![]() After trial-and-error, I realized that one thing that was causing my pages to be flagged was overuse of keyword phrases.but in some cases it was almost impossible for me to fix or address the problem. My pages fared better under the content filters than most users of the site, but I still ran up against them so often that it was aggravating. As a result, there was still a strong incentive for spammers to use the site. My experience with reporting pages as spam suggests that the first problem that went wrong with Squidoo is that the initial updated policies were not enforced strictly enough, and that there was not an active enough response to the spam problem. Some pages were taken down, usually with a delay of a few days, but many (including the spammy page in the screenshot above) stayed up month after month and were never taken down or only taken down months after the fact. I reported numerous pages as spam, and the response was slow and inconsistent. There were whole sections of the site, indexed by tags like "make money online", populated by mostly spam and little else. The problem, as I see it, was that Squidoo did not initially enforce these policies consistently and aggressively enough. You can read one of these notices in modified form on HubPages. I was aggravated that I worked so hard to write and publish unique, high-quality pages, and I had to sit by powerless while other users were allowed to spam the site with pages, comments, and low-quality posts in the forums, without being cracked down on.Īs early as 2009, Squidoo began revising and updating its content policies in an attempt to crack down on spam, plagiarism, over-use of affiliate links, and other problems. The comments left on my pages also became worse and worse, sometimes filled with egregious spammy links, but often just meaningless or generic comments from new users who had published a few spammy pages.įor me, seeing the spam problem destroy the site's sense of community was what first started me feeling disillusioned with the site. As the spam problem worsened, the pages showing up in this part of the forum became worse and worse. The Squidoo forums had a section where users would share newly created pages, offering feedback, including both praise and constructive criticism. The spam problem also began to impact the community aspect of the site. Overly promotional pages such as users creating series of pages highlighting their businesses (which were often little more than affiliate shops) but contributing little else to the site.Gaming the ranking system by methods like fake accounts and networks of accounts that would "squidlike" each other's lenses, boosting the ranks of pages artificially.Plagiarized or stolen content, including both written material and images.Low-quality pages written by far-from-fluent English speakers, or by people who weren't putting much effort into quality.The peak of Squidoo's activity occurred in October of 2012, according to data from Quantcast: The April 2014 Penguin update also produced only a slight effect, perhaps slightly harming Squidoo. The famous Panda/Farmer update in February of 2011, which devastated many content farms, seemed to not affect Squidoo much, perhaps even helping it. The site seemed to grow organically as more people were attracted to it by a wide range of factors, including its fun and quirky nature, its rich and diverse features, the positive community there, and of course, the growing potential for earning money and attracting a large audience.įollowing the history of Google's algorithm changes relative to Squidoo's traffic patterns suggests that Google algorithm changes did not directly drive the rise and fall of the site. This system attracted me to the site, as someone who puts a lot of thought into my writing and my work. ![]() The site was also silly and fun: it had a system of "Squidliking" and "Squid angels" who would "bless" pages, as sort of a peer-review system, intended to maintain the site's integrity and reward authors for the best pages. Whereas HubPages struck me as cold and a bit self-promotional, I found Squidoo to be a more supportive place, where established users were welcoming to newer ones. What made Squidoo stand out to me was the positivity and supportive atmosphere of the site's community. Squidoo started out with a burst of activity, which was followed by slow and steady growth, which started to pick up pace in late 2009.
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