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Note to Squidoo: Facebook Is STILL Evil

Nov 7th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
10 comments

Dear Squidoo:

No, I will not be taking advantage of this new "opportunity" to label my lenses for Facebook's Open Graph (and I think you should come out and inform non-savvy users that Open Graph is part of Facebook -- there, that's better). Why?

1. Facebook is evil.

Or, in case you're laughing at silly old Greekgeek and her quaint Facebook phobia, let's review:

What the CIA failed to do in 60 years, Zuck has done in 7: knowing what 800 million people--more than 10% of the world's population--think, read and listen to, plus who they know, what they like and where they live, travel, vote, shop, worship. — Forbes Magazine

Facebook is a big steaming pile of p....rivacy violations, a site designed to collect more and more more personal information from its members to sell to its advertisers. And it started with a Big Lie.

Originally, Facebook enticed users to join with promises of community and sharing their personal lives with their closest friends. Then Facebook turned their private info public and started selling previously-confidential information. Enter the Facebook Privacy Erosion Cycle: privacy protections would come down, savvy users fought back, Facebook promised not to do it ever again, then did it again a few months later, repackaging the launch slightly. Rinse and repeat, until Stockholm Syndrome wore down users' reservations, and Facebook could get onto the next personal-data-mining push.

"Privacy is dead!" Zuckerberg trumpeted again and again. "This is what YOU want! It's an OPPORTUNITY!" And then he made another million selling people's personal info to his advertisers.

Don't take my word for it. Take Facebook's word for it. See Facebook's Changing Privacy Policy Over Time. Or, better, view this fascinating animation of The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook.

Or take Zuckerberg's word for it. Remember, this is what he said soon after he started the embryonic Facebook:

  • Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
  • [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
  • Zuck: People just submitted it.
  • Zuck: I don't know why.
  • Zuck: They "trust me"
  • Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Source: http://articles.businessinsider.com

Enter Open Graph. Open Graph is Facebook's latest attempt to collect, codify, and spy on its users' web browsing activities. It's trying to get us to "integrate" our off-Facebook content with Facebook so that it can collect ever more specific information on our readers and visitors' viewing habits outside of Facebook's garden wall. It's doing this because it's maxed out the amount of content it's milking from its own users. Now Facebook is asking us to assist it in collecting information about users when they stray from its walled garden.

Again, don't take my word for it. Here's a good discussion of Open Graph by TIME's tech blogger.

So I don't want to hear about Open Graph integration as an "opportunity." It's an "opportunity" for Facebook, not for me, and not for my visitors. It's an "opportunity" for us only in the sense of this famous cartoon:

The "Free" Model by Geek & Poke

 

Yes, Google is also guilty of exploiting us as its personal piggybank, but that does not make it better. I have a few bones to pick with Google. However, Google never presented itself as a social community for sharing personal information with your friends, then tried to redefine the meaning of friendship itself in order to collect information for advertisers. That's bait-and-switch. At least Google was up-front the start that its goal was to collect and index any published information it could find.

Facebook has not earned my trust.  It may claim it's the web, just as AOL did in the 90s, but it does not deserve to be the web. Therefore, I will not let it gather information on my readers, and I will not assist Facebook in its bid to take over the web. (Update: it may be impossible to stop it, of course, since Facebook tracks and records all web browsing of non-members as well as members, once they've visited any Facebook page.)

Oh, and speaking of "opportunity," I've been seeing that word being used in a strange way lately. To quote Inigo, "I do not think that word means what you think it means." I keep seeing "opportunity" used in the context of someone  trying to exploit my content for their benefit. How very Zuckerbergian!

Think hard before sliding down the slippery slope to Zuckerberg perdition. Remember, there are— or were— alternatives.

Twitter is starting to win the social media war, because it does not go down the Facebook route.

Remember Squidcasts?

With Squidcasts, I was communicating directly with my readers who were interested in the subjects I was writing about.  With Squidcasts, I was able to give them highly-targeted, relevant info specific to their interests without collecting data on them, without forcing them to sign up with a social network. They got the benefit of my content, my tips, my recommendations— for free!— and it kept some of them coming back. They chose whether or not to subscribe to a particular article's Squidcasts, and they chose how to use the info I gave them, rather than the other way around. My traffic dipped slightly when Squidoo took Squidcasts away. Yes, Squidcasts were a bona-fide "opportunity," and now they are a missed opportunity...as in, "I miss them."

