Running through SEOmoz's Indextools stats this month, Matt & I noted that Digg has sent considerably less traffic the last two times SEOmoz has been on the site than ever before (starting with our first "Dugg" post back in January 2006). On average, we see between 12-20,000 unique visits from making the Digg home page, sometimes considerably more (up to 30,000 at times). Below are some illustrative examples:
In February of this year, Matt wrote 3 posts that made Digg's home page:
The total for all Digg.com referrals was 68,000 in February. Now look at March, when SEOmoz had two articles hit the Digg home page:
In March, our total traffic from Digg was 34,000 visits, which pales in comparison to February, but still averages more than 15,000 visits per "dugg" post. April was a slow content month (for Matt, anyway, who seems highly attuned to what the Diggers want), but in May, we once again had 2 front-page Digg posts.
Total Digg traffic from May - 18,000; not even 10,000 visitors per "dugg" post. This suggests a pattern, but it's wise to consider all the alternatives before making a snap judgement.
- May isn't over yet - maybe we'll get a hug spike? OK, not likely, as most Digg traffic is very temporal and lasts only 2-3 days at the most.
- Maybe the articles in May made the homepage at bad times? Nope. The Web 2.0 article was on the homepage throughout a Wednesday morning and the 17 Rules post made popular around 11am on a Monday - prime Digg traffic hours.
- Perhaps Digg's traffic is using the RSS feed? Nope. Digg only shows the Digg URLs in the RSS feed, so users are forced to click-through to get the actual URL.
- Could those articles be less interesting to Diggers? Possibly... But, they don't have considerably fewer "Diggs" than our other posts (though a pair of Matt's had a LOT of votes). This would be the most likely alternate explanation.
Far be it from me to post information like this without checking on stats from others. According to my unnamed, but "on-Digg-all-the-time" sources from around the SEO world, Digg has also been sending them far less traffic than previous efforts.
My best guess is that the HD-DVD fiasco had a negative impact on Digg's regular readers. As noted in this Reddit thread, a gaggle of some size moved to that site, while some other posts suggest that general site abandonment over the issue was rampant. This doesn't put any kind of nail in the coffin, but it's more evidence that Digg has lost some of its traffic.
p.s. Digging more into historical Digg traffic - you can see that back in Jan. of 2006, we had 22,000+ visits from a Digg. Here's a post from June 2006 showing 16K visits in the first 9 hours. Barry also pointed out that a late afternoon Digg sent him 17K+ visits in February.
This Minneapolis resident would suggest a possibly seasonal effect. The data presented is sparse, but the best evidence it presents would indicate a slide from January through the present.
In the winter - January is the worst - us of the great frozen north are trapped indoors, huddled around our flatscreens for warmth, clicking on anything, anything at all. Digg is perfect for this. We are Legion, and our clicks are many.
Now it's been spring, and we're all emerging from hibernation - thus compulsively outdoors; biking, skating, fishing, cruising, hiking, basking, and rutting ... no longer clicking on every Digg headline we see, just to keep our fingers thawed out. I would expect to see the decline continue until the end of summer.
That seasonal effect, plus the small data sample used and all the multitude of impossible-to-control-for variables and I think this isn't really support for the contention that "Digg is Dead." I can understand the temptation though ... which is why this is such a good linkbait piece!
It's really too soon to know if this is all the effect of the recent HD-DVD key, but I suspect that does have something to do with this. Whren I was reading some of the coverage and comments from diggers you could tell a lot weren't going to come back.
You'd think the number of diggs the post are getting would decline too though and if they're not it may mean something else is going on.
Digg has certainly had one of the more immature audiences and that immaturity can be fickle. The same way they turned against anything related to seo they could easily turn against digg itself.
<blockquote>Could those articles be less interesting to Diggers? Possibly... But, they don't have considerably fewer "Diggs" than our other posts (though a pair of Matt's had a LOT of votes). This would be the most likely alternate explanation.</blockquote>
I would agree.
