Gil announced that Squidoo has removed the no-follow links located in certain modules (About Me, My Lenses, Text with Big Picture).

MORE interesting,

RSS has had No-Follow ADDED to it. Before the changes there was absolutely no reason for RSS to have no-follow applied to RSS modules, as the entire module was rendered in a way that effectively makes it invisible to Search Engines anyway.

HOWEVER, now that no-follow has been added to the links in the RSS module does that mean that RSS feeds will become indexable soon?? If so, It would be the Ultimate Evergreen Module!

Evergreen Module – A squidoo module that can be updated either automatically or by interaction on a lens without entering the workshop. In addition, an evergreen module is indexable by bots/crawlers/spiders even if they can’t read javascript.

What does this mean?

If a squidoo module can provide ‘fresh’ updated contact on your lens that you don’t have to physically add yourself and the search engines can see those changes, I call it evergreen.

Examples -

• Google Blog Search
• RSS mashup
• Amazon Plexo (even if nothing can be added, Yes, changing the order of products counts!)
• Featured Lens module (set to ‘random’ with more than 5 lenses)
• Yelp
• Hometown Stats
• Twitter Search

Any Questions?

A lot of Squidoo lensmasters seem to occaisionally forget the real depth that is in the module selection area of Squidoo.

Next time you are in the module picker, go to the tab labeled ‘Search (A-Z)’. Just type a space into the search bar and it search. You will get a look at every module that squidoo has to offer (you can sometimes even find ones that haven’t been ‘officially’ released yet ).

I realize that many of the modules seem narrow or not very valuable to you, but you can find some real gems if you look closely. In fact, a lot of the evergreen modules are buried deep in the module pot and not out for display on the front few tabs.

Go do some module mining and get impressed by the breadth of Squidoo all over again.

Bonus Points: What is an obscure / uncommon module that you use all the time (or at least more often than most)?

The Feed My Search module uses FeedMySearch.com to pull relevant news, blog posts, and search engine results into lenses. It works similar to the google blog search module which is also evergreen.

Uses -

I tried out the new module on some lenses I was making this weekend and had some mixed results. It seemed as if the module timed out about 40% of the time returning no results. However, when results were returned, I found the news and blog search results to be more relevant than the google Blog Search module.

Whenever squidoo gets new modules, I like to take them for a test drive to see how they perform. On several of the lenses I used the Feed My Search module on, they were indexed very quickly compared to other lenses I made this weekend (less than 24 hours for some). While the sample size was very small (I only made like 7 lenses this past weekend) I think that the initial results are promising.

I’m going to use Feed My Search going forward for the next few weeks and see how it does. If it seems to be performing well and has a minimum of timeouts, I may even go back and replace the hundreds of google Blog Search modules I have on my lenses. This is a big project though so I’m not going to undertake it lightly.

Have you seen any new modules lately? I try to keep an eye on the new module releases but I’ll be the first to say I miss them every once in a while. If you let me know about one I haven’t heard of I’ll credit you with the find and do a write-up / analysis of it.

New Week and New Modules, make some new lenses!

BDKZ has started a blog devoted to Hey! Monkeybrain called Cowabunga!. I think it’s a great and original concept that allows blogging about hot issues (Like Pirates Vs. Ninjas) while incorporating Squidoo at the same time. Very fun and very cool. Great job BDKZ ! (Psst… Ive got a few debates going on Chickens and Eggs, Star Trek and Star Wars, and Paper or Plastic )

Duel Modules now� load when a page loads making them Evergreen! More evergreen modules is good for search engines and by extension, good for lensmasters!

Fluffanutta has released the latest version of his Advanced Squidoo Dashboard Utility on SquidUtils.com . It allows some cool new organization methods such as sorting by lens category and lens type, which are both really really useful.

Meanwhile Back at SquidU:

There’s the beginnings of a good thread on Directories and Blog Submission sites for Squidoo Lenses. Look for some of these to get added to the Squidoo Training Center this week.

Sneaky Observation of the week:

There’s only 153 Squid Lit lenses… have you read a book or 20 lately?

However, there are some common lensbuilding and squidoo techniques that many people use that are just plain wrong. So, I thought that I’d debunk a few of those for you piratey squids this morning.

1. Squidoo RSS Feeds show google new information everytime someone visits - False -� the RSS feed is run on Javascript (AJAX), not php. Technospeak aside, this means that google can see your module title, description, and subtitle of RSS feeds. However, there are some Squidoo modules that will show different content to google every visit.
2. Excessive keyword tagging can hurt – Sometimes - I always recommend starting a lens with 8-15 keywords and then adding long tail terms as they are discovered. This is more about relevancy than number. I’ve got a lens with the full 40 keywords being used that is getting over 1k hits a week. I’ve got others where I’ve gone back and found I did a terrible job tagging them and only have a few tags that could be more relevant. worry about good relevant tags, not about having ‘too many good tags’.
3. You can’t make any money with Squidoo - If you believe this one you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.. and whatever you do, don’t look here.
4. Google has Slapped Squidoo – Ahh the infamous ‘Google Slap’. Yes, a penalty was applied to Squidoo pages last July. Squidoo and Seth immediately set about beating up on some spam that had snuck into the system. They addressed the problem and traffic has been on the rise ever since August. Google is constantly changing its algorithm to rank on many different factors. I have some lenses that do great with google and some that don’t. Google is going to show what they think the most relevant search results are at the top of the pages. So, provide relevant content to your topic and Google will find your lens.
5. Gil’s Pony is the Secret to Lensrank - Actually, This one may be true…

-The Captain

Here’s a rundown of the most common:

eBay search :� NOT evergreen – The eBay Module loads after the lens loads, so google only sees javascript, which it can’t interpret.

Amazon search: Evergreen� – the Amazon module picks load with the lens, which means google sees these changing over time.

RSS Feeds - Not Evergreen – Again, this uses Java and loads after the lens so no google love.

Google Blog Search - Evergreen – Loads with the lens, just like the Amazon Module.

Youtube - Evergreen (I think) -� The comments for the video load instantly, which is what google can see.

What does this mean?

Every lens you make should have either a Google Blog Search, Amazon module with search enabled, or a youtube video with search enabled in order to give you that ‘evergreen’ look that google loves so much.

What other modules do you swabbies want the Captain to check for evergreen content?

-The Captain