Google, the the evil alter ego of Internet Marketing, doled out their infamous “Google Slap”. Ever wonder what it would sound like if you slapped a squid, too gross to imagine….Seriously did you expect they weren’t going to be …. The brainchild of Seth Godin,

There has been quite a bit of chatter on the blog lines about this matter. Here’s a few conversations I have been reading about this, you might find them of interest:

 Earners blog post: Google filters Squidoo Lenses?

5 star affiliate blogs Squidoo gets Google Slapped and Cracks Down

Squidoo has been from its birth all about making money online. And yes it does support a lot of charities. But it also has a bottom line is, What business doesn’t? and that being the fact that most people are using Squidoo to make a profit online.

So why have a squidoo lense? and how does it benefit you? Squidoo lenses get very high rankings in search engines (especially Google) with little to no effort or work. I know this sounds hype-ish but it is a well known fact. And its one of the main tactics in Rob Benwells Blogging to the bank 2.0

In fact you can even get full courses on marketing with Squidoo.

If you haven’t yet heard of Web 2.0 Tactics, then you’re already behind on what is shaping up to be the next major evolution of how you reach out and grab the attention of your customers.  And if John Reese, king of all things traffic-oriented endorses it, then you KNOW everyone’s going to follow suit!

In a nutshell, Web 2.0 is centered around socialization on the ‘net, but as you probably already know, the biggest social giant site to date (MySpace), bans the practice of marketing, leaving entrepreneurs scrambling to play hide and seek with their customers without the risk of getting banned.

I started using a website called Squidoo to promote my writing services but once I realized how powerful it was, I started using it to market my own products and affiliate items - with amazing results that turned me into the Internet’s residential expert on Squidoo by accident.

Most of the tactics are centered around selecting long tail keywords, optimizing the keywords you use on your Squidoo “Lens”, and of course monetizing your lenses with your affiliate links, to maximize your profits, then it’s just lather rinse and repeat.

I’m pretty sure google had squidoo already in its sights and was just waiting for some idiot spammers to trip the filters. Honestly? It’s really only natural that a simple system for making money blogging like this would eventually attract all the wrong kind of business. ( I say that because google allows it and has no control over it spamming is a business model) Albeit not one I would recommend. Makes you wonder if the mods at Squidoo “really” manually approve your lenses ,they’re supposed to, What are they supposed to under this kind of attack…..

From a Seth Godin news release:

Last week, a few dozen spammers exploited Squidoo and drove the rest of the Web crazy. They spammed tens of thousands of blogs and built thousands of worthless lenses, violating our Terms of Service with reckless abandon. One spammer in La Paz, Bolivia built more than 400 lenses in one day on exactly the same topic. Sheesh.

Since then, search traffic to Squidoo was also impacted, as was our ability to post on blog comments or some social networking sites.

Here’s the great news: thanks to terrific work by Gil, Corey and Megan, we’ve eliminated the tools that bad actors used to damage the rest of us. We’ve also added a squadron of people who hand review lenses, and we’ve made it easier for you (and anyone else) to report spam.

I’m confident that as the web sees that the problem is solved, we’ll be back on track, and searchers online will continue to discover your good lenses.

In the meantime, the very best thing we can do is what we’ve always done: build great lenses (by hand) and promote them (by hand) to people who want to hear about them.

The vultures in the Internet marketing circles are hovering waiting for squidoo to die (idiots). My take is , this Squidoo is getting just the right amount of attention it deserves, what do I mean by this? It’s obvious that squidoo is onto something that works and doesn’t it always happen that when something is working that everyone flocks to it? Good and bad. This is just a growing pain for squidoo and is part and parcel of doing business like this on the internet. Negative attention is a sign that you’re popular or your product is worth while and works. Call it a dark form of link bait. Im pretty sure that all this buzz is creating some crazy traffic to Squidoo.  This should be a lesson for all of you… 

You’re still going to hear stories of people making tons of cash from those single-page Squidoo lenses, And of course you’re going to hear from the whiners who make none or the ones who were generating the Squidoo Sushi but I suspect you won’t be hearing too much of them. SO in short , now would be a good time to get into Squidoo marketing.