Diggers: Welcome To My World

Getting votes in Digg is more like getting backlinks these days, thanks to a recent algorithm change.

The recent revolt over at Digg over the social site’s algorithm change brings me to one conclusion:

Welcome to my world.

What got the Diggers so upset is a change to how stories are ranked, primarily by influential Diggers who continually rank well. What frequently happens is that these Diggers have friends who automatically “dig” their articles to help push them to the top (Hey, we all do it. Some of us just have a lot more friends).

Digg apparently decided that this was cheating and started giving less credit to folks who repeatedly promote the same Diggers. This means these influential Diggers have to get a lot more votes from a lot more people, including a wider variety of folks.

Thus, all votes are not created equal.

As an SEO, I’ve been dealing with this for years. Votes from all sites are definitely not equal. I’ve had to diversify my pool of votes from other web sites every time a search algorithm changes. Link farms, Adsense pages and even links from once respected directories have all gone by the wayside as far as backlink votes. I have to search for and find ways to receive quality votes from a variety of sites in the form of links.

I’m not taking a side with either Digg or the upset Diggers, just pointing out that SEOs, who Diggers tend to scorn, share your pain.

Now, take an aspirin and adapt.

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