Remember Seth Godin's concept of "permission marketing"? Squidcasts (and Twitter) implemented that concept beautifully. Facebook betrays it.

Meanwhile, lately, I've seen other "opportunities" promoted on Squidoo— contests and such— only to find I'm excluded from those "opportunities" because they only exist through Facebook pages where I can't participate without turning over my personal info to Facebook.   When I signed up with Squidoo, Squidoo was not Facebook, and did not require me to be a member of Facebook to participate in Squidoo.

Don't go there, please. Don't relegate me to a second-class citizen because I like Squidoo but not Facebook.  Don't make Squidoo an appendage of Facebook.

Squidoo is better than that.

"What Do You Want?"

Sep 17th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
2 comments

That headline won't make any sense unless you're a Babylon 5 fanatic. (And if you love any science fiction, fantasy, or thought-provoking fiction whatsoever, go find it and watch the first four seasons).

Ahem. I had a really good pow-wow with a couple of Squids yesterday, 2muchtrash and her partner. We talked about successes and failures, and about the challenges of making money and getting traffic to our articles. We picked our collective brains. I coredumped everything I know about succeeding on Squidoo (which alas is still too scanty on earnings; I spent 3 of the last 4 years experimenting with ways to increase traffic).

For all my tips, advice, and tricks, once again I was making the same error most of us do. We discuss the power of backlinks, the use of nofollow, the use of rel="author", SEO, encouraging clickouts, interlinking content, time spent on lens, boosting lensrank, article marketing and keyword research and all these other little techniques for maximizing traffic and profits and lensrank and...

phew!

Even as we start to get comfortable with our skills, search engine algorithms and the way people browse the web keep changing. Even if they did not change, we never know exactly what Google, Bing, or all these different browsing platforms are optimized for: they never tell us, so people won't game the system. All we know is (a) our own areas of expertise and (b) what visitors are doing on our pages, more or less.

 

So once again I return to lens stats and traffic stats, digging up whatever information I can about user behavior. Because that's where the staying power is, the one thing we can master that will survive the web's inevitable evolution. We need to keep asking ourselves: What do our visitors want? What do web users look for, and need, and enjoy? What do the comments we receive tell us about our visitors?

To turn it around, because those questions still sound like, "What can I get out of my visitors and how can I use their behavior to my advantage?" let us ask: What are we giving them? What function do our webpages serve? What GOOD is our content? Not "how good is it?" but really, truly, what purpose does it serve? What can people get out of it?

Why do we spend so much time pondering backlinks and stats and keywords and Tweets and not what are we doing, what are we creating, and how can we make our content more useful, readable, interesting, and/or entertaining?  What about article structure and form: not simply heat maps and click maps, but "How can I make this page as functional as possible?" the way Apple did when it designed the iPhone/iPad interface. We know content quality matters. So how can we improve our content? And why do we spend so little time thinking about it?

Look at your own articles with the eyes of a total stranger who has the whole web to browse. Why yours? Is your content really good enough to hold somebody's attention? If not, what's missing? What kind of webpages appeal to you, and why do you find yourself reading them, visiting them, clicking links on them, or buying from them?

I don't have great answers, how-tos, or tutorials on how to make fantastic, useful content. All I can do is suggest we be a self-observers of our own web behavior, looking to see what we like and use. We can also monitor visitor stats, trying to discover what visitors like and respond to. It's psychology (deducing what users want); it's research (building exceptional content that isn't simply rehashing what's already all over the web); it's writing craftsmaship.

Quality isn't everything: the web is so vast that people may never stumble across it. But really unique, excellent, useful pages have at least as good a chance of long-term success as ones put together strategically, following certain tips, checklists, techniques and "how to" rules.

Panda 2.3, Hubpages, and a Suggestion for Zazzle Members

Sep 9th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
2 comments

By the way, Google reran the Panda algorithm again on about July 25.

What this means is that every month or so, someone at Google pushes the "Panda button." Panda then reassesses the quality of content on each domain versus the amount of junk/spam on it, and gives that site, shall we say, a Panda Rating. That Panda Rating then becomes one of the factors Google's everyday search algorithm uses to decide how well to list a page in search engine results. Panda's rating is apparently a fairly strong factor, as traffic on each domain tends to rise or fall together, unless individual pages on that site have acquired enough other factors (say, backlinks from highly-respected sites) to offset the Panda factor.

