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Just the other day, I posted about Squidoo No-No’s – things that are against Squidoos terms of service that can cause your lens to be locked….or at least tossed into the SquidDon’t Filter. I always minded Squidoo’s TOS so it never, ever crossed my mind that it could happen to me.
Lately, I have been making a point to go into at least 5 of my lenses and ‘freshen’ them. I know that lack of love and attention can cause a lens to slip, but due to my time constraints, I haven’t been able to get in to my Squidoo dashboard as much as I would like. Now, I am making a point to freshen a few lenses the first thing I do each day, and freshen lenses the LAST thing I do each day.
It’s been paying off. Simple keyword analysis with some basic title changes and content edits can go a long way with lensrank AND search engine rank.
So, anyway.
This morning, I go into to freshen up a lens I haven’t touched in way too long – my Earthquake Preparedness Kits lens. I made my changes – added a module or two – and hit “publish”.
Look what I saw next!
Holy Smokes! “Uh Oh” is right!!! What’s wrong??
I certainly know what the no-no lenses are – heck, I JUST posted about it!
–Pharmaceutical reviews and sales
–Online gambling sites
–Underage or violent sexual content
–Dealing with credit card debt
Does that Earthquake lens deal with ANY of those topics?? Even in some remote manner? Freaked me out! So, naturally, I go back into the lens in question and scan it intently. I re-read every single word and I still can’t find anything that would remotely suggest anything to do with ANY of those no-no topics.
Apparently, the lens is not actually locked or else I would suppose no one would be able to see it at all. However, it did fall into a filter or something because Squidoo will not let me publish any changes, or republish it withOUT any changes.
Now What?
Well I know quite well what the steps are to take in this situation. They can be found on a lens created by Megan Casey called SquidDon’t. If you feel your lens has fallen into this filter by accident, take these steps:
First, review your lens and see if you can figure out what the problem might be. I’m sure there’s plenty else about your Vegas vacation worth recommending, not just the casinos.
Second, if it gets caught in the spam filter, feel free to ask us to hand review your lens. We’d love to give you the benefit of the doubt!
Third, please bear with us! It’s hard to draw the line on good topics vs. spambait topics, and we’d just rather not leave loopholes for spammers to slip through.
Ok – got it. I did go back and really scrutinize my lens… I just don’t see any issues. So it looks like I have two choices now. I could just delete the lens and go about my life on Squidoo, but I can’t do that. I know this lens is not a ‘problem’ lens… I can’t see how teaching others earthquake survival tips can be a bad thing in any way, shape, or form.
I spend a LOT of time teaching others how to create better Squidoo lenses. I encourage others to play by the rules and to support the Squidoo community. I am careful about the content I add to the site. I have over 80 lenses and I am one of the 100 most successful lensmasters within Squidoo. I’ve had a Top 100 lens… heck, I even have a lens (1 of only 7 lenses) featured on a Squidoo home page. My goodness, I was even awarded Giant Squid status by the Squidoo site!
Yes, I could just delete that lens and move on – that would be the ‘easy’ way, right? But I’m not. I’m going to ask for a hand review and have faith in the community I love…and yes, I am risking my entire account on this action.
Stay tuned – we’ll see if ol’ PotPieGirl gets dumped from Squidoo…. or if the system really works.
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I can’t see anything wrong with it either! Unless maybe you added the word ‘gamble’ anywhere or something like that…! I had a German lens that once got caught in the filter. Nothing wrong with it. Just that it was in German! It doesn’t help that Squidoo hasn’t actually (explicitly) told us what words/topics are blocked..! Good luck getting it published! 🙂 Lewis
Not a secret: PotPieGirl is one of my favorite lensmasters. (Yes, I can play favorites all I want!)
PotPieGirl: I’m so sorry your Earthquake lens got stuck in our SquidDon’t filter. The reason? There were several cases of the phrase “x7” on your lens, and our Filter was comparing that to other cases of x7 that are frequently found in spamwords and spambait about illegal drugs online. Like, “percocet4free24x7” or something like that.
Go figure.
Sorry for the false positive.
Your lens should now be free of our nets and good to go.
Thanks for hanging in!
Megan
@ – Lewis,
Thanks for stopping by and offering your support!
@ – Megan,
Awwww shucks! Thank you!
Also, thanks for the heads up on the x7 thing… that never crossed my mind. Looks like the Squid Filter works as needed…. and false positives are corrected (thank goodness… I love me some Squidoo!)
When I opted for the hand review, I was informed it could take 3 days for an answer… was more like 30 minutes! Y’all are good!
As you promised, my Earthquake lens is now “free” and has been published with my desired changes. Thank you for protecting our beloved Squidoo and for acting so quickly on this matter!
One of my lenses got locked today and after over an hour of research over the matter, I’m clueless as to the why behind this. I had plans to use Squidoo lenses as my primary platform rather than WordPress blogs but now all of that has changed. It’s too risky to put hours of labor into a lens and many more hours into promoting it just so some lifeless algorithm can lock it. Even if it gets released, damage to the lenses SEO ranking in Google has already been done.
I find this to be really scary and my future promotional efforts will be directed at WordPress blogs rather than Squidoo lenses. I’ll continue with with my lens building but I’ll only spend a fraction of the time I used to put into building them and no time promoting them. I can’t afford to lose hours labor for nothing. Please check out my URL as well as my other lens as it’s an example of my work.
Sorry about the intensity of my previous comment. My locked lens has been released. I think that if your lenses are the result of honest work on your part, you should always ask for a hand review if one of them gets locked. It’s important that the Squidoo administration get accurate feedback on all of their false positives so that they can make the appropriate tweaks to their algorithm.
{ PotPieGirl }
Marc – Yikes! Sorry to hear about the issues with your lens, but glad it is all worked out now.
I completely agree with your statement that ‘honest work should always ask for a hand review’. False positives DO happen – unfortunate, but true. However, in my humble opinion, if we have to endure a false positive now and then in order to protect the entire site from the spamola, I’m all for it.
Thanks for reading!
At the beginning, I had 171 lens and got blocked. I made some money from squidoo because of block, I could collect that money. I started another one with 51 lenes, I got block again. I made money from clickbank this time from the lenses. I am going to start another account and tried to do the same because the way I am doing is really making money. Too bad.