Pagerank is a measurement Google came up with in the late 1990s to help it decided how highly to rank webpages, based on which webpages linked to that page (backlinks) and which pages it linked to. Nowadays, Pagerank is only one of 200+ factors that Google uses to decide how high up to list a webpage in its search results. Google has come up with many ways to detect relevance to a particular search query, making Pagerank somewhat obsolete. (See this post by Google spokespundit Matt Cutts for an explanation of Pagerank). Nevertheless, many old-time backlinkers are convinced that Pagerank is still the number one factor in making webpages rank well in Google, so they keep trying to find webpages with pagerank on which to plant backlinks.
Squidoo is a target for these pagerank-seekers. It’s six years old, and many of its older articles have good pagerank. (Many of my older lenses are pagerank 3 to 5, which isn’t bad).
Squidoo is a web 2.0 website with multiple opportunities for visitors to leave links: guestbooks and link plexos and duels. If you leave a guestbook or link plexo unmoderated — and even if you don’t — link spammers will hit your lenses, trying to exploit your pagerank to boost their own rankings. Linkspam is not harmless. If your webpage links to poor neighborhoods, to sites that engage in shady linking practices, or to a lot of non-relevant content, those links could lower the quality, trustworthiness and relevance of your article in Google’s eyes.
Link spam has always been a problem on Squidoo, but two events within the past year have made it more of a target. First, it has been largely unaffected by Google’s Panda algorithm updates, which demoted a huge number of other websites. Second, on March 19, 2012, Google did a major algorithm tweak which de-indexed (removed from Google results) a batch of paid blog networks and other websites whose sole purpose was to publish thin, computer-generated content which appeared to be real articles, and which contained links to sites that paid them to feature those links. People were paying linkbuilding services to create backlinks for them in this way. Now, suddenly, those backlink sites are worthless, and some paid linkbuilding services like “BuildMyRank” have actually shut down.
All the sites which those backlinks pointed to have now lost standing in Google search results. They’re now searching for new places to plant backlinks in order to replace those they lost. Any blog, guestbook, or “submit your links here” widget is a target, especially on websites that still have some pagerank.
These link droppers are getting ever more clever about trying to disguise what they’re doing so that you let their link through. Today I deleted two comments left on this blog saying it was a very well-written blog, asking me if I coded it from scratch, or saying that the person liked my blog so much he tweeted it to all his followers. It sounded like real humans had written these comments. However, the generic reference to “your blog” without any reference to the subject matter of the blog was a dead giveaway that they were cut-and-paste comments being dropped on any old blog. Their usernames included backlinks to their websites. They were using not only flattery, but one of the “six persuaders“: reciprocity. If someone does something for you, it’s human nature to feel you should return the favor in some fashion. (The “I tweeted this to all my followers” ploy, which I’ve seen on several link drops lately).
I’ve also received a flood of emails from people offering to pay me to put a link to their sites on my lenses.
Don’t be fooled. Google just dropped or demoted a whole bunch of domains these link droppers used to try and make their own sites rank better. You don’t want your blog, lens or website to be showcasing links to the very people Google just penalized for shady backlinking practices and shallow content. Your lens could get hit by the same algorithm filter that demoted the sites they were using for backlinks before.
Your sole criteria for allowing a link onto your page should be the benefit it gives your readers. Is the site it links to useful, helpful, interesting, and strongly relevant to your subject matter? Will your readers be interested in it? Then approve it. Is it off-topic, or would readers who clicked on it be disappointed? Reject it.
By making sure your lenses only link to good, relevant content that is useful to your readers, you’ll not only make that particular article looks good to Google. You’ll help keep Squidoo from looking like “a place for spammers post their links.” By keeping our own lenses spam-free, we ensure that Squidoo continues to be ranked well by Google and doesn’t get hit with a Panda penalty (which would cause a traffic drop for all pages on Squidoo).
Ah yes, those emails asking to reciprocate backlinks that come via my Squidoo Bio – I just ignore them.
A really great philosophy, I wondered why I was getting so many requests for link exchange just lately. Although the link may be relevant to my blog, why now, why all of a sudden. So I started looking around and found your article on how Google has penalized them and now they are running scared. Thank you for answering my questions and helping me stay sorted out.
This is a good heads-up, Greekgeek. I have all of my lenses set up so that I DO have to approve all comments just for this reason. I especially love the ones that say something like “Nice lens. Please read mine at ——.” I have even had a couple of obvious (or devious) Squidoo lensmasters do this. I hold no grudge against the young newbies, but I still delete their comments, simply because I think they didn’t even bother to read mine–based on the wording of the “comment” they left.
GreekGeek, thank you for another informative article. I’ve never really understood backlinks, so haven’t spent a lot of time trying to get them. Reading this, I’m glad I didn’t waste my time!
It appears that Google is getting smarter and smarter about helping us to find what we’re looking for–and to avoid the spammy sites–when we search the web.
That’s a good thing, in my book.
Note that there’s nothing wrong with backlinks per se, although they’re not wuite as important as some people think. It’s true thwt links from related content or really good webpages can boost search engine rankings. For example, if a news magazine like Forbes.com or Wapo links to one of your articles, you may see your article rank a little better.
What Google is trying to penalize is artificial linking practices like fake blog networks where the content isn’t for human readers, just a fake webpage built in order to plant a link. Google is trying not to be fooled by those.
I take advantage of Squidoo tags, which put links to lenses with the same tags in the “related” box. That can get some backlinks. i also will link between my relevant articles when I think the readers of one will be interested in the other, too. This is a slow but reasonable way to create links. No robots, no triccks, just, “if you like this, you might also like that.” Google doesn’t penalize that because it’s not tripping “fishy” filters as 1000 identical links all posted in Squidoo guestbooks would do.
Appreciate the reminder; I find it very annoying when lensmasters try to drop links in the Guestbook so I always set the module to strip HTML from the text. I do not understand why this is not set as default or better yet, disallowed. It seems such an obvious way to keep the module clean if HTML is automatically rejected when entered, yet HQ appear to ignore this solution.
Aaagh, yes, I’ve been hit by so much plexo spam lately. I’ve actually started turning submissions off entirely on some lenses.