Good news for Hubpages members: reorganizing Hubpages along subdomains has helped many of you, by partitioning off your content from spammy members' content. That helps convince Panda to judge your content on its own merits versus that by other authors on the Hubpages domain. So Hubpages is now slightly outperforming Squidoo, ezinearticles, suite101, and other open publishing sites (as opposed to those vetting content with an editorial board, which Panda is going to like better). We can clearly see Hubpages getting an uptick from Panda 2.3 at the end of July:

Now, wait, why did I put DeviantArt on there? A hunch. Just look at all that traffic! I think Zazzle members should have a DeviantArt account where you showcase some of your work and link to your Zazzle gallery and/or accounts on Squidoo and HP where you showcase more of your work.

DeviantArt has an advantage over sites like HP and Squidoo, as you see.   A social community that appeals to a large niche market (share your art! writing! photography!) gets tons of traffic if search engines didn't care diddly squat for it. Members market it by pointing friends, relatvies, and peers to their stuff. Search engine traffic, for DeviantArt, is a bonus on top of the social buzz it generates.

Now, don't all run out and create DeviantArt accounts for the purpose of spamming DA with backlinks. That won't help much for SEO purposes. DeviantArt does not let you link directly out to some other website. Instead, when you enter links on a DeviantArt page like your profile, it's stored in in a special in-house format, which is deciphered by a script only when a user clicks that link.

For instance, here's our friend Flynn the Cat on DeviantArt. Hover over that link in Flynn's sidebar and see what the URL is:

http://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?http://www.squidoo.com/flynn_the_cat

I bet that Google, at least, is clever enough to detect the hidden URL in there and crawl it for indexing purposes: "Aha, there's a webpage at http://www.squidoo.com/flynn_the_cat." But indexing is not the same as ranking. This link probably doesn't count as a backlink, when Google is checking backlinks as one of the factors it uses to decide how high up to list a page in search engine results.

So why bother with backlinks on DeviantArt, if they don't count for SEO? Pages on Hubpages, Squidoo, etc get indexed / crawled pretty quickly anyway.

Because links have two audiences: (a) search engines, which may use that link to rank your page better in search engine results and (b) humans, who will click on links that look interesting or useful to them.

In this case, your target audience is (b), people.

When writing backlinks for people, you have to give something they'll be interested in. On DeviantArt, if they see an excellent portfolio of art, photos, or other kinds of creativity, some visitors will follow your link to see more of your creative work hosted elsewhere. Note that just because DeviantArt itself has a huge amount of traffic doesn't mean your account will. As with Twitter, Facebook, or other social sites, you'll only get traffic if you participate in and/or post really good stuff that attracts a following.

But if you are an artistic person like Flynn here, and upload stuff regularly, you will attract a following. You could then direct some of that following to a Zazzle store, Squidoo gallery, or blog where you showcase your stuff.

By the way, Digg, StumbleUpon, and many social media sites create outlinks the same way as DeviantArt: they are stored in a non-standard, in-house format, and then a script untangles them and sends the user to the real link. So everyone measuring links from those social sites as backlinks is missing the boat. Those may help Google index a page, but they probably don't count much as far as helping a page rank better. As with DeviantArt, those links won't help much for traffic unless you're an active, contributing member of those communities who has gained a following by frequently posting good stuff of the kind that community tends to like.

Traffic Trick: Give Something

Aug 6th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
No comments yet

You know the trick: Free Prize inside. Give people something. Rewarding visitors encourages clicks (we're programmed to reciprocate), and it gives them a reason to read your article. Besides, the internet was built on free stuff  -- commercial enterprise was actually illegal on the internet until relatively recently -- and it still grows largely based on free stuff: our content, our ideas, our comments, which are an indirect return for the massive infrastructure invisibly keeping the net running.

But beyond that. Doing something for customers is a marketing trick used by everyone from the IWearYourShirt guys to scantily-clad people in front of web cams. So many newbies ask, "Why aren't I getting any traffic?" When the answer is, "Why SHOULD traffic show up on your doorstep?" What creative, original thing have you done to bring that traffic? And what are you giving your visitors? You should ask yourself this question with every page for which you want traffic: what are you giving people they can't get anywhere else?

