Squidoo Spanked By Google
July 11, 2007 – 2:23 pmIt 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?
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One Response to “Squidoo Spanked By Google”
In general, I think its great whenever Google cleans up their search results. I’m not so sure that penalizing a domain across the board is the best way of handling it though (and I’m not so sure that that is what Google did).
Google’s goal in search is to provide useful and fulfilling results to its users. To the extent that a lens meets that criteria, I think it is great that it shows up. There are, after all, some great lenses out there. There are also a lot of bad ones that most users would consider spam. If Google can banish these its a success.
In regards to Squidoo, I really see it as a platform for expression. It provides the tools to make a resource page. I don’t see so many conceptual differences between it and Blogger which Google owns, for example. Both offer means of expression and revenue sharing features, making them enticing for spammers. But there are some good Blogger blogs — they aren’t all spam.
I’ve been sitting here trying to think of any user controlled resource that isn’t plagued in some way by what I would consider spam, and I can’t think of one.
Any time users create content, a lot of junk will be created. But of course, one man’s junk is another’s treasure. It’s difficult to police in absolute terms of grey and black, and where possible its best to let market decide and its in Google’s interest to follow the market so that they can keep their customers satisfied.
By mblair on Jul 19, 2007