I have been expecting this for quite a while as squidoo has been consistently losing authority with google and it was only a matter of time.

Look at it from Seth Godins point of view. His brainchild ruled the world then along came hubpages. For a time they still ruled the roost but then hubpages decided to make spammer sacrifices to apease the angry God google and low and behold, they completely hammered Squidoo in google.

Just try to find high ranking sub pages in squidoo like tag pages they have been disappearing at a colossal rate.

I for one am overjoyed these changes are coming and lets face it they are overdue. Will this affect you? Probably….Possibly.

As i said I am overjoyed but it still measn I am going to have to start checking my 300+ lenses to make sure they are more “squidoo 2009″ friendly. Time to remove the overstuffed links to the same domain for one! That said they say you can have 9 outbound links so unless you have a colossus type lens you should be ok

The one issue I would have is when they talk about overly promotional lenses and yet they continue to find more and more ways to stuff as many ads as they can onto “OUR” lenses!

Anyway if for some reason you have not seen the email here it is.

1. No Spam. This one’s not new, but it’s worth saying again.

It’s simple: given our pedigree, our point of view and our dyed-in-the-wool, we-will-never-change-our-mind conviction on this issue, spam is not okay at Squidoo. For a few years now we have had a very strict and enforced stance against spam. That’s staying the same, and if anything, getting even more rigorous. If you actively spam people with your Squidoo lenses (by email, in blog comments, by stalking and harassing people on Twitter, by tricking people with the content in your lenses, and more) we’ll lock your entire account.
2. No more X-rated or Porn lenses

If you came to Squidoo to create X-rated or pornographic content, the time has come to say farewell. We’re not discontinuing these lenses because we’ve suddenly grown shy, or because we no longer believe in the freedom to publish what you want. We do. Practically though, supporting X-rated pages no longer makes sense, and it invites more spam and empty traffic and wasted overhead than anything. Find out more about why we’re making this very hard decision, and what it means for your X-rated lenses. (Don’t panic! You can export your content and take it with you).
3. No Junk Topics from our “SquidDon’t” List

Lenses on free movie downloads. Toenail fungus cures. LoseBellyFatNow promotions. Reverse Phone Lookup 4U. You know junk when you see it. And lots more examples.

Unforunately, topics like these are overwhelmingly conditioned and proven to attract spammers. If a topic has displayed enough trickery and spam and bad activity, we choose not to support it. If we find a lens on a SquidDon’t topic or something very similar to it, we’ll lock it. For good. Our best recommendation: Don’t bother with topics like these. There’s plenty of incredible stuff to write about and recommend online without having to go near the edges of what we’re got going here.
4. A new limit on overly promotional lenses

Making a lens to promote or recommend something is a terrific endeavor. It’s a big part of why a lot of our people are here. But: Less is more! Sales lenses far too often turn into junk lenses, as described by the relentless number of outbound links to the same exact domain. Being overly promotional rarely works. “Buy here buy here buy here!” never does.

So to help you focus your lenses, and sell even better–and to help surfers find our pages more useful overall–we’re introducing a limit to the number of outbound links to the same domain that you can have on a lens. If you have more than 9 links to the SAME domain on a single lens, your lens will get locked for review. Of course we’ll have domains that are whitelisted out of this (meaning, you can have as many outbound links to them as you like), as well as sites that are blacklisted (meaning, even a single link to that domain will get your lens locked).

Please read all the important details on how this works.
What now? First, take a deep breath.

We won’t be flipping the switch on these new policies until July 20, 2009 or later. So you’ve got more than a month to review your lenses to make sure they’re playing by the rules.

In the meantime, here are 4 things you can do to get ready for these changes.

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-policy-update#module37726512

Thanks, guys.

Thanks for reading this far. And thanks for caring about the quality, community and infinite possibility that is Squidoo.

Live long and prosper.

–The SquidTeam
Squidoo.com
***

P.S. Every Squidoo lensmaster is getting a note just like this. We rarely send huge updates like this because we know you’re busy. If you’d rather not get email from us ever again, you can login and delete your Squidoo account under ‘Account Status’. No hard feelings. No tears. Well, maybe a little.

I actually think this is only the beginning, call it a sacrificial lamb, before they sacrifice the entire sheep pop of Australia!

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