11/27/08

Digg and Traffic

Earlier tonight, one of my articles (6 Greatest Signs) landed on the front page of Digg.com, sending thousands of new visitors to this site.  Now Digg users are notorious for only briefly checking out a site, and then leaving as quickly as they came.  Tonight was not exception.  In one of my reports, it seems that 80% of the several thousand visitors spent 5 seconds or less on the site before departing as quickly as they came.  

Also, apparently many of the Diggers were upset with my simple blog, and had my front page article "buried," which meant it was sent away from the front page- into oblivion somewhere.  The point is, that article was a very good way for me to reach new audiences and it was abruptly taken away from me by some unfriendly Diggers.

Something that really upset me was that several other articles around mine (on Digg) were not buried as mine was.  I wanted answers.

After a little research, I found out that an article can be buried due to an algorithm that resides in Digg.  Here's what Digg's "Help" section says:
"The promotion and burying of stories is managed by an algorithm developed by Digg.  There is no hard number of [buries] to [remove] a story.  It's based on a sliding scale that takes several factors into consideration..."

So basically, I would just have to deal with it.

Needless to say, I'm more than a little upset about the whole ordeal.  I'm wondering if any of my readers/visitors have had a similar issue with Digg.  Let me know if you have or not, please.

7 comments:

  1. I've been intrigued by this digg thing hoping to get thousands of visitors, but to no success until now.
    Reading your article worsens my doubts for digg.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In all fairness, your prior article didn't necessitate more than 5 seconds to look at the 6 images. When people browse digg, they're basically looking for Highlights of the Internet, meaning they check out a story, then move on to the next. If they spent more than a minute checking out the rest of the sites they go to, they'd miss out on all that Digg has to offer.

    How often do YOU realistically spend on other blog sites you discover through Digg? Do you more often than not go beyond the article or image in question?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Furthermore, you have two things to consider.

    First: If your article hits the front page 23 hours and 50 minutes after submitting it, IT WILL DISAPPEAR when it hits the 24 hour mark, no matter how many diggs it's received. This applies to EVERY submission.

    Second: The six signs were nothing new. Being an average digg user myself, I can tell you that I've seen each of them numerous times before. Personally, I wouldn't bury something if it was a duplicate but still made me laugh, but in this case, I just don't think there was enough original and funny in the content to get people to Digg it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Angel:
    Don't give up hope! I am a firm believer that good content will be appreciated by any number of people. And Keven was right- my "6 Best Signs" article really wasn't the most unique. There was room for improvement, which I will continue to work at in future articles.
    What I'm trying to say is this: If you write likable content, it will be"Dugg", "Redd" and/or "Delicious'd."

    Keven:
    Thank you for your view on the situation. I agree with a large portion of the things you said. I appreciate your straight-forward and honest answers. I believe your perspective will help me fine-tune and tweak future articles in ways I normally would not have (such as double checking content uniqueness).
    Also, as a part-time Digg'r, I totally agree with you about the whole 'spending 5 seconds on a page' bit. I am guilty of doing it too. I think I was just blinded by the fact that I had several thousand views in a short time, but not many will ever come back or sign up for the RSS.

    Again, thank you both for commenting- This blog is as much an ongoing conversation as it is a platform for stories.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have been finding Forum posts far outweigh Digg benefits in terms of page views. If all you're looking to get out of Digg is a big pop, you might have to wait a while to earn it - but BB posts bring in consistent, returning traffic.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You're definitely right about forums posts, but having managed a few large forums, I can tell you two things you need to be prepared for:
    1. Google ads will have a MUCH lower clickthrough rate
    2. It's very difficult to reach a tipping point where your members stimulate enough discussion that it doesn't require as much of your effort to keep the forum alive.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Actually, I've given up on the whole Adsense thing- I just want to publish material people enjoy.

    And I agree, Keven- I am having a hard time reaching that conversational tipping point.

    As far as social networks go, I'm finding I'm getting some good exposure via sites like wtfurls.com, urls4all.com, etc

    Thank you both for your thoughts.

    ReplyDelete

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