I have a good online friend who's just turned thirty. To celebrate being 30, she created this website: Experiment30.  For the next year, she's going to be putting up polls inviting the internet to tell her what to do. Crazy stuff. Silly stuff. Not R-rated stuff, mind, but just...well, go see what her first poll asks.  She'll be posting photos or results as she acts out whatever people tell her to do.

Will she get visitors? No guarantees. She's not doing it to get lots of traffic. She doesn't know squat about SEO. She has no idea I'm posting this as a signal boost. But it's an interesting experiment. It's also authentic. She's just doing it....because why not?

Happy birthday, you nut. Good luck.

A Squidoo Riddle

Jul 17th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
23 comments

Fluff is not allowed to answer this (unless he knows who's responsible for it).

For several months now, there has been a Squidoo Easter Egg on every lens that gives me flashbacks to the pre-internet of the 1980s. It's both blazingly obvious and utterly invisible. Do you know what it is?

It surprised me when it first appeared, because it was a bit of unnecessary "stuff" added at the same time that four years worth of accumulated code was tidied up and streamlined. But I suppose search engines know to skip it.

Keywords Mean Speaking Your Readers' Language

Apr 15th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
1 comment

A post in SquidU dismissed keyword research in this way:

Keyword research is for writers who are not interested in what they write, they are interested to collect traffic and then the money by selling things. So they skim the net for keywords and if they think the keywords can bring profit they use them and start to write about the topic.

Unsurprisingly, this elicited some strong responses. I understand the point the author was trying to make -- content farms have shown the worst of keyword research, and really DO follow the approach described above -- but that's not how keyword research should work, nor does it have to.

As a poet, writer, and sometime student of languages (BA and MA in classics), I have been fascinated by the concept of keywords, the use of words as signposts to to help people find what they're looking for in a nearly infinite sea of words, the web. It's a powerful new use of words whose potential we're still figuring out. In some ways it reminds me of the moment in cultural evolution when writing itself began to play a major role, when knowledge was no longer limited to what you could memorize and repeat in rhyme. The storytellers were appalled that oral traditions were dying, but writing unlocked a new potential of language which was not possible before.

The thing that fascinates me about keywords is that they are at the same time distilling a whole page down to a phrase which like a yantra, and on the other hand, they are words which function not simply as units of meaning, but as functional links, like the parts of a chromosome which are not there simply to contain genetic information but which serve to buffer the chromosome from damage or otherwise serve in a functional, utilitarian way. Keywords are like the labels on file folders. You reach for them to find what's contained inside.

Keywords have been much on my mind these last few years. The final chapter of my abandoned dissertation was going to discuss keywords. Therefore, I wrote an impassioned rebuttal to the claim that writers who use keywords don't care about their writing:

Keyword research is understanding what language people use to talk about the topic you are interested in, and speaking their language.

(more...)

Squidoo's Beginnings: How It Started

Apr 6th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
No comments yet

On my sticky notes of Squidoo lens ideas, I've had one grandiose note sitting in the idea box forever: "Squidoo then and now  -- how to realize Seth's vision." This week, I finally got around to tackling it.

I found more questions than answers. And then I realized that of course, we all have different ways to realize Seth's vision, because if we all did the same thing, it wouldn't match his vision.

Therefore, I made THIS lens:

Squidoo's Beginnings: A Look Back

And what we can learn from them.

 

My goal with this lens is to look back at how Squidoo started, and learn what it was like then, what it was for, and what Seth Godin's original vision for a lens actually was.

Then I trace some... just SOME! ... of the way the site, the community, and our concept of a lens developed.

It's shaped by my own experience of Squidoo's growth and changes. Your experience will be different, and that's good. Examine your own memories of how Squidoo's changed and think about them. Consider the threads I've picked out. Especially, consider the questions: what is a lens? What is it for? What is Squidoo all about?

Over time, the answers to those questions have changed... but not entirely. Some things have remained constant. What are they?

Those answers may help guide you in finding your very own way to Squidoo.

Online Forums: No, I Do NOT Want an Argument

Apr 3rd, 2011
by Greekgeek.
3 comments

I've been watching online communities go through their biorhythms for 22 years now, and the same patterns happen again and again. I still screw up now and again, but at least I've learned to recognize the steps of the dance.

This is what I've learned.

Text-Based Communication Isn't

Everybody knows that text-based communication strips out tone. Somehow, posts tend to sound sharper, blunter, more snide or sarcastic or unpleasant than when you can see soft eyes or a smile to add a little warmth to people's statements.

