Seth Godin developed Squidoo because he was dissatisfied with the quality of information often provided by search engines. He wanted to create a space (a lens) where internet marketers could provide in-depth information about a topic, program or area of interest.

He set up Squidoo so that internet marketers could create a lens that had a number of modules that brought together information from other sources such as Article Directories, YouTube, Flickr, Amazon.com, EBay and other websites and blogs. He wanted to integrate RSS feeds as well.

Each Squidoo lens represents an in-depth focus or window on a topic. People have created lenses on affiliate programs, products, services, singers, hobbies, sports, personal development, entertainment, parenting, pets and charities. The topic of your lens is only limited by your interest and imagination.

Squidoo lenses are very easy to develop and you can develop a lens (in-depth, focused web page) on any topic. You can have as many lenses as you like. It is a chance to be highly creative, have fun, brand yourself and your expertise and generate traffic to your website or blog.

The growth of Squidoo

Squidoo started in October 2005 and now has over 100,000 lenses and Squidoo.com has a Google ranking of 7. The Alexa ranking of Squidoo is 747 at the time of writing (up 424 places in 3 months).

Leading internet marketers like Joel Comm have recognised the value of Squidoo by creating their own Squidoo lenses to promote their e-books, programs and resources on specific topics such as Google Adsense.

Squidoo has now reached a critical mass and is beginning to grow exponentially as the established lensmasters promote the program and others write books and articles about its benefits. Many people wished they had got in early on YouTube or MySpace. However, the opportunity to get in on the ground of an accelerating trend has come around again with the advent of Squidoo.

The Squidoo Opportunity

Squidoo provides the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert and to create traffic and income to your website or blog. Ironically, Google ranks Squidoo lenses very highly and even more highly than blogs. I have a Squidoo lens that was ranked in the top ten results for my keyword within two weeks.

Google will continue to value Squidoo lenses because they give the community the results they are looking for when they use a search engine. NOW is the time to act and grab your share of the very valuable Squidoo internet real estate.