Another item of note that was in the massive box that we took possession of recently is a large but bloated Squidoo account in the previous owners name. In this account there are a little over 100 Squidoo lenses, most of which are pointing to blog properties that we now own.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? All that juicy Seth Godin inspired Web 2.0 traffic.

Unfortunately this isn’t good news.

First of all we don’t have a log in for the account, which means we can’t change or update the lenses.

Second of all we have pretty good inside intelligence that suggests a clamp down by Google, as part of their all encompassing Google caffeine project, on Squidoo and other free services that have been used and abused by the internet marketing crowd.

Once upon a time Squidoo was really useful. Then the internet marketing crowd got hold of and plundered it for free links back to their spam blogs. Squidoo’s business model was always about ammassing as much content as possible so they turned a blind eye to all the lenses that sprung up for Texas Medical Insurance Lawyers and other keyword soaked Google bait. But Google isn’t stupid and it can see when a service is being mined by the internet marketing losers. Google has slammed Squidoo before but this time they really mean business.

Part of the Google caffeine update is the addition of an abuse list. Services that allow internet marketing gurus to abuse them will have their page rank reduced, sometimes to zero, unless they clean up their act. This shouldn’t come as any surprise after last years FTC clamp down on anything related to affiliate marketing. Google are just following the fast moving trend against internet marketing gurus, a move that should be welcomed by anyone who values the internet.

But this leave us with a small problem. We want to delete our Squidoo lenses but we can’t login to Squidoo. When we try to reset the password we are asked for an email address which we dutyfully enter only to be told that our account can’t be found even though our account is clearly visible and our Squidoo lenses are linking back to us.

If anyone knows a support email address for Squidoo please let us know.

If anyone is using Squidoo as a means of building free links back to their blog, be careful, Google will see what you are doing and act accordingly, if and when it wishes to.

Bottom line. Building links the natural, organic way is good. Building links by spamming services like Squidoo with keyword soaked junk is the same as building a house on sand. It might look easy but it will all be for nothing in the end.