Crowdsourcing Outrage

Another problem is the speed of communication. Somebody posts a complaint, and it's like a spark in dry tinder: it sets off everybody, and everybody has an opinion, and an admin can stop by after 5 hours and find a wildfire raging. It is so dangerously easy to crowdsource outrage.

Posting Online Is Like Posting Drunk

As a species, we have learned how to interact in social groups to survive. Unconsciously, we monitor those around us for clues showing how our words are striking people. Over the millennia, those who weren't adept at reading conversations and adapting to public opinion got hit with a rock, stabbed, shot, or otherwise removed from the population. Therefore, learning to communicate our views without pissing people off is a deep-seated survival mechanism.

Online, we lose 99% of the cues and signals from face-to-face and group interaction. It's like trying to do archery wearing four pairs of dark sunglasses. Suddenly, we're all like my friend Cal who puts his foot in his mouth up to the kneecap and never notices he's shocked half the room and offended the other half. We're asserting ourselves without the benefit of our built-in inhibitions and self-filters that help us function smoothly in social settings. Thanks to that lack of inhibitions, it's like being drunk.

This can sometimes be a positive, because people share things with great frankness. The flip side, however, is obvious.

Counteracting the Problem

As I've stated on more than one occasion, the reason why I have a harpy avatar (actually a siren) is to remind myself with every post to watch my claws. That's precisely because I've thrown a lot of rocks, and bear the scars of others. I've got a stubborn streak a mile wide, dig my heels in, and try to convince, persuade and prove with research and lengthy argument. I get very worked up about some topics, just like everyone else.

Yet how often does an online argument really matter?  Sometimes, when money or fairness to others is involved, one has to speak up. Even then, if it's not going to matter or be remembered six months from now, it probably doesn't matter now. We use online forums to post our content, do business and exchange ideas, share comments and support one another. When it stops being about any of those things, personally, I walk away.

Which brings me to the trigger for this post.

Defending Ourselves...Does It Help?

Do as I say, not as I do.

Recently, in response to a critical post that I felt was aimed at me, I responded defensively. Two days later I came back from a RL fender bender, shaken up and  seeking some support on Squidoo, only to find a furious debate raging after the original poster called me "abusive." Gack.

I'm not here to rehash that conversation, although that is why I've been avoiding SquidU lately. It upset me more than I let on. Which is silly of me, in light of many other incredibly generous and kind comments directed my way.

At any rate, my point is this. When each person feels like she's been attacked by the other, unless you can kiss and make up, continuing to debate will only exacerbate the situation. It doesn't matter who's right. It doesn't matter who started it. It's become a barfight, and there are bystanders trying to drink their beer.

Name-calling or fingerpointing is against SquidU's rules and won't help. But surely, we should be able to defend ourselves? You'd think so. Unfortunately, due to the problems with the text-based medium I mentioned above, it's nearly impossible to defend yourself without escalating tensions.

When you're frustrated and upset, that is precisely when the "posting while drunk" effect is at its worst.

Some Other Approaches to Try

If the person who's attacked you really is being unfair, abusive, and failing to respect community rules of conduct, three things can happen.

  • If you've conducted yourself fairly and generously, other members will speak up for you. Or, at the least, your actions will speak for themselves.
  • You report the comment privately to the moderators. The moderator locks the thread and/or takes action against your attacker.
  • You report an attack to the moderator, and the moderator fails to intervene. Golly, that sucks, doesn't it? But maybe it's not worth pursuing. Go do something productive and see if that helps you feel better.

Occasionally, when I am extremely upset, I vent my frustrations privately in the report box to the moderator, as if I were using it as a confession box, so that I don't let my anger leak out in public. Oddly, I received my last moderator job from an admin who appreciated my discretion...even though he was sometimes the target of my private verbal diatribes.

I digress. The bottom line is this.

When we get into a forum debate that's stupid and petty and annoying and frustrating, chances are, a year from now, it really won't matter. Is it really worth continuing the conversation? Isn't it more likely that the fight will just drag on, and people will keep sniping, squabbling, and refusing to listen to each other? Is the person you're arguing with really going to listen to you?

When that seems to be the way the wind is blowing, I try to make myself step out and get back to work.

