The DiggBar, Digg’s browser-based toolbar for digging and sharing content, has seen a tidal wave of controversy since its release last week. The problem for many site publishers is that it frames content within the DiggBar itself, meaning that users aren’t actually on your site, but are looking at a frame of your site while staying on Digg’s servers. And the DiggBar also acts as a URL shortener, but does so using a 200 code rather than the preferred 301 permanent redirect that other shorteners use to ensure the destination sites get the traffic. Now Digg is getting ready to slightly compromise.
Digg’s VP of engineering John Quinn, writes in a post today that Digg will change the behavior of shortened URLs. For anyone not logged into Digg, they will now get a 301 redirect to the site being pointed to sans the DiggBar. Users who are logged into Digg and have not opted-out of using the DiggBar, will still get the 200 variety, meaning they will technically reside on Digg’s servers.
But the opt-out part is important to note. Users of Digg will still get the DiggBar (and its 200 code) by default, so if you don’t want it, change it in your settings or sign out of Digg. Digg clearly has made it opt-out rather than opt-in because despite the controversy, the DiggBar is working the way Digg wanted. Quinn notes that since the DiggBar’s launch, roughly 45% of all digging activity now comes through the DiggBar. He also notes that a quarter of the users are using it to find other content on the site.
With the DiggBar now doing 301 redirects for non logged-in users, Quinn says that the Digg-shortened URLs will not appear in the major search engines. Of course, he also said that last week when he gave an update on the DiggBar amid the first wave of controversy. Despite his assurances last time, huge sites like Engadget opted to block the DiggBar. Other sites, like The New York Times already block iframes, which means the DiggBar won’t work there either.
We’ll be interested to hear what Danny Sullivan and other SEO experts have to say about these latest changes. Early reactions from others who were opposed seem pretty favorable.
Digg says it’s working to get these changes out next week. And it says it’s still listening to feedback about the tool, which means that we’ll probably have another update on another round of changes in a week. But Quinn notes that the DiggBar is valuable to the “vast majority” of Digg users — which is probably true, it’s just some publishers that don’t like it. And who cares about them (us) anyway?
If you don’t like Digg’s URL shortener, feel free to use ours. Just hit the ‘Tweet This’ button at the bottom of each post to send it to Twitter with our shortener. Or find a short URL at the very bottom of the comment section.
ahh.. Only Slight relief from that DiggBar thing which I also didn’t like very much.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Smart move. I hated the Digg bar both as publisher and digg user, but its extremely valuable as far as digg is concerned.
Agree 100%. Hate the bar but realize it’s good for Digg, so this seems like a good compromise.
I wonder if there was much internal debate about the DiggBar and its potential ramifications?
What do you guys hate about it as Digg users?
well… how many toolbars does one needs?
I’m going to run out of browser screen space. But I can see my 20 toolbars.
Good question I kind of like it. and I hope this trend of the frame bar get bigger
Digg bar is too thick, and it wont scroll up and disappear when we scroll down. Instead it is static and eats away precious pixels.
This doesn’t change anything.
1. The frame based toolbar steals content, traffic, and potential revenue from publishers.
2. It contributes to cluttering the Web
3. It spams website visitors
4. By allowing it you create incentive for others to create their own framebars
5. It’s unethical and illegal
If you’re not breaking the Diggbar, you’re part of the problem.
http://tomuse.c...onsible-spambar
…Or it’s just an extension of Digg’s site.
I am not sure why publishers are complaining about DiggBar… Wouldn’t that tremendously improve the chances that their site will be Digged, commented on, which will attract more users coming from other sources….
What I don’t like is that Digg it self sends the user to the DiggBar shortened url. But for a URL shortening service, I believe all those Digg submissions will eventually get them more and more traffic….
What do you guys think ?
Follow me @ http://twitter.com/mcastilho
Its mainly about two things –
i) Drains google juice
ii) Obscures actual page url.
Huge win. Internet: 1, Digg: 0.
Now only if they would make the digbar opt in we can call it a day.
You opt in by opting to use digg, they have every right to develop their (free) service as they wish
If they don’t visit the site, the site owner doesn’t get the hit, therefore, traffic numbers on the site drop and they lose leverage when pricing ads. Less hits, less money.
Hah, “While the vast majority of Digg users find the DiggBar valuable (only a very small number of users have disabled the feature or hit close with any frequency)”.
Sure, they must find it valuable if they haven’t yet disabled it or don’t close it frequently!
Slight relief, but I’ll take it. I think it’s another compliment to the SEO community and to web authors & users. Well done, digg.
I wrote about DiggBar and SEO:
http://www.tjkw...not-seo-killer/ Check it out!
