Would you prefer a green bean recipe

So, today we are searching for something different! Keeping in mind those premium search results from Chitika are ready to showcase our search with valuable, premium search results.

For those of my readers following along, we previously were talking about That is just plain wrong I say! In that Topicability blog post, we were discussing how I was searching for Stuffed Cabbage ON Squidoo, not on Google, and how I arrived at the Chitika premium sponsored search results that looked rather wrong.  I was searching on Squidoo in the search field to pull up my lens-HUB, Stuffed Cabbage of ALL things! That was the day that I was told there were NO search results available on Squidoo for Stuffed Cabbage and would I like to create a lens?

And, here we are at Monday, and the beginning of a new week for us!  I thought, I'll try something new!  I ventured to that search box on Squidoo and typed in "green bean recipe" and lo and behold, I found several lenses talking about "green bean recipe" that were recently updated, today of all days, June 14, 2010.  Well, that was more like it!  Actual lenses on "green bean recipes!"

OK ... so I went back to my lenses and refreshed.  Oh wow!  There in my premium sidebar column, to the right of my lens, I spied the premium sponsored search results of Chitika.  Hey, don't take my word for it!  Check it out for yourselves!

So, what do you think? Interesting eh? Take a close look at those websites ... not something you would expect to find for being an authority or expert on green bean recipes? Maybe ... maybe not?

Have a great Monday!

That is just plain wrong I say

What the heck is that I am wondering? You see, I've talked about the sidebar that I love so much. It is some really prime real estate that aligns itself to the right column, i.e. sidebar of our Squidoo lenses. OH, and there is also sidebar on our blogs too you know?

Well, here I was minding my own business today ... and I dropped by another lensmaster's lens. I don't know why I didn't notice THAT earlier, I guess I wasn't looking for it. There in that right sidebar column was this series of 3 Chitika Premium Sponsored Ads er Results. Well I surely beg YOUR pardon, but get it right will you!

This is shameful. We lensmasters pride ourselves on our quality content lenses which occasionally will merit the awarding ... drumroll ... of that purple star. Yes, once in a blue er purple moon it might happen.  And, we pride ourselves in getting Google traffic from being placed high in Google's search results.  What can TOP that high placement?  Why ADS!  Sponsored ads ... ads that are paid for i.e. paying for clicks on top traffic topics.  Stuffed Cabbage, my friends seems to have arrived in the mainstream ... and this is actually kind of funny!  You know?

So, why am I sounding a bit peeved? I'll come back later and share the other blog post about why all those ads for stuffed cabbage as that's just what I am asking once again. Who moved my cheese? Who STOLE my traffic? Why WOULD someone want to steal my traffic for Stuffed Cabbage of ALL things?

This is actually kind of funny ... you know ... and probably you are thinking IT IS FUNNY, well funny until it happens to you and your topics.  Ciao!

A SquidCast about the Sidebar

Ah, today's post is "A SquidCast about the Sidebar" ... a SquidCast about the sidebar widget employed recently on my Stuffed Cabbage lens in particular.

Are you SquidCasting? Yes, no, maybe? Are you SquidCasting more or less than previously? I've not done any serious analysis on the frequency of my SquidCasts, but I have noticed that some lensmasters have obviously picked up the frequency on their SquidCasting.

With a little investigation by looking at the source code of my Stuffed Cabbage lens, I figured out the "link" for a particular Sidebar Widget that I wanted to spotlight in my last SquidCast.

It's imperative that you start your SquidCast home page for your Squidoo lenses. Here is the SquidCast home page for my Stuffed Cabbage lens. Once you've done your first SquidCast, you will find that home page populated with your SquidCast and subsequent SquidCasts.

Going to my Stuffed Cabbage SquidCast home page, I can click on the titles of each SquidCast to get that specific SquidCast dedicated page. The SquidCast I created on April 9, 2010 The Very Best Stuffed Cabbage Rolls should be ... IS "A Squidcast about the Sidebar."

An interesting observation about SquidCasts. Some lensmasters have been talking much about creating good SquidCasts. That's not the subject of this blog post.

What I have noticed, as I scroll my favorites tab on my dashboard with the SquidCasts queueing up sequentially, is that "people" are either ignoring SquidCasts, or, for the most part, if they visit a SquidCast, they are NOT commenting on them! Why is that?

Go to your favorites tab, select to view 25 SquidCasts. Now scroll down the list and see how many comments you can count. Are you seeing a bunch of zeroes next to the comments? I know I see interesting SquidCasts out of the 25 listed; why do those NOT have any comments? I've recently done my part to add a "1" to those comments. Did I visit one of YOUR SquidCasts?

