About the limit on "overly promotional lenses"

Making a lens to promote or sell something is a terrific endeavor. It's a big part of why a lot of our people are here.

But less is more! That's not just marketing speak, it's also statistically supported. Junk lenses are often 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. Whereas a few curated, commented and spotlighted products or links are most often followed.

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 could get locked for review.

**Photo from presta on Flickr.

Let me explain a little more. That doesn't mean you're limited to just 9 outbound links total on your whole lens... just 9 to the same exact domain that we aren't familiar with and haven't whitelisted.

Any links generated by Squidoo modules (like the Amazon module or the Wikipedia module or the eBay module) don't have a limit, nor do feed modules (like the RSS module or the Flickr module) or modules that your readers post in (like Guestbook and Plexo and Duel modules).

For those reader-submitted-content modules, it's up to you to moderate the links your readers post on your lenses however you see fit.

Furthermore, if your lens does have more than 9 links to the same domain, excepting the cases above, and it gets locked -- you'll be able to easily request a review of your lens. Chances are it could get greenlighted forevermore, and you will be free of the limit. Chances are also good it could stay locked. So if you'd rather not wait through that review period, pare down your links to the same domain. We're not just trying to be stingy for no reason: less really is more.

Last, and of course, we'll have lots of 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).

We could spend years debating every domain that should be whitelisted or blacklisted.

We're not out to write a new Constitution for the web. We're also not out to run a whole anti-spam index.

What we're doing here is setting up some general expectations for our lensmasters, and describing some guidelines.

If you're making great lenses and linking to worthwhile sites and products, you're either going to be in whitelist territory already, or you're a Giant Squid without any limit, or you've gotten your lens reviewed and greenlighted, or you're well-served with fewer than 10 links to the same domain.

That's plenty of room for promotional goodness. In fact, infinite room for it.

If you're making lenses that are linking a lot to blackhat sites, though, chances are your topic is a SquidDon't topic anyway, and there are a lot of ways your lens might get locked. Not just because of the blacklist.

There is an evergrowing list of Whitelisted domains. Like Amazon, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, Vimeo, Animoto, eBay, Zazzle, Etsy, Lulu, CafePress, Wordpress, Typepad, StumbleUpon and Facebook and lots more. See a sample list below. You can have as many outbound links to those domains as you want. But still, less is more, so go with good taste. We're constantly reviewing and updating this list.

On the flip side, there are also Blacklisted domains, and that list will be growing as well (but not published publicly). Even 1 link to a blacklisted domain will get your lens locked from view. Sites that consistently show up on lenses that are consistently spam and overt junk and take advantage of readers, domains and programs that have earned a bad reputation because of spammers... we're putting them on a no-no list. This means: Blackhat SEO sites. Reverse phone lookup sites. Paid people finder sites. Lots of dating websites. Many affiliate websites that have proven to be a community of spammers. Like that. Even 1 link on your lens to those domains, and your lens will get locked.

Two special cases of note: Allposters and Clickbank.

Lots of lensmasters use Allposters.com to punctuate their lenses with photos, as well as to make money from the Allposters affiliate program. For the most part, you do it fairly and well. You don't take advantage of your readers and you properly cite your sources. So Allposters is on the Whitelist for now and you can have as many outbound links as you like. But a word of caution not to overdo it.

Similarly, many lensmasters find great personal success with their Clickbank lenses. However, the number of people using Clickbank and spamming their lenses around the web is ruining it for the good guys. So while we're not blacklisting Clickbank on lenses, we're also not Whitelisting it. This means that the "No more than 9 outbound links to the same domain" limit applies to you. So be selective with your outbound linking and don't overdo it. (Reminder: Giant Squids are greenlighted out of this).

Millions of personal and good sites deserve to be on a whitelist for sure, but that's not a relevant way of looking at this. What we're doing is trying to help lensmasters make lenses that aren't overly promotional, and keep the overall quality of promotional lenses high. Which is why we have an outbound link limit in the first place. So even if you've got a great site you're promoting or recommending, you should still use fewer than 10 links! That's why we're not going bonkers whitelisting the entire world. Only the biggest and most obvious cases.

Also note that we've whitelisted many popular lensmaster-run sites.

about.com
allposters.com
alltop.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
animoto.com
art.com
artfire.com
associatedcontent.com
blogger.com
blogspot.com
bukisa.com
cafemoms.com
cafepress.com
chowhound.com
cnet.com
creativecommons.org
delicious.com
dltk-kids.com
ebay.com
ecrater.com
ehow.com
etsy.com
ever.com
ezinearticles.com
flickr.com
freewebs.com
friendfeed.com
google.com
helium.com
heymonkeybrain.com
homeschoolblogger.com
homeschoolshare.com
howstuffworks.com
hslaunch.com
hubpages.com
hulu.com white
imagebucket.us
imdb.com
istockphoto.com
knowledgepedia.net
lulu.com
lulu.tv
meebo.com
mozilla.org
photobucket.com
photojojo.com
popshops.com
proinfosports.com
prostores.com
prostores.com
shareapic.net
squidbids.com
squidboo.com
squidlit.com
squidoo.com
squidtop.com
squidu.com
squidvids.com
stumbleupon.com
suite101.com
technorati.com
tmblg.com
tumblr.com
twitpic.com
twitter.com
typepad.com
vimeo.com
wikia.com
wikipedia.org
wordpress.com
yahoo.com
yelp.com white
youtube.com
zagat.com
zazzle.com

For privacy and fairness issues, we're not posting a public list of the sites we've blacklisted.

But to give you an idea of what could get blacklisted, sites that go against our SquidDon't an no-Porn policies like these will be listed:

CatchCheatingSpouse.com
10acne.com
acme-people-search.com
adultfriendfinder.com

Just for example.