Is Squidoo Dead?

Strange title, isn't it? Is Squidoo dead? I ask myself this question several times a day. Especially when checking traffic stats. Traffic stats are quite depressing these days I must say.

Quantcast's stats

First let's have a look at Quantcast's stats for the site. The graphic has the same shape as last month's one. Traffic still decreasing and nobody in HQ seeming to pay attention, or having a word with us regarding the dramatic situation. They keep posting their quests... Are these quests profit anyone? Not sure if traffic dies for good. They keep making changes, the last ones being the introduction of the new templates. Are they going to profit anyone if the site dies for good? No...

Still HQ doesn't seem to even notice how dramatic the situation is. Click on the images to enlarge them.

 

Squidoo stats from August 10 to September 8

As you can see in the above graphic the number of unique visitors decreased this past month. People, visits and page views as well. Do you want some comparison materials? Then take a look at the stats Squidoo vs HubPages.

Squidoo VS HubPages from Aug 10 to Sept 8

As you can see HubPages wins the battle - if there's any battle involved. I myself who have never been successful on HubPages since the introduction of the subdomains, saw an increase in my HP traffic these past weeks! No wonder where Squidoo is going to - or already gone. 

Did Squidoo's management do all they had to do in order to get back in Google's good graces? Hm... not sure since the mass deletion of lenses couldn't send any other kind of message than "we're a spam site, we're removing the majority of our pages since we allowed bad behaviors and practices to last for so long without lifting a finger".

Is Squidoo dying? 

Honestly, I don't know. But it looks like it's an agonising site. I think HQ doesn't know what to do to get things back to normal. They're clueless what good SEO and webmastering practices are. They perhaps really monitor what Google and other search engines say but are unable to interpret them. Just like a bad fortune teller would see the card spread but wouldn't be able to tell you what it means.

And now that the site is getting so bad, they keep doing their subdomain test including even more lensmasters accounts regardless how bad they're hurt! Most have seen their traffic plummet next to zero and sales along, of course.

Most are wondering what happens and don't understand that urgent need to switch lensmasters over to their own subdomains.

What's the reason behind the subdomain switch?

If I were the kind of person who's addict to the conspiracy theory, I'd say that Squidoo is currently an agonising site. Be cautious: it's just a theory. Something virtual... Because, as a lensmaster hit by the dramatic traffic drop, I want to know what happened for my account to get 10% of its usual traffic only.

Like any dying person or animal, they're slowly, gently breathing... until the last breath. They know they're dying. But they don't want to let us know. Because, somewhere on the site, there's still some signs of life.

If they let us know that they're slowly dying, they're risking the whole site's future as most of us will pack and leave without the shadow of a doubt.

Surviving lensmasters accounts could be hurt because of the death of let's say 50% of lensmasters' accounts - I think that there are more than 50% hit by the traffic drop but I'd like to remain somewhat positive in my assumptions. So they're left with no other choice but transfer all of us on our own subdomain in order for the dying accounts not to contaminate others and the main site. Subdomains can die, but the main site must be preserved along with its best assets (subdomains that won't die).

I remember that, in the past, I used to have subdomains attached to my main domain. When one subdomain died - because I left it aside to work more on Squidoo - the main domain remained untouched. It still got its daily share of traffic, was still ranked well on Google. Then I removed a second subdomain as I wanted to move this one on its own domain name. Still my original main domain remained untouched and still well ranked on Google. Even when I switched all related backlinks into the new domain name links. 

So you as lensmastername.squidoo.com will even be able to delete your Squidoo account - it's on a subdomain you see, so it won't affect Squidoo at all. But if you, as squidoo.com/lensmastername delete your account, you won't remove a subdomain from the main domain : you are going to remove a directory from the main domain. Something that's closely attached to the main domain. Doing so will hurt the main domain. Especially if your account contains a huge collection of lenses - some lensmasters built up to 1,000 and 2,000 lenses! That's mass deletion when the lensmaster gets rid of them!

And what are lensmasters doing since a few months? They're quickly removing their lenses from Squidoo's portfolio because they try to save the few assets that can be saved.

And this badly hurts Squidoo.com as a whole!

And that is something Squidoo.com can't support because as any clay feet giant, it's going to fall along with those that leave.

Now while some do see a bright future for Squidoo, I'd say that, in case Squidoo can expect any brighter future, it won't happen this year nor next year and probably not in 2015. See how long HubPages waited to recover from traffic loss!

I'd say that if only Squidoo recovers one day it won't happen before 2 years from now.

Now I also have some experience with sites of which pages lost rank in search engines. While going for Giant on Squidoo, I neglected my two main sites - Halloween and Christmas related sites. I shouldn't have left these sites aside and shouldn't have focused that much on Squidoo - after all my Giant badge doesn't make ends meet, especially nowadays that traffic plummeted. But I focused on Squidoo so much that even last year I didn't update any of both sites!

Both sites haven't recovered yet. As a matter of fact, I only work on the Halloween one since June this year and haven't started updating the Christmas site yet. But I know for sure that although I publish one article every other day on the Halloween site, it hasn't recovered from the traffic loss and won't entirely recover by a few month or a couple of years. 

Still this site doesn't work as good as my remaining 23 Halloween lenses. Squidoo, although it's current problems and its constant traffic drop remains a huge traffic driver. Given the same kind of experience Squidoo and my site are currently getting, I can say that my site won't recover it's usual traffic rate by two years from now. But instead of Squidoo, my site traffic is increasing daily. Not dropping.

Although abandoned, my site wasn't hit by Google's new algorithm and updates. I haven't changed anything in my way of doing my pages: still they carry Amazon, CJ.com and SaS ads, I haven't reduced their amount. I haven't been penalized. Not at all. Though now when I build new pages, I pay more attention to these rules. But I haven't done any drastic change that search engines could notice!

And I think that it is because I didn't touch my sites that they passed the Google updates with more or less flying colors. The same way my lenses passed their filters with flying colors when some lensmasters producing actual content and modifying their lenses in order to comply Big G's rules were dramatically hit with these updates and filters.

Where can you best hide something you don't want anybody to see? In the crowd. That's what I did.

Instead, Squidoo with their 400,000 (now only 350,000) indexed pages and millions of WIP pages, made drastic changes, search engines noticed them and took measures. 

And now, they have to try to save their last assets. It's the only reason I can see behind the subdomain test and final switch that's going to follow - as although most lensmasters don't see anything but a traffic drop, they're going to eventually move all of us.

Thanks for sharing your own theory or thoughts below.




Posted by Squidoo lensmaster Prosperity66