I wasn’t sure about posting about getting the nix from digg earlier this week, but apparently it was on many people’s minds. The response has been pretty amazing. Note, it was a blog domain name, not a user account that was added to the digg banned submission list.
Here’s a list of blogs/sites that have been talking about digg’s spam and editorial policies this week.
- How to be a dirty digger – Graywolf
- The list of domains ditched by digg keeps growing – Chris Winfield
- Done with digg – Kim Krause
- A new social news site for SEO
- digg banning domains open to abuse – Brian Turner
- digg digs further down deeper – Red Dixon
- digg members go renegade – Lisa Barone via Bruce Clay blog
- Digg’s Spam Policy Is Still In The Dark Ages РConnected Internet
- Spam fighting getting reputable domains banned – Tony Hung @ Deep Jive Interests
- Digg hater – not sure what to think about this one
- Spotting the disturbing digg trends, time to move on – Tamar Weinberg
- Digg and your social marketing strategy – Fused Nation
- digg acts more like Google and less like a social media site – Roger Kondrat
- No really, what’s up with digg thug posses? – Li Evans
The story was also mentioned by Andy Beal, Todd Malicoat, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land and Danny Sullivan on they Daily Search Cast.
Thank you to everyone who is making the effort to draw attention to this. If nothing else, digg will be more specific in it’s published policies. Ideally, they’ll improve their “banning” process because right now, it’s wide open for abuse.
There are some interesting points made in the comments on digg and in the stories above such as, “Why is this a big deal? If the SEO site is any good, it will get traffic from the search engines.” Also, “digg is a social news site, the community decides what it wants in or out at it’s discretion.” Then there’s these comments, “SEO = spam” where there really is no room for discussion. Very much like how digg support works.
The most interesting commentary to me, comes from Tony Hung who describes the inherent issues digg must be dealing with due to the massive amounts of traffic, stories, etc they’re handing and the method they use for moderating stories and domain/user bans which is prone to abuse.
There are a lot of good things in digg and it would be a shame to see it peter out because of DMOZ style power trips (as Jill says) and “baby out with the bathwater” style editorial policies.
Yeah, not used a digg button on our blog to make it easy for “SEO” flavored stories to be submitted. digg users hate SEO.
I was shocked to hear about toprankblog’s banning. Is there anything specific that if you look back on you would have done differently in terms of your interaction with digg? I’m curious about the catalyst for banning so it can be avoided.
Pete — often times its nothing that a URL does that gets it banned; quite often it is probably small cadre sof diggers who have a pre-existing prejudices against different things. People who don’t like blogs. People who don’t like SEO. People who find “web2.0” design “annoying”. People who don’t like marketers.
If you’re looking for a way to make sure a URL isn’t banned, the only absolute way is to make sure its never submitted to Digg. I think as long as the banning and “spamming” process works the way it does, there will always be a risk that you will be offending someone even if your intentions are pure.
That is to say, even if your blog is about potatoes, and say, you did a post about “top 10 awesome things to do with Potatoes AFTER Xmas”, you might get buried NOT because people hate potatoes (who hates potatoes?), but because people don’t like blogs, they might view your submission as “spam”, or overly commercial etc etc.
Cheers
t
Hi Lee,
Thanks for noticing my post and I am glad you are receiving so much support. I still don’t get how a sight like Digg can support such a tactic. It goes against everything they stand for at least from the perspective of a reader.
Also you should know your stuff is being ripped off by SEOCOIN.com unless thats an affiliated site you may want to chat with them.
What surprises me about the whole Digg vs SEO issue is the blanket dislike. In one sense SEO’s are simply webmasters with a greater awareness of marketing possibilities online (crude, I know). But the actions of a few “seo spammers” shouldn’t blacklist SEO as a practice anymore than email spam should mean people reject using email.
2c.
Here is the story of the “catalyst” that got me banned from Digg:
http://paulamooney.blogspot.com/2006/12/all-diggnations-men.html