Who has got an eye on you

For those of us who are Squidoo lensmasters, we are naturally very curious about our visitors; about our traffic; and about who has got an eye on you i.e. us and our lenses! For the most part, we lensmasters like to keep an eye on stats and can often be found checking things out via the public stats of squidaholic.com. You know, I did a Squidoo lens in March 2008 which seems quite topicable today, Squidoo Stats :: Public or Private?

Squidaholic.com is precisely where we can check out those mysterious backlinks! You know, where it tells us:

Find out who is linking to your lens. Tip #1: Make sure all your other sites, blogs, MySpace pages and Twitter and Facebook profiles are pointing to your lens. Tip #2: Ask your friends to lensroll and blogroll you. Here are a few webpages that link to this lens, according to Yahoo.

Well, it was another lensmaster who had mentioned something about mysterious backlinks, so I opted to do my own poking around.  I started unofficially "studying" the mysterious blocks of backlinks that have been spotted on many lensmasters lenses via Squidaholic.com.  It was a very curious, "oh wow!"  I started spotting those blocks of backlinks on many "random" lenses.  However, what is funny, or WAS funny, was the fact that I  did NOT find those mysterious block of backlinks on any of my lenses!  Isn't that odd?

It was suggested in the forum not to worry about these backlinks and that said mysterious blocks of backlinks were attributable to lenses being "top lenses" that have appeared on the Squidoo home page or splash page as some call it.  HUH?  I was wondering ... you see I've had maybe one or two or three lenses that were "top lenses" and would have appeared on that splash page, BUT, my top lenses still did NOT have any mysterious blocks of backlinks.

On May 3, 2010, I commented in the forum:

I have been looking at some pretty interesting "stuff" that I've not exactly figured out, but I would say that something is definitely UP with the traffic being mysteriously DOWN in Squidville ... whilst I do see some UP spikes in traffic with pretty mysterious backlinks ... can't elaborate just yet ya know! I'm thinking HQ can surely get to the bottom of IT though!

On May 4, 2010, I commented again:

Well, may I say I do think backlinks have "some" impact on lensrank in that technically we hope for good backlinks because they provide more exposure for our work i.e. our lenses which hopefully translates into more curious visitors clicking through from those very backlinks to visit our work i.e. our lenses. Yes?

So ... as I was doing some "research" into backlinks, I couldn't help but notice a "block of backlinks" that seem to be mysteriously appearing, so says squidaholic, on quite a few lenses which have appeared in the top ranks of the categories ... so mostly seeing that same "block of backlinks" on the lenses which have experienced the HIGH traffic. Has anyone else noticed that? The "sites" listed in those "block of backlinks" don't sound like run of the mill sites that one would normally expect to see as a backlink ... you know?

On May 5, 2010, I said this:

Hugs ... yes indeed ... you have tuned in to that "block of backlinks" that have me perplexed in Florida today ... It is a hot and sticky day too! What's pretty odd ... I did lots of research to undercover those, but could NOT find them on my lenses ... but on many a top lensmaster with the top traffic or top 100 lenses. That got me to wondering ... how come that block was on so many lenses? The law of averages would dispel such an interesting observation as more than sheer coincidence ... you know?

Hello, it was June 22, 2010, and my traffic was dipping into obscurity, as it has been doing for quite a few other lensmasters.  On top of all that, a former TOP traffic lens of mine, which was "targetted" [or whatever else you want to call it] for others to possibly emulate and get some traffic, well that lens started abruptly on its descent into the abyss, and will soon be a R.I.P. lens, oh my!  TYVM people of Earth!  Thanks for thinking of me in that way.  You really rock!

SO IT WAS TIME FOR SOME OFFICIAL BACKLINK RESEARCH!

I spent this morning capturing actual data. What I did? I picked, at random, one guy and one gal. I picked one each of their lenses to analyze for the block of backlinks. Both of these lenses, I am guessing, MUST surely have hit the splash page of Squidoo, although, no offense intended, they are NOT your typical top ranking lenses. I think there was some divine intervention at play. But, regardless of that ... I looked at each and every backlink available to me through squidaholic.com for these two random lenses.

I captured all the pages of backlink data. Using first a Word document, I got the data into two streamlined, separate tables. Next, I transferred the data to Excel into separate worksheets. I stripped and scrubbed to get the data to be apples to apples, rather than apples vs. oranges ... oh, that's a Squidoo lens folks that I did a while back and YOU might enjoy it ... or maybe not.  ;)

Then, I started sorting and tabulating to identify alphabetically the backlink websites, along with the frequency of backlinks; i.e., if they were providing more than one backlink for said "top rated" lens. Last but not least, I merged the backlink data into one worksheet and looked to see if the frequency of backlinks agreed between the two random lenses.

FOLKS! I cannot make this stuff up!  It seems, this must have been a backlink "test" that was rolled out to specific lensmasters and specific lenses.  Not mine -- and I'm not sure if that is good or bad.  Maybe you can tell me?  What I cannot make up is the FACT that each and every mysterious block of mysterious backlinks JIVED between the two lenses ... i.e., with frequency!!!!  I have alphabeticized those blocks of backlinks, and color-coded by frequency; i.e. 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, 4/4, 6/6.  Yep, some were providing not only one, but two, three, four and even six each backlinks to those two top rated lenses!

What the heck? So, were you and your lenses included in this block of backlinks test? Have you experienced a massive influx of traffic? Have your clickouts zoomed off the charts? Have your sales spiked upwards?  Are you noticing any upticks in Google PRs. What do you make of all this?  I wonder if the "test" is still actively going on?

I find it very interesting, to say the least. Happy Tuesday everyone. It's gotten quite hot and sticky here in Florida and we will be having some nasty thunderstorms really soon.

Something is amiss at Maus Haus ... First it's a scream in the night, then a vanishing houseboy. But when his old girlfriend disappears, something has to be done. Qwilleran, Koko, and Yum Yum set out to solve the mystery--and find a murderer! --The Cat Who Saw Red!