About the limit on "overly promotional lenses"

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Ranked #170 in Squidoo Tips, #23,217 overall

When too many links are too many

As part of our recent Squidoo policy update, we're introducing a new limit to the number of links to the same domain that you can have on a lens.

Here's a deeper look at our thinking on this issue and how it affects you.

Thanks for reading.

**Photo from clemmac on Flickr.

Read the whole Squidoo Policy Update 

featured lens NEWSFLASH! A Squidoo Policy Update

June 2009 When we started creating Squidoo in 2005, we had a vision of openness, creativity, authenticity and generosity that has guided the Squidoo publishing platform, our company and our community to much success. A few years later, as the numbe...

A little background 

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.

To explain a little more... 

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).

Important! 

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.

How this works 

1. If you're a Giant Squid, you've earned your way to the top and demonstrated that you don't create junk pages. So you can have as many outbound links as you want. You're greenlighted out of this entirely.

2. There will be a growing 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.

3. On the flip side, there will also be 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

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).

If you're making great lenses and linking to useful sites and products

...then chances are really good that...

a) you're in whitelist territory already and needn't worry, or

b) you're a Giant Squid without any limit, or

c) you've gotten your lens reviewed and greenlighted, or

d) 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.

An ever-growing list of Whitelisted domains 

You can have as many links to these sites as you want, if you want.

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.

But if you run a site that you'd like to submit for whitelist consideration, just to be safe, feel free to post it below.

Also note that we've whitelisted many popular lensmaster-run sites, like Squidutils.com, Squidlog.com, Squidoocool.com and Lensroll.com (plus many more).

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

A sample list of Blacklisted sites 

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.

Want to suggest a site to whitelist? 

If you run a site that you'd like whitelisted, you're welcome to suggest it here. We'll review the inbox from time to time and add popular sites to the whitelist. In the meantime, you'll probably be well-served by using fewer than 10 links to the same domain on one lens anyway, no matter how good the site is!

submit
  • Reply
    MeganCasey MeganCasey Nov 24, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
    Thanks everyone. We just added a bunch of new domains to the whitelist, and some new especially malicious ones to the blacklist.

    The more important point for all to consider, though:

    Millions of personal and good sites and platforms deserve to be on a whitelist for sure. But that's not a relevant way of looking at this. We're not trying to editorially define what sites we like or don't like. What we're doing is trying to help lensmasters make lenses that aren't overly promotional, because we have a ton of data and experience looking at what makes lenses perform and perceive well. Which is why we have a link limit in the first place. So even if there's a great site with great content you're promoting or recommending, we still hope you'll use fewer than 10 links to the exact same domain on a single lens.

    That's why we're not going bonkers whitelisting the entire world.

    But yes, we'll be refining this a lot as we go, so if anyone runs into significant and unanticipated problems, please feel free to send us a bug report here: http://www.squidoo.com/pages/feedback

    Thanks.
  • Reply
    startrekkie startrekkie Nov 21, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
    >HI - I love Squidoo and am having a ball making my lenses! I just made some changes to my links and got a warning about the # of links to one domain. It said you will be limiting SOON, so I hope that does not mean NOW.
    >BUT - I would like to request a review BEFORE I get locked if that is possible.
    >I have a new datafeeder site (ie, the "one domain name") I am pointing to. I prefer to send people there because it really gives them more choices than going directly to one vendor. I would like to keep doing this on my Star Trek lenses. People love Star Trek and the links are all for different things (almost nothing says 'buy here, buy here' :-)]
    >My biggest lens is - OrderStarTrekCostumes
    >the others are smaller, but might run into the same problem as I make the images clickable (which makes people happy)
    >They are StarTrekDressCostume, StarTrekMovieShirts, and StarTrekKidsCostumes
    >And I second the idea of making sites like Linkshare, commission junction etc whitelisted. Unless your intention is to get rid of affiliates.
    A 9 product limit is not very helpful
    >Thank you so much
  • Reply
    eloise-spleen eloise-spleen Nov 20, 2009 @ 8:58 am
    http://www.deviantart.com/? It's a great way of promoting art and artists. Surely there's nothing spammy about that.
  • Reply
    DotGirlMoms DotGirlMoms Nov 9, 2009 @ 9:13 am
    Hello, We write monthly articles that are posted at Kotex.com. We post links to these articles from Squidoo. Each link is to a different article on the Kotex site and provides our Squidoo Fans with an opportunity to follow us on another site. Notice we are not selling anything with these links. We would appreciate Kotex being whitelisted so we can continue to provide this information to our fans.
  • Reply
    SalonOfArt SalonOfArt Nov 4, 2009 @ 11:54 pm
    Hi there! I use one of my lens for my monthly newsletter to send people to all the new products with my art on them. I have stores everywhere. With the holidays approaching I have many links on this months newsletter, so thought I would request a whitelist for 3 sites.

    www.Artamatik.com, www.Greetingcarduniverse.com and www.imagekind.com

    Thank you for considering these!
    www.squidoo.com/SalonOfArtNews
  • Reply
    rtyndall rtyndall Oct 26, 2009 @ 5:24 pm | in reply to Home-healthcare
    I agree. I use Linksahe, Shareasale, Commision Junction. Google affiliate network. If these aren't white listed there is no point to trying to create lenses to sell our products.