When I did some digg analysis on our network back in Jan we found on average:
Personally, digg.com appears to have 'less' high quality articles than in early 2006, when frontpage stories were fresh and had the 'wow-factor'. These days, i'm jaded by the:
I'm sure I'm not alone.
Seems like Digg is not getting "dugg" anymore.
Yeh.. i know its a bad joke but I couldn't help myself
All the Digg clones may have diluted their brand a bit too. That and there are other sites like Digg that are more niche and may offer more social community aspects. The look and feel are a bit outdated now IMO, it was sexy when they first launched, but the look-a-likes were relentless.
I think one problem with the SEOMoz stories is that idiot Diggers hate SEO, and hate anyone that submits their own stories.
Out of the few SEOMoz articles I've seen on the frontpage, all of them were filled with crap ( and modded up ) comments like "Stop blogspamming &$^@& SEOMoz", etc etc
Diggers have hated SEO companies for a long time... they hated us when the site was bringing us a lot of traffic as well. I do find it amusing when the comments are full of SEO-hatred and yet the story doesn't get buries... :)
I do love how it's "blogspam" just because it comes from an SEO company.
It's content, for Christ's sake! We build it for the site (just like every other article/story/cat picture out there), not to trick, confound or otherwise manipulate Diggers or anyone else.
One more time, all together now: Linkbait is NOT spam.
I've seen a drop in Digg-based traffic as well, and while I do think that this implies Digg's traffic is down at the moment, I don't think it will be permanent. Digg's obviously had a bit of backlash here, but I think people will go back to it.
Great post. I agreed with all the things you say. Also i want to ask - why my post are not showing on first page on Digg-beacuse i'm not popular or something else? Is't necessary to be popular digg user?
If the number of people - seasonally adjusted - visiting Digg is actually dropping then there will be no reversal. Every activity that has a social attraction for people has a use-by date and that's been the same right through history.
These days the use-by date comes around a whole lot faster than it did in the past so perhaps what you're seeing is the beginning of Digg's use-by date.
I'm not suggesting that Digg will fade away completely because there will be community that remains but the glory days may have gone.
True - i didn't think we'd see the shift away from MySpace that I'm now seeing, either, but people are getting sick of the spam, the profile hacks and the ads. The profile hacks, IMO, are the main thing that's driving people away from that site. If you have more than ten friends (and especially if your friends aren't that bright!) every second message you get is spam and every third bulletin post is about buying crap online.
The influx of people to Bebo and Facebook is currently astonishing, and many of those are ex-MySpacers.
When you think about it it's no different than what happens to most everything and as Stuart pointed out it just happens fatser now and faster online.
A certain group becomes attracted to something and sets the fashion and trend and then the masses climb on board. At some point the eaarly adopters move on along with many of the masses. They all move on to the next thing.
A certain group usually remains behind and those that are left were probably the real market all along.
I still tjink we need a little more time to see what happens to Digg. Is this just a natural migration away? Is this the result of the recent HD-DVD incident? Is it just a couple of weeks of really nice weather and people are spending more time outside? My guess is we're seeing the start of a decline for Digg, but it really is too soon to say.
I think the problem is that Digg as a site is getting more traffic and actually more contributors. Articles seem to be moving on and off of the front page much faster than they have in the past and the articles that are hitting the most popular list are the articles that have a broad often sensationalist appeal.
Therefore if you article appeals to core Digg users it will make it to the front page but become quickly pushed off by re-hashed linkbait by two-bit spam-bloggers and never make the most popular list.
I think a large immigration of less tech savvy users has watered down the standard for content to perform well on the site. The HD DVD key fiasco is a scapegoat, Digg is still the leader by far over Reddit concerning traffic and authority and that's the problem.
Evan
I gotta agree that Digg doesnt seem to appear as big as it once was.. especially with all the lookielikies out there.. however perhaps there is an element of seasonality here as mentioned above.. weather is getting better (ok, perhaps for you guys, still raining in the UK!) and people are out and about more often...
