Seth Godin will, that’s who; he’s started Squidoo and wants to share it with me and you, so click on through and on into the site he likes to call Squidoo.
It’s all about the concept of a lens, as noted author and online marketing luminary Godin describes the focal point of his new search concept, Squidoo. Through the lens, one can better focus on web-based content relevant to a topic they wish to search.
His interview with the ClickZ site discusses the concept behind Squidoo. By creating this lens, essentially a page focused on a specific topic, it should be easier for a visitor to find specifically targeted information.
Those creators would ostensibly be experts on topics for which they create a lens. “We’re beginning to see the backlash of one-size-fits-all search,” Godin told ClickZ News. “There’s a real desire to deliver something like what we’re doing.”
BuzzMachine touched on the business side of Squidoo:
The business approach is what will make this work: You can go to Squidoo, once it’s up, to create a lens and if you do, you’ll benefit in a number of ways: Because it is a co-op, you will get revenue from the (very targeted, high-value) ads and commerce links that appear there. Also, if you create a lens into your own site, you will bring in more traffic from people who know what they are getting into and looking for and you’ll likely improve your search-engine optimization…
That potential also contains the prospect of drawing spammers to Squidoo. Godin said they will prevent automated lens generation, and will rely on community policing to fight spam lenses. How this will differ from a site like Blogger will be interesting to see.
Squidoo will rate sites with a LensRank algorithm, and unlike the vaunted “secret sauce” behind search engines like Google, will be transparent. In fact, lens makers will be encouraged to vie for high rankings within Squidoo. Factors will include “community ratings, clickthrough rates, recency, number of lenses by the author, and number of outside links.”
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