    I have yet to see any clarification on these types of affiliate management companies.
  • Reply
    dreamsgate dreamsgate Oct 26, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
    The greater majority of my lenses are about Blender 3d, an open source modeling program and I often link back to the "mother site" with educational /informational links. So could you white list:
    http://www.blender.org/
  • Reply
    Home-healthcare Home-healthcare Oct 25, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
    Please whitelist LINKSHARE and SHAREASALE. They represent good companies, and if you create a colorful and informative lens with photos sourced from there (linked to the specific affiliate product in the image) and also have a text link, your entire lens would go over the limit with just 5 products choices!

    I am decimating (ruining) good quality lenses (my own and those I've worked on for others) trying to comply with the new guidelines - which are truly onerous if your lens is focused on a nice product category. Tons of work to create them...tons of work trying to take out links and still leave the lenses useful to visitors...REDUCE the quality of the lenses by good faith compliance!

    Compare that with Ebay, Amazon, CafePress, where a single product module will have 5 product thumbnails. It would be unfair to be more onerous on quality affiliate networks such as these than Ebay, Amazon, CafePress.

    PLEASE announce this whitelisting so we STOP wasting time and hurting lenses.
  • Reply
    TheRealJewell TheRealJewell Oct 24, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
    Please whitelist www.authorsroundthesouth.com and www.sibaweb.com If there is more you need to know for that to happen please let me know. Thanks for you work.
  • Reply
    amy1980 amy1980 Oct 21, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
    I concur on linkshare. It is how I do affiliate links for PBS.org. The domain on the link is linksynergy.com
  • Reply
    VJYoung VJYoung Oct 19, 2009 @ 10:05 pm
    Please consider whit listing nonprofit web sites like www.envirocorps.org which have mutable pages that need to be linked to individually. If this can not be accomplished, I will need to move to another service if your limits are exceeded. I have used the target="_blank" tag to keep people on the squidoo site.
  • Reply
    access2 access2 Oct 14, 2009 @ 10:59 am
    wow-europe.com
  • Reply
    Grangermdk Grangermdk Oct 10, 2009 @ 7:55 am
    Please look into adding LinkShare to your whitelist.

    They are a company similar to Clickbank. The HTML links all have LinkShare in the code, but they each link specifically to a unique product site. It has been my experience that they are a reputable and not spammy.

    Not every single one of their product programs is desirable, but hundreds of them are. It would be up to the lens-master to focus on right programs. Lets not through the baby out with the bathwater.

    Thanks for your consideration.
  • Reply
    goldenecho goldenecho Oct 9, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
    I think www.biblegateway.com should be whitelisted. I can see where someone discussing a theological argument or Biblical topic might want to reference more than 20 passages of scripture, linking to the chapter or book so that the viewer could read more in context, or could read the same verse in a different language or translation. Bible Gateway is one of the most popular sites which includes the Bible text in nearly every available translation and various languages.

    I'd also like to suggest http://www.bartleby.com/ , which has text to thousands of poems, plays, and other works of literature and non-fiction. These are free and open to the public, and I could see where a literary lens might link to more than 20 of these.
  • Reply
    Robin_Forlonge_Patterson Robin_Forlonge_Patterson Oct 7, 2009 @ 8:00 pm
    SourceForge - http://sourceforge.net/ - deserves to be whitelisted. It's a "location to download and develop free open source software". Two of my favourite games (e.g. http://sourceforge.net/projects/freecol/) are there, but it has heaps of serious stuff too, and each project can have numerous pages on the site, such as forums and bug reports and download pages.
  • Reply
    Dragon82 Dragon82 Oct 3, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
    Another music website request - Sellaband.com
    They've partnerships with Amazon, The Orchard, AOL, Bol, etc so they're hardly small-fry. With only 9 links, I'm going to have to ditch content because I'm limited to how many Artists I can link to.
    Cheers
  • Reply
    Dragon82 Dragon82 Oct 3, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
    A request to Whitelist www.Last.fm please. A lot of artists who I've made lenses for have full tracks available to listen to on Last.fm, and nine links barely covers one album.
    Thanks
  • Reply
    California_Dreamin California_Dreamin Oct 2, 2009 @ 4:03 am
    The last time I published my lens "Great Texas Chili" a>, I was told that I'd exceeded the limit on outbound links to the same domain. That's interesting because I only added one link, to a site called The Ring of Fire, a linked list of chili websites.

    The only thing I can figure is that because this site links many many websites together, the computer detects a number of links instead of just one (forgive me if that's an idiotic assumption on my part, I'm a little technically challenged).

    Anyway, I'd appreciate it if the site could be whitelisted, or the problem could be fixed in some other way.

    Thanks
  • Reply
    grannysage grannysage Sep 29, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
    I want to add http://icanhascheezburger.com/

    I use them for cat pictures with captions for my cat lens. I think it is a main reason why people keep coming back to it.
  • Reply
    ____Cate ____Cate Sep 29, 2009 @ 6:47 am
    Commission Junction okay? =)
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by MeganCasey

MEGAN CASEY is Editor in Chief of Squidoo.com, the popular publishing platform she started with Seth Godin and a small incredibly talented team in 200... (more)

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