Squidoo Spanked By Google

It appears that Squidoo has been spanked by Google. I’ve been noticing a huge increase in spam to low level “Lenses” and apparently I wasn’t the only one. Incessant crybaby Jason Calacanis has apparently whined enough that the infamous Matt Cutts has brought his executioner’s fingers down on the scrawny neck of Seth Godin’s mis-shapened love child Squidoo.

For the bored, here’s a timeline of the events that have led up to the inevitable demise of this second rate attempt at free content development. The idea is always the same: “I’ll give away free resources so that others will create content on my domain.” Great idea, and all, but generally the only people looking for free web resources to publish on don’t invest much in their businesses.

Of course, the penalty applied to Squidoo is of the nature of a website that doesn’t pass link juice anymore. The pages are still indexed in Google and the backlinks appear to still count. I guess the main lesson here is one of quality control. If you don’t control your quality, then someone else at a third party website will be forced to intercede.

Are you sad to see Squidoo get spanked?