David Leigh

First Squidoo started to act against spam on July 5th and then lensmasters reported that many Squidoo lenses were losing their rankings over the weekend.

Was this due to Google taking action against Squidoo, as many people fear; or the result of sites “insulating” themselves against the sudden increase of Squidoo spam reported last week and Squidoo therefore losing backlinks as claimed by Squidoo?

I don’t know the answer, although Ed Dale first said that he believed it was a Google penalty and thenintriguingly mentions that it is for a “reason that will amaze you” and that he’ll post on his blog soon.

Of course as soon as an SEO trick gains favour then it screams out for Google’s attention; if Google has sanctioned Squidoo it shouldn’t surprise anyone because SEO always has been and always will be an arms race.

The moral in this story is that those who do find new tactics should realise that if it seems to be too good to be true then Google will target it as soon as it gains critical mass.

That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t try new SEO tactics - of course you should do it if it gives you an advantage, but always make sure that you have all your bases covered; relying on one SEO technique to gain all your traffic is a shortcut to disaster.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 16:58 and is filed under google, internet, seo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.