Why is Seth Godin not talking about the Squidoo problem?
A blogger asks why Seth isn’t talking about Squidoo‘s massive SEO and porn problems. They also speculate that I might be attacking Squidoo because they are competition for Mahalo.
For the record, everyone knows I attacking anything that has to do with deceiving users or the pollution of the “infovironment.” My feeling is we have to expose anything bad on the internet including malware, spyware, bad SEO, PayPerPost, FederatedMedia’s high-class version of PayPerPost, Squidoo, VibrantMedia, etc. If Squidoo were spam, porn, and SEO free–heck if it were SEO, porn, spam-light–I wouldn’t even bring this up!
When I had SEOs on the last CalacanisCast they raved about Squidoo and it’s ability to game the system, and if SEOs love your platform you have a HUGE problem.
Also, Squidoo is a publishing platform like Blogger or Facebook. It’s not a search engine or even a directory. That’s just not how it works. You can compare this by doing an iPhone, cancer, or Paris Hotels search on Google, Yahoo, Ask, or Mahalo and comparing it to Squidoo.
Frankly, I think Seth has fallen to the dark side and has become a Sith Lord of SEO, deceptive affiliate links, and page view gaming. I’ve known Seth for over 10 years and I respect some of the stuff he’s done, but frankly Squidoo is so horrible it makes me wonder. Also, the fact that he won’t address the problems is just, well, sad. Does he not care or does he not want to stop the SEO/affiliate gravy train?
I know I’ve got a couple of friends upset at me because they think I’m being too harsh on Squidoo, but the way I feel is I’ve been bringing up the Squidoo issue for a year now and Seth won’t address it. Seth is polluting the internet just like spammers and sploggers, and he should answer for his actions (or inaction). Please, if I ever pollute the web call me out on it.
More squidoo stories.
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[...] great tool. For me, using it for promotional purposes, it doesn’t work. There are quite a few negative writings around the net connecting Squidoo with spam, adult content and overusing SEO. Even Google penalized [...]
Pingback by photonovice.net » Blog Archive » Social Media In My Way — May 5, 2009 @ 1:13 pm
I think you know by now that Squidoo is changing it’s policy,
maybe Seth heard you? they are putting a halt to “over monetizing”
of sites, removing porn, and trying to deal with spam issues.
I’m not saying they’re great, I don’t get much traffic from them
anyway so it’s a moot point.
Comment by Doug — July 20, 2009 @ 4:33 pm