Potential Refugee's From Squidoo

1. 72

   Kangaroo_Jaseposted 12 years ago

   There's been much mayhem occurring on Squidoo over the last few weeks, during the big shakeup they have endured with the decree to fix spammy, low quality lenses or see them deleted. I have noticed that the site has dropped from a position of 57 to 117 on Quantcast since three weeks ago.
   
   Most of the forum discussions are currently reflecting locked and banned lenses of Lensmasters. For many users they have garden variety, low quality, spammy, ad heavy lenses. For many others they have detailed, well researched, extremely well written lenses providing unique insight on specific niches.
   
   Many are experiencing a time when we here on HubPages endured when Panda (original farmer update) came and walloped everyone with a big, shiny axe.
   
   Lets extend a hand of support to those when the refugees start looking for places to find themselves (as writers) again.
   
   I only have 20 odd lenses on the site myself. But none has been affected, which surprises me.

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   1. 68

      lobobrandonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Well, if they're looking to put those articles here that would be bad because I know the low quality articles that that site had loads of. Of course, there were gems among them; but, the percentage was low. I have just 1 lens up there

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      1. 72

         Kangaroo_Jaseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I see a certain format of Lens that used to be extremely popular over there and its heavy on sales modules and light on substance.
         Hubpages started the crackdown on this not long after the initial Farmer/Panda outbreak. That type of lens has taken nearly 2 years to no longer be effective with Google.
         
         My surprise has been that Squidoo HQ hasn't cracked down on this style of Lens much sooner than now.
         
         I doubt that those types of articles would be attempted here, if those writers don't know how HubPages work, they will be in for rude shocks when their articles don't muster with QAP.

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   2. 78

      galleryofgraceposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Google has cracked down on Info barrel too. So here they come.

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      1. 72

         Kangaroo_Jaseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Not familiar with the type of articles on Infobarrel, but the crackdown on content sites with Qcrap continues on not just with HubPapes.

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      2. 62

         Anamika Sposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I have not logged into InfoBarrel for over a year. I have some 37 articles published there 3 years ago. Guess I will go and publish another 13.

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2. 83

   Marcy Goodfleischposted 12 years ago

   That's a great idea, KJ - although I have not written on Squidoo, I met some great and supportive writers on a FB group (back when all sites like ours were tackling the person scraping content).  I asked for help in getting a copied hub removed from Squidoo, and was given some advice that worked quickly.  I have a lot of respect for the good writers there.  And I also feel that writers working together to improve the content across all sites such as HubPages and Squidoo can help raise the overall reputation of sites where content is generated by users. 
   
   As you mentioned - we have many good colleagues on Squidoo (and many are published on both sites). I hope we can all work together to get rid of lingering 'junk' articles and to attract more talented writers in the future.  I'm sorry they're going through those struggles over at Squidoo.

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   1. 72

      Kangaroo_Jaseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Marcy,
      
      I see this as a growing, and worthwhile, collaboration for many writers. There is a growing trend of writers banding together to help one another and is writing platform agnostic. I like this as well. We are all in this together, and our collective experience can only benefit one another for the long haul.

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      1. 83

         Marcy Goodfleischposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Writers have the strongest voice (IMO) for getting effective change to come about.  We are fed up with junk being published, with our work being stolen and with writing (good writing) being undervalued.  But the gates have been left open for so long that it will take a concerted effort to search out and eliminate the bad content and the thieves.  Even though copyright owners are the ones responsible for filing DMCAs, we can alert moderators to problems we spot on our site and even others.
         
         When I reported my stolen hub to Squidoo, I also told them of another hub the same person had stolen.  It was easy to see the thief had not written either piece, and that he or she was publishing only stolen content.  The person's account was removed within minutes - which impressed me greatly.  I hope our colleagues there can survive the slump. We need an entire cadre of good sites with user-generated content if we want to have collective clout with Google.

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3. 82

   HollieTposted 12 years ago

   I think the problem maybe that many rev share sites will only now want content which receives a decent amount of organic traffic (whilst of course not being spammy). Unfortunately, some of the gems do not receive those kind of numbers but are still valuable.. I think it will be interesting to see how the next 12 months will pan out.

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   1. 72

      Kangaroo_Jaseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I feel sustained traffic is a virtue rather than traffic that grows, swells then disappears after a minor Panda/Penguin update from Google. We all want articles that receive decent amounts of organic traffic, as well as sustained traffic from other sources.
      
      Gems in amongst the roughies are becoming harder to define. A glowing gem to me may be rubbish to you!
      
      It seems some revenue sharing sites have started to see the errors now occuring and some others are still fighting to get it right. Google is such a fickle bee-atch!!

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4. 45

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   That site is a train wreck.  It's lost two-thirds of its traffic since the end of October.

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   1. 60

      paradigmsearchposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      It do look more and more like HP is the only decent game in town.

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   2. 72

      Kangaroo_Jaseposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm just surprised it didn't happen earlier nor did Squidoo take more drastic action before now.

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   3. 83

      Marcy Goodfleischposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Which site - Squidoo or Info Barrel?  Wasn't sure is you were commenting on the OP or on the comment immediately above yours.

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5. 62

   Anamika Sposted 12 years ago

   I found Squidoo almost the same time I found HubPages, but could not figure it up then and gave up. Now I feel that I need to try the site again for the sake of building backlinks.

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   1. 82

      Jason Marovichposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I found HP and Squidoo around the same time, too; however, there were giant squids swimming those waters so I left.  A frightening experience, as I remember it.

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