OK ... this one is pretty interesting, with a touch of humor. You need to follow through to "GET IT." You see, afterall, it is a "SquidCast about the Sidebar."

#1 Visit the SquidCast that I created on April 9, 2010 The Very Best Stuffed Cabbage Rolls should be ... IS "A Squidcast about the Sidebar." That will set you up to as an introduction to the Sidebar Widget.

I am channeling a message that I received telepathically or should I say, spiritually, from my grandma Julia Nagy ... She is rolling over in her grave.

#2 Find the Sidebar Widget on my Stuffed Cabbage lens that has the rest of the "story."

A Dutch Oven for YOUR Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

P.S. If you are planning on making Stuffed Cabbage Rolls, you need a good Dutch Oven. Why not try the Lodge Logic Dutch Oven with Loop Handles! I know my grandma Julia Nagy made great Stuffed Cabbage Rolls in her Dutch Oven. And, Hey Monkeybrain! What are you waiting for? Go comment on somebody's SquidCast already. Happy Sunday!!!

The Power of Squidoo - Check THIS Traffic

If you Squidoo, you are very familiar with lensrank and people talking about all the traffic to their Squidoo lenses. But, do you really know who the top traffic lensmasters are? Or which lenses actually GET the MOST traffic? Yes, there is the Top 100, but that is really not a list of the top traffic lenses. The Top 100 is a topic for another discussion or two.

Today I want to take a moment to recognize that we have just passed the Thanksgiving holiday and survived Black Friday ... only to be hit with Cyber Monday. I had a fellow lensmaster share with me an article about the myth of Cyber Monday. It is a myth to me because I am not the typical shopper. Yes I shop like crazy online and have been doing so for some ten years. But, I don't save my shopping for Black Friday or Cyber Monday -- I shop every day of the year if I want or need something.

So, thinking of Cyber Monday, I decided to check a particular lens on Squidaholic.com. Wow, I am blown away by the huge traffic that fellow lensmaster flowski is getting for a 7-day period on his lens, Top 10 Best Christmas Gift Ideas 2009. I thought that traffic was pretty huge the other day when it was showing over 92,000 unique visitors for a 7-day period. But, today, it is sporting over 117,800 unique visitors. Now folks, that is traffic!!! Congratulations to Brandon on this wonderful success with the huge traffic. "Brandon "flowski" has been a member since August 18 2006, has rated 2,586 lenses, favorited 443, and has created 120 lenses from scratch."


I have a similar lens Best Christmas Presents for Gifting that was created on November 29, 2007 -- a two year old lens. But, I would wager a guess that my lens has probably NOT had 117,800 unique visitors in its two-year life span!

You know, when you have had a number 1 lens on Squidoo, it is a blessed experience. I've been there just once with Stuffed Cabbage -- this is the ONE lens out of my more than 593 lenses which means the world to me. In it I celebrate my grandmother Julia Nagy and the fond memories of Holidays with Grandma. So, having had a number 1 lens, I get lots and lots of emails which have questions about getting to that number 1 spot. A recent question from a lensmaster asked if 10,000 was a lot of traffic or normal for that number 1 spot. My answer was something like, "well a number 1 lens should surely have that amount of traffic." What about Brandon's lens? Oh, it is ONLY at number 14. Gosh, doesn't quite seem right does it? I would think traffic over 117,800 would guarantee that number 1 lensrank!

Doing my research for this blog post about traffic, I check many lenses in the Top 100. I could find no other lens approaching flowski's high traffic lens. In fact, I found many a lens well under 1,000 in 7-day unique visitors. There was a lens that passed 50,000 in 7-day unique visitors for traffic, yet that lens appeared to get no higher than maybe 40 or so in lensrank! I've seen another lens with over 15,000 traffic in one-day, and that lens was near the bottom of the Top 100. Yet, there are two additional lenses that come to mind with high one-day traffic on topicable topics -- the Presidential Vote Poll and Kevin Skinner -- those lensmasters achieved a Number 1 lensrank for their lenses.

So, how do lenses with high traffic get to the top spot? How do we as regular lensmasters even know when theses lenses have such wonderful successes with the traffic and the Google love? Recently, thefluffanutta got my attention with a Twitter tweet about the top lensmasters list that he provides us through SquidUtils.com. That made me ask, what about a list of the top traffic lenses? Wouldn't that be an interesting list to see? I know I'd love to see it.

Happy Cyber Monday to all my loyal readers, friends, buddies, chums! Have a great day.

About Me: JaguarJulie has been a member since March 21 2006, has rated 6,298 lenses, favorited 488, and has created 593 lenses from scratch.

