
Copyblogger
Crash
Cynthia Nixon
Dailymotion
Daniel Radcliffe
Descargar
Die Hard
E.T.
Easy Tiger, Ryan Adams
Eat, Pray, Love
Facebook
Fergie
Film-Noir
Flip Video Camcorder
Fred Claus
Galilea Montijo
Garry Marshall
Get Smart With Steve Carell
Guitar Hero T-Shirts
Hairspray, the Movie
Hannah Montana
Hot Fuzz
Hotel Rwanda
Hoteldipity
I Know Who Killed Me
Icky Thump
Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur
Is My Boyfriend Making Me Fat?
John Krasinski
Khaled Hosseini
Kim Catrall
License to Wed
Lifehacker
Little Miss Sunshine
Live Earth
Mallu
Maroon 5
Michael Bay
Michael Patrick King
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
My favorite Whole Foods foods
My Mother is Driving me to Drink!
Naruto
Nikon D40 6.1MP Digital SLR Camera
Noelia video
Our Love to Admire, by Interpol
Pamela Anderson
Paris Hilton
Photobucket
Problogger
Ratatouille
Rihanna
Rocky
Ron Paul
Sellendipity
Serendipity 3 Frrrozen Hot Chocolate, Yum!
Shakira
Sicko
Skyblog
So You Think You Can Dance
The 4-Hour Workweek
The 5-Factor Diet
The Dangerous Book for Boys
The Diana Chronicles
The Host
The Huffington Post
The Martha's Vineyard Diet Detox
The Simpsons, the movie
The Truth About My No or Low Carb Diet
Tina Brown
Traveling Wilburys
Truthiness
Unlock Your Creativity
Untitled JJ Abrams movie
Vitter
Water for Elephants
What is the Craziest thing you Have Ever Done in a Car
Yahoomail
Zeitgeist, by The Smashing Pumpkins
10 Places to See in Canada Before You Die
10 Places to See in the UK Before You Die
10 Places to See in the US Before You Die

[John Guanzon]

I don't think it is all that big of a deal, basically all they did was take away the ability to use iframes, plus Google rankings were hurt a bit.

The drop in lens rank is due to a change in the alg most likely due to the amount of lenses that were dropped and removed in one fell swoop.

It is still a very viable form of advertising and a great Google ranking tool. The best thing to do is adapt to the new structure and continue promoting and building them while continuing to make the best of it.

[its_me_shaners]

What I also think about this is that this is a growing pain for squidoo. Maybe its the real birth of squidoo. Seriously I can only imagine what kind of traffic Squidoo has gotten after Google eats squidoo sushi and gets indigestion | make money blogging

I'll bet people are arriving on Squidoo's door step looking for a great sushi feast now. I wonder if anyone has approached Seth about the traffic as a result of this. It always seems in IM that bad news is the ugly cousin of success.
Lynda do you have an in with seth and maybe get some thoughts or even a traffic result from all the buzz?

[Linda Buquet]

That graphic is TOO funny!

I saw the heading in my feed reader but had not clicked over to see it.
They linked to my blog about it too.

SIDEBAR BLOGGING TIP: You just never know what will go viral. I thought about writing this story. Then decided not to and tried to find something better to talk about that day. Struck out, so came back to this story. Sometimes the stories that I think are going to be really popular don't make a splash and the ones that I dont even think will be that popular go crazy.

So are 2 possible lessons for you all to learn from this...

1) Either Linda's hot news radar is broken
OR
2) Blog about everything you can come up with and something will stick!

Take your pick!

[its_me_shaners]

LOL glad you like it lynda. I saw the picture of the sushi, while multi-tasking while I was reading earnersblog, while I was reading a lego instruction manual while I was having my hookers breakfast (Phew I'm exhausted just thinking about multi tasking), and thought Oh man that's just priceless, so I blinged it up with the squidoo image. and posted away.
hangs head in shame, WHAT YOU DONT RECOGNIZE MY TRACKBACK
Always happy to send link loving THE BEST AFFILIATE FORUM on the net today!!