Groups & giant squids & spam
I’ve been thinking about the new squidoo HQ effort to clean out groups. It has caused a lot of groups to close down that I am glad to see go down the internet drain.
However, thinking about this, and looking at my own groups – it is very easy to come to the conclusion that only my smallest groups fit the criteria. Once a group has more than 30-ish member lenses, it is no longer useful to the visitor to list them all – or that’s what I think anyhow. In those cases I’ve put a link plexo up, so members can enter their lenses & still have the link. I see groups mainly from the perspective of SEO: getting targeted links to quality lenses (including my own).
I’m seriously in doubt about only two of my groups though: The Humor and Hilarity group – which is so large that I can hold contests for the most funny lens perpetually (though I don’t know if I’ll get enough votes). In other words: I think I can just pass muster.
But with my Religion & Spirituality group – which features only my own spiritual lenses, I’m not so sure. It really depends on how strict HQ is planning on being. If they only want to weed out spammy groups that serve no purpose whatsoever (you know, the ‘anyone can join’ type), this group is safe. At least I see no reason for it being considered spam. Any visitor to that page will find what they expect: information about religion and spirituality. And quality information too. I don’t expect it to ever get an award for best group of the month or anything, but from a visitors perspective it’s not spam. I refuse to see it like that. I analysed the latest post by Kimberly in relation to this issue in the squidu forums.
But let’s step away from that for a moment. From it’s own perspective, if there is such a thing, this is just a topical lensography hosted on the squidgroups network. I used the technology in a way that many other giant squids have: as a way to interlink my lenses. I did it in a way that would work for users: I limited myself to my religious & spiritual lenses – leaving the other 70 or so out of the question.
Let’s face it: any giant squid needs to organise their lenses with (I think) multiple lensographies. See your lenses as a website. Any website with more than 50 pages has several navigation pages. That is: pages that link to other pages by subject or by function – usually by subject. But in a normal website there would also be links back to those navigation pages from all the pages on the site. Or at least to the main ones. This is where, for a giant squid, the work really starts mounting. How does one manage a link back to the main lensographies? The easiest way by far is the squidoo groups route.
This is why replacing the group with an ordinary lensography (as has been suggested in the forum) just makes no sense: the main thing is just those relatively easy to make links BACK to the lensography. I’m talking SEO again.
The thing is: navigational structure is one of the main tools to do two things in webdesign:
- Make the website easy to use for people
- Make the website structured so that search engines (read google – it has a 70% share by now) can find all the pages and know what they are about
While point one is always close to my thoughts – point two is where I would be really unhappy to see groups used as lensographies go. Especially the least spammy kind: the kind that links lenses on the same TOPIC together.
But honestly, I’m not too worried. I think Squidoo HQ is moving slow for two reasons:
- To give us time to adjust
- To find their own footing
Squidoo has never been overzealous at fighting spam. They’ve always done no more than cut off the worst (squiddon’t topics) and stimulate the best. The mass in between contains a lot that’s not worth looking at, but that’s OK, because hardly anyone gets to see it.
That’s partly, I think, why they had to interfere in the groups. By the very nature of the game the worst groups were the most noticeable. They were the biggest, because they let in anybody. One way to stop stimulating that would be to simply stop having a list of the biggest groups. After all – it’s among the smallest that the best groups can be found.
8 Comments »
Greekgeek said :
April 11, 2009 at 3:44 am
I’m sorry this is so rough on people… and I see all the arguments…
Oddly, I had started trying to put together my tutorial on how to make indexes/directories/navigation on Squidoo lenses easier BEFORE all this started. I make long lenses, so I’ve had to develop various strategies to make it easier to navigate them — as if they were a website.
Likewise, as I passed the 70 mark, I started having suites of lenses that needed to be grouped together. I still only have one Lensography. I see the challenges.