Google Trends would suggest a seasonality for Stuffed Cabbage

Google Trends would suggest a seasonality for Stuffed Cabbage? Have you checked out Google Trends to learn more about the topics about which you write? For me, one of my favorite topics is food and cooking. I think it is because of my Hungarian and Eastern European heritage that I love to cook with old world inspired recipes and to experiment with my own. You can always find me tweaking this or that recipe and coming up with my own secret ingredients to make that recipe special. Well, one of my all time favorite comfort foods, Stuffed Cabbage, is one of the foods that I write about lots! As they say, "you are what you eat," and I surely must be stuffed cabbage or a stuffed cabbage patch kid at heart. And, I do have a pretty good sense of humor.

Google Trends is a public web facility of Google Inc., about Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. --According to Wikipedia.

Google offers some pretty amazing tools for us to help us in understanding the popularity of our topics -- you see Google is so much more than just a search engine. But, you probably already knew that if you are into that which is topicable or on the topicability index. So, stuffed cabbage is the topic for me and anytime I can find more scientific data to demonstrate the popularity of this comfort food, I am on it. I've been studying the Google Trends for the past several years, and what I find particularly interesting, is how the charted data is seemingly 'identical' for the years of 2006, 2007, and 2008. It would suggest a seasonality and consistency in the searching trends and popularity for stuffed cabbage.

Well, I decided to conduct some of my own scientific research through the employment of a reader poll, is stuffed cabbage a seasonal comfort food? Do you eat it during specific seasons of the year -- or do you eat it year around? Help support this scientific research and take some time to answer that poll. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, or year around -- when do you eat stuffed cabbage?

Oh, and why not check out Google Trends for your topic of interest? You might learn something new -- and if you do, please take a moment to tell me about it!

The Topicability of the Purple Star

The topicability of the purple star ... in the titles of lenses. Well it was just another Wednesday morning for me until I ventured into the SquidU Forum to find that yikes, my Stuffed Cabbage lens was a hot topic of discussion in that a star symbol had been inserted into the title of the lens after the title of "Stuffed Cabbage."





To help you determine how you would like to weigh in on the debate about showing special characters in lens titles, I have included a snapshot of the Stuffed Cabbage lens with the open shadowed star design that I currently employ on my twitter profile. Thus far, I have heard no comments one way or the other on the appearance of the stars on my twitter profile. So, I can't weigh in with the scientific evidence about that.

However, a few lensmasters have mentioned that browsers other than FireFox do not recognize this special shadowed open star! Hmmm -- must fix that!


OK -- so this snapshot above of my Stuffed Cabbage lens uses a special character star that I believe should image correctly in browsers other than FireFox. It doesn't quite have the impact of the other star and it is definitely not purple -- haven't figured that one out.

Well, the purple stars are being handed out now at a rate of 21 per week -- we will be close to one hundred lenses I think by the end of this week. I've got ONLY one purple star while there are lensmasters with 2 purple stars and quite possibly some of these lensmasters may earn a third purple star in the near future. I'm holding my breathe for a second one although I did NOT nominate any of my lenses this week.

So, what do you think? Like any of these stars in the titles? Actually, thinking about it ... I know I did happen to see a registration mark or a copyright mark on a lens title for a trademarked product. I think those special characters should be allowed to be used!

By the way! You wouldn't believe how many other lensmasters started employing the asterisk in their lenses titles. Good to see so many jumping on the star bandwagon.

Rewarding Content - Unveiling the Purple Star

Rewarding Content - The Unveiling of the Purple Star. The PURPLE ONE has made its appearance at Squidoo! By 'purple one,' I am referring to the purple star that is now being rewarded to Giant Squids for their quality content lenses. These purple stars made their debut on April 16, 2009 -- oh, they had been around for quite some time, but officially just hit a handful of Giant Squid 100 Club lenses.



Above is a screenshot of what that beautiful purple star looks like on a lens -- you can find the purple star next to the gold star under the lensmaster photo in the upper-right hand corner of the page. I love that my Stuffed Cabbage lens was tapped for my first purple star !



For those Giant Squid 100 Club members who have just earned their first purple star you can also see a purple star on their lensmaster profile. Check out mine!

The purple star program has now kicked into high gear! To find out more about what it takes to earn a purple star, be sure to visit this official Purple Star Program Lens lens which explains the program. At the moment it is only available to Giant Squids! So, I'd say that is an incentive to qualify as a Giant Squid!

