Squidblog

Gil’s right. Squidoo lenses are getting discovered.

Our Googleism is working. (And MSNism and Yahooism, etc). Why? Because lensmasters are making relevant, handbuilt, curated and authentic pages. And bloggers are posting about them. And Diggers are digging them. And Delicious-ers are bookmarking them. And so the traffic economy goes. The good stuff rises.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out some examples (from the crowded restaurants and food categories):

search Google for “north end boston” and Dave Pye’s awesome Boston’s Little Italy lens is the 3rd result.
search for “french culinary institute.” the lens is on page 2
search for “healthy greek recipes” and it’s the 8th result
search for “kinsale tavern” and my lens is the third result. (It really is the best pub ever).
or, wow, something as broad as “vegetarian new york” and it’s on page 2…

Similarly, we have a wealth of great author lenses (or reader fan lenses) and several of them show up in top results in Google when you search for the author’s name or the book title. See some examples here www.squidoo.com/authorsonsquidoo.

Kudos to all our lensmasters.

I’ve recently added some wicked banter to my cocktail conversation, and as it’s Squidoo related I thought I’d share.

So, I’m at a bar the other night and a friend says: So, Gil, how’s work?

And not that I didn’t have great answers before, but this one tops them all: Well, search MSN for “hot girls” and a Squidoo lens is the 1st result. Number one!

Now, since Megan said so, I should qualify my excitement. For those of you who don’t know the true most popular searches on the web, they’re usually… unmentionables. “Hot girls” is one of the tamer queries of the bunch. BUT, it’s still an incredibly popular search. Which means that not only are our lenses truly showing up in Google, a lot, as planned—they’re coming up in some of the most competitive territory online.

On a more serious note, our lensmasters have been asking recently how things are shaping up at Squidoo, so I thought I’d give a quick update. Despite the summer heat, our traffic has been increasing steadily—so much, in fact, that we’ve managed to double the number of weekly visitors in the past 3 months. That’s great news for Squidoo, and great news for our lensmasters, who have been working hard on building a community chock full of recommendations, knowledge, and resources. Congrats!

Meteor thingy

Originally uploaded by Lenny & Meriel.

Boing Boing posted about this today. And then Daniel Rudd sent it in to Squidoo.

Lenny and Meriel are the artists behind this masterpiece. They rake some art onto a sandy beach, then fly a kite above it and take pictures.

Wow.

Just me, or would this photo be killer in Squidoo orange?!