Have any of you ever visited Squidoo? It's a fabulous concept. It used to be a fabulous network site. On Squidoo, you can create what they call lenses, pages about pretty much any subject you like. You can add text, images, links, Amazon links, etc.
A couple of years ago, I created a couple of their lenses about Migraines and headaches. Recently, Google alerts brought some troubling Squidoo lenses to my attention. When I went to the site and looked, I was dismayed and disappointed. Lenses for The Migraine Relief Guide were all over the place. So were lenses for other so-called "cures" and snake oil.
When I saw all of these lenses, I exercised one of the so-called privileges of being a member - I rated them, I rated them at one star out of five. I rated them honestly!
A few days later, when a couple of friends visited, we discussed this. They logged onto Squidoo and did the same thing. That brought our accounts under scrutiny, and it should have, because it looked as if I had multiple accounts and was messing around with their ratings.
So, I followed their protocol and asked for a review. I got their response this afternoon. Here's what they had to say:
Hi Teri, I'm showing you rated a long list of migraine related lenses as 1 star - we can only assume in an attempt to get your own lenses to rank highly. That abuse of our rating system is a direct violation of our TOS.
Now, their terms of service do NOT say that you can't give low ratings to a lot of lenses. They don't say you have to lie to avoid being banned. Their terms of service DO say not to spam.
So, I'll leave you with this question:
Live well,