Update: After my Stuffed Cabbage lens earned the purple star on April 16, 2009, it made it to the #1 spot overall on Squidoo on April 19th. As of May 18, 2009, it spent 24 days in the #1 spot; 6 days in the #2 spot. As of May 18th, it was one of 3 different lenses, each recently earning purple stars, to make it to the #1 spot. The Stuffed Cabbage lens, now HUB, had been experiencing excellent traffic for about 1-1/2 years, before it earned the purple star. It is open to debate whether any lens now occupying the #1 spot could achieve that lensrank without the benefit of the purple star !

Say, you're not yet on Squidoo? Hey, what are you waiting for -- here is your invitation!

New Look to Squidoo Home Page - Like Alltop

I simply must go on vacation more often -- why you ask? Well, lots of things happen when I go away! It's rather like Murphy's Law.


The first thing worth mentioning is that a whole new group of Squid Angels were chosen -- I missed out on the call as I had no internet access in Southern Spain; dog-gone it! The 'new' Squid Angels were chosen by invitation from Kimberly. I've asked that she put me on her list for the next go-around! Now, we have many returning Squid Angels doing second and third tours of duty; I'm thinking there are probably some doing a fourth tour of duty -- those lucky guys and gals!

The next really big thing that I noticed that was new was the super cool view of the Squidoo welcome page -- the home page. It gives an overall look at all the topics or categories within Squidoo by spotlighting the Top 5. I love this! Especially if I can make it into the Top 5 in any of the topics -- not an easy feat to do. Luckily, I seem to have hit on two of my lenses being spotlighted: Stuffed Cabbage and Meniscus Tear -- Not just a jock's injury! I think some lensmasters have several of their lenses showcased on this welcome page -- a hearty congrats to them!

P.S. Here is another view of Top Lenses from Squidoo -- it's Squidoorati @ Alltop.

The People Who Make My Day

I've been online for more than 12 years, first with free websites and later with several of my own websites. I've sold online through eBay, eCrater, iOffer, and Overstock; and only had an eCrater store until I closed that too. Next, I tackled blogging in 2004 and still manage to do a bit of blogging although not always daily. On March 21, 2006, I joined Squidoo and began my quest toward the Giant Squid 100 Club.

Today, I have authored over 400 lenses and spend many an hour weekly administering to my lenses, groups, and comments -- while also taking time to visit other lensmasters' lenses to offer my advice, encouragement, or to just plain make a thoughtful comment.

Well, I've had my share of some pretty remarkable comments through the past 3 years. Today, I was particularly touched by the comment I received on my Stuffed Cabbage lens. My reader Erin Baxter wrote:

I remember quite clearly the smell of stuffed cabbage floating through the house when I was a child. My family called it Sodoma (I'm not sure of the spelling) and it was my Great Grandma Fox's recipe. She was of Croatian and Slovenian descent. I never liked it but my mother still loves it although she is disabled now and can no longer make it. I am the one preparing it for her now. I put all of the ingredients together in a crock pot but instead of cooking it at my house, I take it to hers and my father and her not only get to enjoy the taste, but they get the aroma as well. Here's my family's secret ingredient - when everything is in the pot and ready to cook, you pour a pan of bacon grease ( what is left in the pan after cooking a lb of bacon) over the top. How unhealthy is that?! But my family swears by it's deliciousness!!! This recipe and other recipes of old world food MUST be passed down from generation to generation! Food is the international language of love! God bless

Join me on Squidoo! Create a lens or two, participate in the community and meet some great people like I have!

I seek comfort in Stuffed Cabbage

In times like these, I seek comfort in Stuffed Cabbage. In the past 4 weeks, much has been happening -- here, there, and everywhere. It's a time to turn to some comfort food like Stuffed Cabbage. My grandmother, Julia Nagy, bless her heart, taught me to make stuffed cabbage rolls. Our family has carried on her name through her many fabulous Hungarian and Czechoslovakian recipes.

A couple of Sundays ago, I made a huge pot of stuffed cabbage rolls that lasted us for the entire week. I've now got a request in, from one of our workers, to make this again really soon.

Today there were a lot of topical happenings over at Squidoo. Early in the morning, I received an email, from another lensmaster, alerting of a new spam filter that was snagging good lensmasters' content-rich lenses. Well, that was enough for me NOT to do any updating as Squidoo's staff is small and I wouldn't want to add to their work to hand-review any lenses.

I've taken some time today to check into the Squidu Forum -- it certainly is reassuring to see that Megan and Seth both have taken time to ensure us lensmasters that good things are being done to address the issues. Oh, and they encouraged us good lensmasters to perhaps blog about some of our GREAT lenses! Well, look no further ... this is one of my lenses that I am quite proud of ... and because of my grandmother, Julia Nagy, this lens was able to be written.

Thank you grandma ... I love you and miss you dearly! Hope to see you soon.