It's Traffic, Not Sales!

There have been revolutionary changes lately in the Squidoo rankings - especially in the Top 100 by LensRank (LR), but also in the Top 100 by Most Profitable (MP) and Most Visited (MV).

First of all, current (as of Feb. 14, 2007) Top 100 by LensRank is no longer dominated by 3 groups - illuminati, videosense and affiliate marketing contests. No, they are almost gone, with exception of illuminati - they still have 17 lenses, but it's much less than 2-3 months ago when they usually had about 20-30.

This time, the Top 100 by LensRank is led by the "free downloads" group. They have 18 lenses and I'm disturbed by that, because their lenses are of poor quality and the legality of services they offer are very disputable. In fact, I'm afraid Squidoo may be gone from the search engines because of them. This opinion is shared in the Squidoo Forum by others lensmasters…

Another big change - and it really is revolutionary - is the impact of Top 100 Most Profitable on Top 100 by LensRank. While in the past at least about 30-40% of lenses on the MP were making it to the Top 100 by LR, this time it is only 13(!). Two of them are "regulars" - mynameiskate's and Greendrv's handbag lenses (plus two other handbag lenses - this is very interesting…).

From the first 30 lenses that are listed on the Top 100 by MP, only 5 are also on the Top 100 by LR (incl. three "handbags").

So, somebody may ask, is there any visible trend among the lenses that are in the Top 100 by LR?

Yes, it is! The answer - TRAFFIC!

I didn't have time to analyze the whole Top 100 Most Visited (most traffic), but I looked at first 30 from the MV and the results are fascinating! 26 lenses from those 30 (i.e. 87%) are also on Top 100 by LR.

So what is the best way now to get the honor of being in the Top 100 by LR? The answer is simple - get traffic, as it's apparent from the numbers that the current LR algorithm prefers traffic to sales from the lenses!

I don't like that at all, because I know that the traffic numbers can be easily, very easily manipulated and giving lower weight to sales may - and I'm sure will - discourage many lensmasters who create lenses to make money.

I think there is a reason why Squidoo HQ decided to re-do the algorithm in this way. I also hope the change is also temporary… That reason can be seen on the graphs from alexa.com (they show the strategy is working - from Apr. 3 or so…):

http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=squidoo.com

Ilona Zuzalek
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