Thanks. I should have looked a bit harder.

Tried to find out something about the Yahoo update on the web but there seemed to be so little written. When Google dinged squidoo lenses a year or so ago, it was big news.

Guess nobody bothers that much about yahoo anymore...

Yeah, I was whinging about the Yahoo traffic earlier today too.

But there's nothing we can do. Squidoo HQ is talking to Yahoo and trying to get it fixed. Until then, all we can do is work to get traffic from other avenues. At least that means that when Yahoo traffic does come back, we'll have a net increase in traffic!

I don't understand why your comments would have disappeared, though.

That does sound weird.

Last edited by Greekgeek (04/23/2009 8:38 pm)

thefluffanutta wrote:

Yes, Yahoo! have made a change to their algorithm, which accidently prevented any Squidoo Lens from appearing in the results. Details here: http://squidu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=33894

Just like to add its preventing any website using the http://www.squidoo.com domain to rank highly, I've managed to find a few pages by searching my exact title (and even then its bottom of the first page) so thats homepage, lensmasters and everything else on Squidoo thats taken a hit.

frances wrote:

There just seemed to be so little written about it.

Well that's true, at first I thought it was just my lens until I accidentally came across this SquidU topic where they said there was a global problem with Yahoo and Squidoo.

I don't think my lenses receive any Yahoo! traffic at all anymore, it was just dropping steadily from a few hundred to 70 today (probably just the 7 day traffic thing not updated yet and it will become 0 soon). Hopefully they will sort it out soon. I wonder how changing Yahoo algorithm caused problems specifically for Squidoo pages?

Last edited by Chadrew (04/24/2009 9:26 pm)

Report SquidSpam.
It gets locked!
Report lenses against Squidoo's TOS.
They get deleted!

Squidoo HQ can't police them without our help.

MikeMoore wrote:

Greekgeek wrote:

Report SquidSpam.
It gets locked!
Report lenses against Squidoo's TOS.
They get deleted!

Squidoo HQ can't police them without our help.

I've reported about three lenses in the last few days for plagiarism and none that I know of have been locked or deleted. Mind you, I didn't check today, but I know one of them was still active last night.

Squidoo HQ is usually slow to react on reports like that from my experience. Don't know the reason so I can't comment. I imagine they're just swamped with work.

Now this is probably going to sound weird, but:

- Yahoo! still uses meta keywords when ranking sites, isn't that correct?
- Squidoo tags are in meta keywords as well, and most people use up to 40 tags, many of them long-tail keywords, resulting in huge meta keyword tags.

Could Yahoo! have seen this as a massive practice of keyword stuffing inside meta tags?

Mind you, I don't think any serious search engine should pay too much attention to meta keywords, but still...

Last edited by Chadrew (04/24/2009 11:50 pm)

Well, I didn't imply that they're slow on solving the "Yahoo problem" - just that from my experience, they're kind of slow to react on reports of lenses with plagiarized content (and I mean, texts copied directly from blogs and websites without the slightest editing) - maybe those are harder to check than other kinds of reports?

At any rate, for all we know, low quality lenses might have nothing to do with the current "Yahoo problem" at all. I mean, there are so many websites with much more duplicate content than Squidoo has, and yet they still get thousands of hits from search engines happily.

Last edited by Chadrew (04/25/2009 9:20 am)

There is no specific Yahoo/Squidoo problem. Unless you want to consider that Squidoo has to roll with the punches like everyone else on the web and try to guess what Yahoo's major algorithm changes over the last six weeks have been. Squidoo pages are not unique in the traffic and backlinks dropoffs. Here is some proof to that http://www.webmasterworld.com/yahoo_search/3880063.htm.

This likely not going to sort itself out soon. Yahoo just hired a new CEO who is cleaning house quicker than a weed whacker. Looks like they have been tossing luggage overboard as noticed by their shutting down Geosites earlier this week.

Making quality lens is the key. Google specific SEO would help. Trying to determine what Yahoo's algorithm is shaping up to be is another approach, but I'm hedging my bets that if you can SEO for MSN, you may beat the Yahoo problem. Microsoft is either going to buy Yahoo or win the outsource contract.

I want to also add that some search engines do not even look at tags or keywords to check for relevance, but if your content is heavy in relevant terms you'll get gigged for stuffing. I am currently reworking nearly 800 pages at my store to get the percentages closer to 3% than 5%. Whew!

Last edited by drifter0658 (04/25/2009 9:32 am)

Cari_Kay wrote:

I am showing comments in my emails but when I go to those particular lenses, the comments are not there.  Interesting

Not even under the [Pending] tab when you edit the Guestbook module? It does depend on how you've got it configured.

I always report spammy Squidoo Pages whenever I come across them; nothing much, I know, but I try play my part.

SquidooDummy21 wrote:

I always report spammy Squidoo Pages whenever I come across them; nothing much, I know, but I try play my part.

That's strange, do you really know the meaning of spammy or plagarism?
in another thread about the 'google side-step' tactic (http://www.squidu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=34099)
you posted

SquidooDummy21 wrote:

What's wrong with taking people content and re-writing it? :-(

I always do that for many of my sites; sure, I may not re-write it word for word, but it gives me a general template to follow when writing posts for my sites.