Diffusing the DiggBar traffic timebomb

Davey Winder
Thursday, 16 April 2009 05:06

Business IT - Technology

In the new posting made at 9am on the 15th April, John Quinn acknowledges that Digg has "received valuable feedback from the Digg community, publishers, SEO industry experts and Google."

With some 45 percent of all Digging activity now coming via the DiggBar, it has certainly been a success. Quinn reckons that some 25 percent of all DiggBar users have discovered new content they wouldn't have spotted otherwise courtesy of the related search feature.

"Along with all of the positive feedback and results, we’ve also heard your concerns that we take seriously and want to address quickly" Quinn admits, however, adding "We are rolling out a few key changes over the next week or so."

These changes would appear to revolve around a new way to handle those Digg short URLs which means that all anonymous users, on or off Digg, will be taken directly to content via a permanent 301 redirect without the toolbar.

Logged in users, who can always opt out of DiggBar use, will continue to see the DiggBar.

The DiggBar will soon only be visible to logged in users, with the opt out process being made a lot more obvious.

"These changes ensure that content providers receive full search engine ‘juice’ or credit for all links on and off Digg" Quinn says "They also ensure that Digg short URLs won’t appear in the indexes of any major search engines."

Quinn says he is hopeful that the changes will be pushed out live next week, and promises further additional enhancements and updates soon.

So, does this diffuse the DiggBar timebomb for you? Let us know via our user comment feature.