There has been plenty of discussion about the stories that become popular on Digg. However, these posts don't actually help the submitter that much. Do 'Microsoft' stories hit the front page frequently because there are a lot of stories submitted about Microsoft or because Diggers love Microsoft?
I think it is much more useful to look at the statistics behind what does and doesn't get promoted. The most important metric is one I've termed 'Promote Rate': the percentage of stories with a given characteristic that get promoted to the front page.
I wrote an analysis a little over 6 months ago that looked at some of the key characteristics and felt it was time to update and expand on my initial analysis (a few friends were submitting some content to Digg and I wanted to offer them the best advice).
Time of Day and Day of Week
Mid-week (Tuesday and Wednesday) have historically been the most active days on Digg. Most stories are submitted and promoted on these two days. However, Sunday and Monday are the best day of week to submit a story:
In addition, Sunday afternoon to evening is by far the best time of the week to submit a story. A story is twice as likely to be promoted during this period than the worst time (early am on a weekday).
Category
The most popular categories are not necessarily the categories that are best to submit to. The two graphs below show the difference between the top categories by stories promoted and the categories with the highest promote rates.
I'd like to repeat the analysis with terms in the headline, but I'll need to save that for another post.
Notes:
This analysis was conducted on data over the last three months: 10/27/07 to 1/26/08. The data for this analysis was retrieved using the Digg API. There are a few holes due to API-related errors, but I believe 98% of the stories submitted are represented here (about 770K submissions).
Not that I'm opposed, but I'm wondering why this story went directly to the main blog. Is it because it's "that good"?
BTW - nice article Dave. Thumbs up. Do you have any hypothesis as to why articles are best submitted on Sunday afternoon - evening? Is that across the board, or just for certain categories?
He knew what time to submit it.
Seriously though, nice post!
Well, I kinda jumped right into that one. You're a fast one Critchlow/
I'd guess that Sunday evening would be best because of the reduced traffic. Less posts means less competition.
But I'm guessing this data is Seattle-time-zone based and Digg is pretty global, so I'm not sure how that effects the data.
Thanks for the compliment Sean.
My hypothesis is that the Monday morning surge of activity favors posts that have already gotten some traction the night before.
On Monday morning, there is a surge of post/vote/comment activity. Posts that were submitted the night before have had a chance to make it to the 'hot lists' in each category. There isn't a tremendous amount of competition in the 'hot lists' (since everthing submitted monday morning is still waiting to accrue enough votes to get to the hot list).
So basically, it is a factor of less competition vis-a-vis activity on the more visible hot list.
That is my theory at least. I haven't done enough research to figure out if that is truly the cause.
I thought it was very interesting, and he put a lot of effort into his study and into the images, so front page it is.
Good post, love to hear more on using / interacting with these social sites (more than whats in the social media guide)
Thanks for sharing your analysis.
Dave,
Amazing research. I want to try your formula and see how it works and keep tracking the trends from now on. I will keep sending more stuff as i do the research.
Amazing research and analysis. Nice effort in doing this not-so-easy study. Keep it up!
Thats really a very nice research done by Mr. Dave !!
It's appreciated but my concern is as you know that each country has different time difference, so how could people figure out their exact country time?
Well done bro.
Great post! It's great to see the data to back up your theories. Guess I'll be logging on a lot more frequently on those Sunday evenings then...
3 cheers for data mining! srsly. glugglugglug.
this went into my "do not delete" bookmark folder. cha-ching.
;)
next week! the most ergonomic way to out-rank your competators.
Nice post... I spent most of the time at 'Category' graph. Looks like really hard work. How did you calculate the promote rates of the categories?
The Digg API provides a bunch of information about stories. Category and story status (if the story was promoted or not) were both available from the API.
I had less than a million stories, so I pulled the data into Excel (an incredibly quick tool for analysis when it can be used). A few pivot tables later and I had the data for the graphs you see above. PM me if you want a look at the promote rates for all of the categories - I have the data readily available but thought it was a bit overwhelming for a post.
Great research article there Dave.
Do you have the promote rate by hour for each day individually? you only compared Sunday to all of the other days on the line graph. Would be interested to see graphs for each day of the week.
Todd, I did look at the daily activity by hour, but I didn't see any trends that were noticeable enough to call out independently. Drop me a note if you're interested and I'll send you those graphs.
In an interersting twist, this conflicts a bit with the best time to launch viral content, which I believe is Tuesday mid-morning Pacific time, early afternoon East Coast time. Granted, my data is much more anecdotal, but I've noticed that for content both here on SEOmoz and the viral work we launch for clients, Tuesday is the most highly trafficked, likely-to-spread day.
Must be when the linkerati are at their hungriest :)
Yeah, I think the takeaways here are limited to Digg, and are a function of the mechanics of Digg's Submit/Vote system.
I wouldn't be surprised if the effects of a well-executed viral campaign on a highly trafficed day overwhelm the added benefit provided by the Sunday submission on Digg alone.
Very nicely done dude. Good article.
I second DebGeorge! All information I didn't know before is great information to read about.
Thanks for the presentation of your "homework". It was very insightful! Especially from someone who is just beginning to tackle SEO!!!
This article is most likely going to go front page on Digg (It has 3 Diggs already). As soon as it does, everyone that is actively trying to improve their status (become top users on Digg) are going to shift their habits. This article is going to effect the statistics it sought to study, effectively invalidating all of the data presented.