Squidoo Struggles with Nofollow bugs
 |
| Click the image to enlarge |
For the past few days, many people who create new Squidoo lenses have been met with an unpleasant surprise. All the links on the lenses have been turned to nofollow, as demonstrated in the screen shot on the right. Apparently, this is a bug that popped up after Squidoo changed servers. The lenses are jammed in WIP mode, and in this mode, all links (including internal Squidoo links) are nofollow. It normally only takes the daily lensrank update to break free from this mode and, in turn, have all the links transformed to dofollow. The bug can be traced all the way back to April 9th, so it seems a bit funny that it still hasn’t been resolved.
Hopefully, this bug isn’t a preview of things to come. Most people would flip if Squidoo actually added nofollow tags. Although, Jason Calacanis might be pleased since he views Squidoo as nothing more than an outlet for spammers.
We’ll have to keep an eye on this one. It seems like a long time for a bug to still be acting up.
Related posts:
Want to know what Shell is doing?
14 Responses to “Squidoo Struggles with Nofollow bugs”
By thefluffanutta (1 comments.) on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
These issues have now been fixed, and lenses are coming out of WIP (and nofollow) within 24 hours.
thefluffanutta
By Tracy (3 comments.) on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
Lots of people would jump ship if this feature stayed around. Building a Squidoo lens and getting it popular takes time, and this should be rewarded.
By Shell Harris (1 comments.) on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the update. I still wonder if it is only a matter of time before Squidoo follows Flickr into the land of nofollow.
By captain squidoo (1 comments.) on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
The nofollow status only shows up on wip lenses. I have a feeling that this is intentional to reduce possible spam issues. I think that there is almost zero chance that squidoo will nofollow published lenses, now or ever.
By Will (21 comments.) on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
It doesn’t sound like it’s been totally fixed. It shouldn’t take 24 hours for the lenses to leave WIP. It didn’t take that long on the old server; the links were dofollow as soon as you published the lense. But I guess as long as they are eventually converted, that’s good enough.
By Marius (3 comments.) on Apr 17, 2008 | Reply
Squidoo is nothing more than a website full of spam and clickbank links. I really don’t understand why Google trust it so much. I really hope they will use nofollow for good.
By Kimberly at Squidoo (1 comments.) on Apr 17, 2008 | Reply
Lenses don’t leave WIP until LensRank refreshes, and LR doesn’t refresh more than (or less than) once every 24 hours unless we have problems.
WIP isn’t a bad thing. It gives you a chance to polish your lens before people start visiting it. Take the time to make it shine and it will get a great welcome.
~Kimberly
Squidoo’s Community Organizer
By Shell Harris (164 comments.) on Apr 17, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the explanation, Kimberly. I think Squidoo has value for both marketing and making money online. I think some people overvalue it and get disappointed it. It is a tool like anything else on the Internet.
By Olivier (1 comments.) on Apr 28, 2008 | Reply
This explains a lot. I had the unpleasant surprise to find my lens completely nofollow. What a shock! Especially since they advertise that one can promote ones own blog with squidoo, exactly what I’m trying to do.
Thanks for covering this issue!
Olivier.
By Will (21 comments.) on Apr 29, 2008 | Reply
Glad we could help, Olivier.
By Markus (1 comments.) on Jun 3, 2008 | Reply
It’s certainly taking a lot longer than what it would take to rectify a bug. I have a sinking feeling that squidoo has actually scummed to the might nofollow. May be their rankings were dropping in the listings. They have a lot of content now to afford people going off. And the thing is that they get most of their best content from people who are not looking to get a backlink. Considering these factors, squidoo seems to have made the right move. Sad for us but good for them.
Good thing is that the previous posts are still dofollow, so the link value for those links will surely increase because of this move
By Bill Gassett (2 comments.) on Jun 12, 2008 | Reply
I had noticed that squidoo went no follow but was unsure why. I am glad to know it is just a server issue.
By Mie (1 comments.) on Sep 3, 2008 | Reply
This begs a very interesting question regarding social posting and promotion of new lenses.
As I write this a lens I just created is resolutely on nofollow.
So I am wondering whether to leave digg, stumble etc until the lens has follow links, in the hope that google will not spider it until it is follow.
What do you think?
Is there an update on this by the way. Are squidoo intentions any clearer?
At least hubpages have a definite policy based on page and author rank.
By hahah on Sep 17, 2008 | Reply
nofollow does NOT mean, in google’s eyes that it will not crawl that page, it will not PASS on page rank to the link, MSN and Yahoo however, will not crawl it.