Of course, it's hard to step away without responding when someone accuses you of something that you did not do. You may feel you need to say, "I did not do that." But if that's all you say, and then you leave (and contact the moderator), then the truth is where it needs to be. If you conduct yourself with honor, generosity, and responsibility, the accusation will most likely redound on the accuser, because the community knows better.

Google Panda/Farmer Update Cont'd

Mar 10th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
2 comments

I thought I'd check back in on Squidoo and Hubpages now that the Google Farmer Update (Panda update) has had some time to work. Short-term results can suggest major upheavals, but it's the long-term stats that really mean something.

Here's today's traffic charts from Quantcast, showing that Hubpages traffic has stabilized:

Google Panda Update Impact on Hubpages and Squidoo

Keep in mind that the update was only for Google's US search engine. It hasn't yet been unleashed globally. The drop in U.S. users is included in "global" as well as "local" results.

My prediction, based on what I'm seeing, is that after this change, Hubpages' traffic is going to be nearly the same as Squidoo's. It already is within the US.

The Spam's the Thing?

Jennifer Ledbetter of Potpiegirl.com made a mini study of specific spam phrases confirming by the numbers my guess in my last post on the Farmer Update: Squidoo's ongoing spam crackdown means it has fewer (but alas, still some) pages on the most spammy topics than Hubpages and several other sites. This DOES explain why ehow.com didn't lose places in the SERPs: it has even fewer pages matching these spam phrases.

Jennifer didn't test this, but we both also argued -- in different ways -- that Hubpages' much, much stricter policy on outbound links may be causing it some trouble. She pointed out that links on Hubs are nofollowed until you've reached a certain status. I related my experience of having all my hubs locked for having one link on each of them to cite the source of my photos. Squidoo's got a nine outbound link per domain limit, instead, and it nofollows affiliate links in its merchant modules.

Various other ideas have been thrown out to explain the change. Another thing I pointed out is the significantly lower bounce rate of Squidoo compared to Hubpages, ezinearticles, and (of course) mahalo.

There's just one problem.

The Quantcast traffic charts show Hubpages U.S. traffic simply dropped back to Squidoo's levels.

If my explanations and Potpiegirl's  guess about outbound links were correct, Squidoo should now be outperforming Hubpages. But it's not. They're now about the same.

Jennifer's spam study shows that Squidoo has fewer pages than Hubpages on the spammy topics she chose to test, but not all that much less. The last phrase she checked ("tv for pc") actually had more pages on Squidoo than Hubpages. (It really shouldn't be filtered as spam; how to watch television on a PC is a reasonable query. It's just gotten targeted by a lot of spammers trying to cash in on a popular search).

So my vote is on the spam being the deciding factor -- as it should be -- about how Google's picking "quality" sites.  Let's keep reporting and flagging it when we see it, folks, and for goodness' sake don't write on a Squiddont topic! Also, don't give up on Hubpages. It's gotten humbled, but it's no worse off than Squidoo. And keeping eggs in different baskets is always a good practice.

The Google Farmer Update and Squidoo

Mar 1st, 2011
by Greekgeek.
15 comments

Google Farmer Update: Early Returns

So, the manure has hit the rotary blades, and we're starting to see some results from Google declaring war on so-called "Content Farms" in 2011. (When even mainstream news media hears about it, you know it's big.)  Various pundits and industry experts had ideas on what content farms are, but until we saw the traffic shake-up, we couldn't be sure how Google defined them.

Of course, I hear the little Michael Martinez devil's advocate on my shoulder screaming "insufficient sample size, short-term data is inferior to long-term data"! but with that caveat, we've already got some apparent results.

Squidoo users, for the most part, haven't seen any changes in traffic:

Squidoo Traffic Farmer Update

 

Hubpage users are feeling some pain (it's all over their user forums), which is reflected in the Quantcast traffic data:

Hubpages Traffic Google Farmer Update

 

Go play with Quantcast to test your own favorites. Some aren't available yet (ehow, ezinearticles), or are CLOAKED (mahalo.com, surprise surprise) so Quantcast can't measure them.

For the big picture, see Danny Sullivan's "Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change?" on SearchEngineLand, although Squidoo is too small a squid to have attracted detailed stat analysis by the experts, unfortunately.

My own traffic stats reflect what Quantcast saw: in fact, my traffic has been increasing slightly since the change (repeat: limited sample size) not dropping.

So what does this all mean for Squidoo users, most of whom publish on a variety of other platforms as well (including Hubpages)?

(more...)

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