One of the newer lensmasters sent me an email wondering about 2 things:
Should I ask other lensmasters for rating and linking my lenses? (Or is this frowned upon in the community?)
Why is the Squidoo lensranking system so unpredictible?
Here’s my opinion – please add your input in the comment box below.
“Aahh – the eternal mystery of the lensrank…lol – I don’t know nothing about it…(I guess the double-negative means I know something…not much, tho…)
1. Only HQ knows the formula, and they keep it secret so it can’t be rigged by the usual a-holes of this world.
2. I would never directly ask people to rate my lens. The nature of Squidoo.com is to write great content and present it to the world for their judgment – “The Power of Recommendation”. It might even have a negative effect to ask for ratings or link/rating exchanges.
Back to the mysterious LR…
3. Visits, ratings, clickouts, regular updates…everything plays a role in the LR determination. I’d venture to say that what benefits Squidoo.com the most – Glam ad and Amazon ad clickouts AND purchases – probably weighs more than visitors and stars.
4. The mysterious high jumps of lenses that hadn’t been updated or visited a lot, or, conversely, the frustrating dropping of regularly updated lenses with tons of visitors and ratings, can be explained (somewhat) by the fact that about 1,700 new lenses are published daily on Squidoo. As we know, new lenses get an initial boost from Squidoo and from Google, so they tend to rise quickly and push existing lenses down.
Let’s say you have a nice lens in the About Me category, freshly updated, ranked in the Top 100, and with a fair amount of visitors and ratings – one day, every newbie and a few existing LM’s decide to publish their personal story for the world to see, like, maybe 200 of ‘em…that creates a lot of “pressure” in the top field of this category – and your work of art drops, for a while.
Once the newness (and the initial boost) wears off (and if your older lens is well-maintained), your ranking shall rise again.
If nobody publishes much new stuff, overall or in “your” category – you might see a rapid rise of your lens.
5. Longevity plays a role, too. I’ve been doing this over a year now, and some of my very first lenses had come “out the wood works” when I expected it the least. And I hadn’t even been updating much.
All in all, my “formula” for financial success through top-ranking lenses is this: Keep making new lenses. Why? See #4 above…”
Another fine image from the Heather Katsoulis Collection, available to all of us through Creative Commons
[ratings]
On a similar note...
Bavarian Squid Angel design courtesy of lensmaster Steve Thompson.
With thanks to 
Overheard on twitter...
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