I think it is possible to treat Squidoo webpages as one would webpages on a site you own yourself. It just takes a little more planning and large shiny street signs, so to speak, to connect them up in a way that makes it really obvious they’re all part of a set.
I’m still getting my tool set together. Trying to figure out how to present this. But if they DO ban single-person groups (which have always looked a little odd to me, though I understand why people do it) — this may provide an alternative.
My first baby steps was getting that tutorial out on how to replace the Featured Lens Module with one that looks just like it, but you decide how many lenses, what order to list them.
Next step is how to connect up different lenses — pages — into a hub.
Lots to think about. Anyway, good luck. I hope some of what I’m doing may turn out to be helpful for Giants who have got a lot more lenses than me.
Stazjia said :
April 11, 2009 at 5:05 am
Links between lenses on the same broad subject is the thing that has bothered me most about Squidoo’s set-up. I think the answer could be to have a
special template to act as the equivalent of a site map to lenses that should be linked together. These wouldn’t be ranked or eligible for payment so there’s no pressure to update them unnecessarily but still should be spidered by search engines.
Using this system, a Squid could have multiple index pages each to cover a different subject area. In my own case, I’d have one each for food, UK places, and antiques and collectibles.
These would remove any confusion about using a group for a single lensmaster and hopefully give the full range of tools available for a regular lens.
That’s my idea for today. Happy Easter.
spirituality said :
April 11, 2009 at 5:36 am
Great comments
Greekgeek: One way to do interlink related lenses is to make a link plexo with all lenses about a specific subject, but even that becomes rather weird when it’s a hundred and one lenses about the same subject (literally: I’ve got a 101 lenses about religion and spirituality). I’ve recently made a link plexo with all my Buddhism links. Put it on all my Buddhist lenses – for instance: http://www.squidoo.com/Buddhism-books
I guess you’re suggesting that squidoo HQ create something like a subject index tool – a bit like groups, but for individual lensmasters?
spirituality said :
April 13, 2009 at 5:41 am
BTW – citizen barkely has assured me she’s convinced there is no chance of decent groups being closed down. Long abandoned groups have a chance of being closed down & spammy ones. that’s about it, according to her. And it is true that Squidoo has never been overzealous in fighting spams – so why should they start now?
In other words – I think my groups are safe & so are those of most of my readers.
mulberry said :
April 13, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I haven’t worried too much about this. I only have one group, I don’t think it’s too large, it gets updated monthly, it has some decent content, it’s fairly focused. If it gets booted no big deal. My bigger concern is that I wonder if there will be any groups left that my lenses fit within.
I really need to do something with my lensographies, but they just haven’t been a priority…that’s my excuse for them being so pitiful!
katinka - spiritual said :
April 14, 2009 at 2:16 am
Given your income off squidoo – I don’t think you’re pitiful. But your lenses might get even more traffic (and sales) if you did create topical lensographies for them.
Treasures By Brenda said :
April 15, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I turned off the automatic acceptance of lenses to the Culinary Favorites group and then I was swept away with this Angel business. Then I had the nerve to go away for four days on the long weekend and, uh oh, that list of lenses to accept is growing…
I’ve added a link list so that everyone who is in the group can get their lenses featured on the page (if they care to come back and add it!) It is a big group and there is no getting around that. However, as Kim did, I will continue to visit each and every lens.
I have to say I prefer my nice little Easter Time Headquarters group which, of course, is going to languish for the next 10 months…and now I cannot start the groups I had put off while I went in search of Giant Squid status…
Oh well, there is no shortage of other things to do!
Thanks, Katinka, for your very helpful writings here.
Brenda
katinka - spiritual said :
April 16, 2009 at 3:07 am
Brenda: I do think somewhere on your list ought to be what I finally ended up doing for my humor and hilarity group – a check on (at least) the lowest ranking pages in there whether they even qualify to be IN the group. I think you’ll be unpleasantly surprised at what’s there – if the group was set to automatically accept, there’s no telling what junk accumulated.
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