Every publisher that I’ve spoken to…the ones creating content that they like to share with others, have told me that they are just fine with tools like the DiggBar. The ones getting upset are SEO Experts who only start creating content when they can get attention. The SEO people who really care about publishing have spoken to our team at BurnURL and like Digg, we’re making sure everyone is happy.
As I wrote here:
http://skitzzo....g-in-web-20.php
ALL content producers should care about sites like yours stealing our content.
I find it ironic that you’re coming out against SEO Experts with the argument that we don’t create content, when in fact, YOUR site does NOTHING but leech off the content other people create.
I would certainly hope you’re following Digg’s lead on this but even better would be making your service something publishers can opt into rather than forcing us to opt out via framebusting scripts.
Amen skitzzo! Drew, you can turn this discussion into an attack on SEO all you want.
While you are doing that, we’ll continue the discussion about how “user enhancements” (especially as they apply to shortening services) should distributed only to people who are actual users. (i.e. they voluntarily signed up and logged into your service)
To me, anything short of that is unacceptable. And I’d be willing to bet that at the end of the day, my list of publishers (who agree) will be much larger than yours.
The only thing it proves is that you haven’t talked to enough publishers. I can come up with a statement like “every content publisher I have spoken to hates the diggbar” while having spoken to 2 publishers.
oh yeah.. one more thing. I just tested my Ning community URL with your service. It does not work. With http://bit.ly works just fine. One more reason why services that frame content should die.
Drew, I’m an SEO expert. I also create content that I like to share with others. It’s not content that I created just to get attention (though I don’t know anyone who writes any type of content that they don’t hope gets attention). And yeah, I’ve got a real problem with how your service frames my content. And I have no doubt that if you give me 3 minutes with those publishers you say love what you’re doing, I’ll have them pretty angry and disturbed when they really understand what’s going on. It’s not just an SEO thing.
Thankfully these changes will eliminate the SEO issues the Diggbar presented.
I’m still not fond of any site (including Digg) framing my content without prior consent but at least now it won’t have negative SEO implications.
@Cory – the way Digg is framing the site actually calls the site just like a regular visitor does. The framed site will still receive a visit and thus their ad impressions etc won’t suffer.
Let’s hope other sites like Owly follow Digg’s lead on this.
Great to see digg coming to this compromise. Ow.ly (hootsuite) will be implementing these same changes in an upcoming release.
What is a 200 redirect? A 200 is a successful HTTP response with the originating site in a container frame. There is no redirect about it.
exactly, it’s the second techcrunch article in a week that talks about “200 redirect” . 200 means “OK”. there’s no redirect here, it’s a page in a frame
Yes, someone brought that up in the previous article, but I guess the TC/author didn’t read the comments. It sure makes the author look clueless, given how many times he mentions it in this current article.
Thanks guys, my bad there with the language. Updated that.
If it wasn’t for people like Skitzzo standing up for what they know is right, Digg would have kept stealing the search engine juice. I think they deserve some props for that. SEO has a ton of scam artists and spammers, but the good ones accomplish some great things.
awesome, now it only affects diggers
NEVER compromise! How do you think Vista became so successful!
Per other comments- hard to know what a ‘200′ direct is. I think you mean ‘302′
http://www.goog...t,+302+redirect
Since when should Digg base their business around keeping SEO companies happy?
Getting more users and more people “digging” content is what will deliver value not passing page rank.
A nice move from Digg. I can imagine that the Diggbar is very useful for heavy Digg users. They are now able to stay on the page and do all their Digg stuff like digging, commenting etc.
I cannot believe you someone on a site with “tech” in the title would actually post:
“The problem for many site publishers is that it frames content within the DiggBar itself, meaning that users aren’t actually on your site, but are looking at a frame of your site while staying on Digg’s servers.”
Do you have any idea how a web browser works? The end user is no-more or no-less “on your site” with the DiggBar loaded. IFRAMES do not equal proxy requests or anything like that. Please get a clue.
Besides the shortened URL that takes you first to digg and then to the actuall site (just like tinyurl and others) none of the links or other content on the page is affected. This is no different than using the google toolbar or any other installable toolbar except that it does not need to be installed.
What a bunch of FUD.
I’ve just been to digg.com, not logged in. I click on a Digg story, and it takes me to the Digg shortened URL (i.e. the framed page). However no 301 redirect seems to occur – I stay within the framed Digg page. So what’s all this talk of a 301 redirect happening to non-logged in users?
Is the 301 redirect something they are implementing in the future, because it’s not happening now (I was not logged in when browsing Digg, just like search engine spiders won’t be).
I find myself visiting Digg less and less because of the Diggbar. When I do visit, I don’t bother to actually click on the links. Sure you can disable by logging in and changing your account settings, but half the time I’m viewing Digg without actually being logged in..