Has anything like this 'drop' occured in the past? Looking at the data over the past year... if not, then maybe we are finally seeing a 'calm down' on the 'Digg effect'... who knows
Interesting food for thought tho Rand :)
There are just so many similar sites to Digg out there now--it's hardly surprising that we're seeing less traffic I suppose.
I have had continuous Digg traffic by having a couple of buttons on the page. The article was getting dugg throughout three days and was still bringing traffic (albeit smaller, of course).
I guess the traffic also depends on the amount of diggs, as rightly noted before.
Not that it doesn't mean that Digg didn't lose traffic over the cracked code.
While I do think that some people left Digg in the latest "mass exodus", I'd be skeptical to say that it's half of what it used to be. Digg traffic is contingent on a lot of factors: quality of story, number of diggs, lifespan before it was usurped, strength of the Digg category, etc. So it's hard to say with 100% certainty that the numbers are across the board lower than they used to be, at least at the levels you're suggesting.
No argument, Jeff. As I said in the post:
Dozens of factors could influence the traffic levels on specific Diggs, but this data, combined with our friends telling us similar tales, suggests a pattern.
Rand,
I'm seeing Digg users actually read the source pages less and less, which may account for the traffic slippage. Call it what you will, but it is a game of Digg or bury as fast as can, without ever really reading the article.
Putting those cynical views aside, have you noticed a drop in the halo Digg traffic (referring specifically to the increase in links and traffic from sites outside Digg that reference the source article)? Granted, this is more difficult to measure, but if it is roughly the same from the rough link graphing, then from a SEO perspective all is well.
I think that the turning point for digg was June 2006. That's when things got heated with top users. There were "gaming" acusations and then several of the top users left for Netscape. I think the overall content quality dropped after that. Now you have things like Geekiest Bowl Ever making the front page. Just kidding Matt! I dugg it.
I don't think the HD-DVD fiasco had a long term negative effect. In fact, the publicity from the incident probably caused the site to grow, if anything.
I don't think the HD-DVD fiasco had a long term negative effect. In fact, the publicity from the incident probably caused the site to grow, if anything.
I agree. Diggers were pissed and agitated but they loved the controversy. The sheer amount of submitters and users trying to game the system is causing everyone to suffer.
If you need tech news there are many better places to get it than digg.com.
I've seen a drop in Digg traffic as well. It *could be* lots of things but I suspect the HD-DVD incedent has a lot to do with it as that is when the traffic drop began. A lot of holes in the system were revealed. And Digg's initial ban-slaping was a bit too reminicent of a popular forum a lot of us used to frequent. And we all know how that turned out, don't we?
The publicity Digg picked up from that incedent is mostly negative. Sure a lot of people probably dropped by the site out of curriousity but those weren't "born Diggers"... they were the people that slow down to see the carnage on the highway. They don't have any ties to the Digg community or any real care for it.
As for the community itself, it seems pretty fractured.
MHO
What time did the stories hit the front page?
A story which lands the frontpage at 3am EST will not get as many clicks as one that lands the frontpage at 6pm EST.
Good analysis - my guess is the "appeal" of digg has somewhat faded a bit.
Another type of analysis that may relate to this is how many digg's are front page stories getting. I.e. if the overall traffic was declining, then one would suspect that number of digg's would also decline ... not only to get on the front page, but the overall totals of popular stories. Ditto number of comments. You'd need to analyze a large number of stories to be statistically valid.
Wonder if similar behavior seen at other sites like Fark, Slashdot, etc.
With the recent controversy Niel Patel was involved in - the burying of stories by digg admins report - there was a lot to notice about the digg community... never really played in the space... but it does seem as if it is less popular or the teen users are distracted by something else
I haven't used digg until lately because i run a competing
website that just launched www.vybr.com
so i am checking out all the sites which might be related.
Looking at various traffic charts digg is losing traffic
and the time this happened was even before the redesign of the webpage. That was even before removing the top user list i believe.
The problem is very simple. For a mass audience the topic is too niche. I am a technical person and i couldn't give a rats about the ubuntu and whatnot linux geek stuff.
My site vybr.com will be much more broad. Right now its mostly celebrity stuff to get things going