Is Squidoo becoming a massive, dirty SEO back alley?

Like many folks I had a hard time trying to figure Squidoo out ever since Seth was running around with mockups of it at Web 2.0 two (three?) years ago. It's a decent concept: anyone can create a "lens" of their favorite topic. So, if you love bulldogs you can create pages about bulldog that are somewhere between a blog and a wiki page.

However, the SEO slimebuckets (not the whitehats--take it easy 10%ers :-) got their dirty little hands into the system and now the whole place is filled with spam/SEO sites. So many that folks are marketing Squidoo as a way to make quick money.

I first found out about this use when one of the SEO slimebuckets tried to take over my SeRP and made fake Squidoo and MySpace pages (very smart--but lame).

Do a couple of searches on Squidoo and you'll see what I'm talking about:
http://www.squidoo.com/search/results/porn
http://www.squidoo.com/search/results/mortgage

Also, the top 100 lenses seem to be lenses that have the #1-5 result on Google. Squidoo has the #1 result for laptop bags now: http://www.google.com/search?q=laptop+bag

Now, none of this is Squidoo's fault... it's just what happens when you run a platform company. Frankly, digg and Netscape have to deal with these sames issues. I told the Netscape folks to kill any story from the system after 30 days if it had less than X number of votes. This would take out the SEO incentive of posting and keep the system clean. Of course, you lose some pages and page views... so, that's the balance I guess: keeping your system clean vs. having it packed with bad information that brings you traffic.

Squidoo is dancing very close to being viewed as an SEO trap I fear. If I was Seth I'd put the brakes on these people because they are tarnishing the name.

Also, if Google thinks the system is an SEO play they will ding Squidoo's page rank/value, and that would be a real shame. It really sucks that these SEO, MLM, and PayPerPost maniacs keep pissing in the well. The Internet is such a great place and you have all these evil people trying to frack it up... it really pisses me off.

End rant.

MORE: Seems like folks are adding Squidoo links to their fake blogs, with fake tags, to complete the circle from blog to Technorati to Squidoo. Great.

Here is the Squidoo chart on Technorati:

.. and update #3: Of course Squidoo has it's own affiliate program to get people into the circle:

Example: http://dailyfreebiesforum.com/blog/free-squidoo/258

Feb 28th 2007 9:44PM
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1. Same thing with Wordpress, Blogger, MSN Spaces, etc

Posted at 1:06AM on Mar 1st 2007 by Cameron Olthuis

2. I agree, but not with your headline, its becoming/ become a spammers alley, not a SEO's alley, and indeed even so-called "Mr Adsense" himself Joel Comm (who might I add uses endorsements from Chris Pirillo) is pushing Squidoo as a way to gain Google juice. SEO's do not equal spammers Jason in the same way that blacks don't equal criminals, Muslims don't always equal extremists, and Americans aren't always dumb you know whats...well mostly on the last one ;-) You've ruined a good post on something I've been seeing myself for the last 3 months with your hatred of, or should I say jihad against SEOs.

Posted at 1:37AM on Mar 1st 2007 by Duncan

3. I can't help but think Seth has brought this on himself. In all his posts on "building blog traffic" or "attracting people to your Web site" he advocates building a lens on yourself on Squidoo. I'm sure SEOs and spammers read Seth's blog as well...

Ed

Posted at 9:15AM on Mar 1st 2007 by Ed Lee

4. 10%ers, heh, I love it!

None is Squidoo's fault? C'mon Jason.

Squidoo was clearly designed from the ground-up to get traffic from other search engines. Those nice neat URLs ranking in Google like you point out, http://www.squidoo.com/laptopbag/, that's self-evident.

So now people are tapping into Squidoo? Am I mistaken, or those mortgage pages -- they are carrying Google AdSense that Squidoo profits off of over on the right hand side, right?

Put the blame first and foremost on Squidoo itself. Let anyone in to make anything? Exercise some control. Improve your ranking. Use nofollow. And don't leave the doors open like that in the beginning.

Posted at 9:17AM on Mar 1st 2007 by Danny Sullivan

5. put the blame on google's adsense that allows spammers (not SEO's) to profit off of it. remove the motivation - kill the practice.

google is almost singlehandedly the reason for all the of spam blogs and their derivations.

Posted at 3:11PM on Mar 1st 2007 by Scott Randolph

6. That's what the social web is for, to make searching easier. Bookmarks are meant to help you not to destroy or "frack" as you claim the internet.

And what exactly does PayPerPost have to do with this. I don't see payperpost coming on top of the searches for Laptop Bag or Porn or Mortgage? I do see ThisNext quite a lot thought, and 'that' really pisses me off.

Posted at 12:54PM on Mar 2nd 2007 by Ali

7. Yes what does PPP have to do with this? Nothing! You go on and on about PPP and its getting tired. You also say that you dont get paid anything for the ThisNext ads. You own stock in ThisNext!!!! How about some disclosure you hypocrite

Posted at 5:04PM on Mar 2nd 2007 by Anthony

8. edgeio.com is worse than this thing

Posted at 6:27PM on Mar 2nd 2007 by Garth

9. Ummm... newsflash... Squidoo itself pushes itself as an easy way to make money online. Go sign up for a new account... they make it pretty clear that squidoo can be an easy way to make money online. In fact the way they present it... it seems almost encouraged.

The constant tears over blackhat SEO has really become ridiculous. I'm not a blackhat in any way, but I could care less what those goofballs do.

If you suck at SEO, then learn to get better instead of whining about what the stupid blackhats are doing. The fact is, that if you know what you are doing, no blackhat is going to able to beat you... unless of course... he understands SEO better then you... which he probably does, because he spends more time learning everything possible to beat the engines rather then crying all day long about what other people are doing.

Posted at 7:40PM on Mar 2nd 2007 by Geoffry

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11. I think that Squidoo could be useful to hobbyist who don't know the first thing about publishing online, but beyond that I'm surprised it's garned this much traffic and attention. I gave it a shot myself, and so far this is the best I could come up with: http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo_sucks/

Posted at 2:06AM on Apr 23rd 2007 by Alex

12. I agree that it is a free-for-all on squidoo, but I just got started and found it pretty easy to use and you can also intregrate an Amazon aStore so you can generate some nice affiliate income from your specialty lense with a little effort. What's wrong with creating some content about something you like and then selling on the internet? Let me know what you think of my site:
http://squidoo.com/classictv

Have a great day and please feel free to contact me with any questions. I haven't seen a lot of people using squidoo this way and I'm curious to see if it is at least somewhat profitable.

Posted at 12:45AM on May 21st 2007 by Bill Cook

Is Squidoo becoming a massive, dirty SEO back alley?

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