One of the problems is that we’re all more or less performing interpretations of what we think Google is doing by reasoning and guesswork which may or may not match what Google actually does.

I’m already pushing a point by suggesting that we look very closely at the timing of Google algorithm changes and Squidoo design changes vs. traffic fluctuations. But “correlation does not equal causation.” It’s just a slightly more rigorous approach than “what do I think it would be logical for Google to do?” I also base my guesses on anecdotal evidence: (1) on multiple occasions, I’ve seen Matt Cutts and the Google team recommending that a site suffering from Panda or other content-related penalties take a long hard look at its content and purge the junk. (2) When Squidoo was hit by a Google penalty in summer 2007 for too much spam, and Squidoo acted quickly to install spam filters and tidy up the site, Google responded favorably, and all the search traffic came back.

Which leads me to think that Google takes into consideration whether the deleted pages were poor content and whether the cleanup seems to be an attempt to improve the site. The problem is, I’ve seen an awful lot of high-quality, original, well-researched articles that were getting good search traffic locked and deleted on Squidoo, while some of HQ’s projects to push mini reviews and lenslets appear to me to be doubling down on some types of pages that are discouraged by Google guidelines.

A side note: Bounce rate may not be quite the ranking signal we often assume it to be. See Michael Martinez’s essay on bounce rate for some perspectives that made me adjust my own thinking about bounce rate.

It would increase bounce rate in google’s eyes
It raises a flag that google “thinks” that if this website has removed a lot of pages of crap, than maybe the whole site is crap?

That’s my two cents

That’s the goal HQ is striving for, and it’s a valid one, even if I’m sounding the alarm on other problems that I fear may continue to dog Squidoo in the SERPs.

Meanwhile, many members are are afraid to update existing lenses, after finding content warnings popping up when we hit publish on an existing, hitherto “safe” lens. (I keep hearing of people who update long-established lenses, only to find them locked the next day.)

Lots of lost content + people reluctant to fix the damage suggests to me that Google is seeing an awful lot of empty modules and incomplete lenses, which may be treated as “thin” content by Panda.

Noticed just yesterday when trying to update lens, a lot of my Amazon modules were empty. When I clicked on them sometimes they showed what was supposed to be there and sometimes they were devoid of items. If I clicked save without doing anything, they would reappear. Sometimes it took 2-3 tries to get them to show up. I filed a bug report.