Digg Traffic Worst Compared to 3 Other Social Sites ;-)
It's no secret that SEO 2.0 has more traffic from social media than from search, mostly due to it's popularity on StumbleUpon and Sphinn. Indeed direct traffic equaled search traffic with 15% each during the last 30 days.
These days weren't really very busy outside the huge buzz around the Google browser. I got several dozens of links immediately from other blogs as well as sites and for a few days I got thousands of visitors from numerous sources.
So while at it and during the remaining of the last 30 days nothing much happened, besides, yes, besides that I got in a way "popular" on Digg (where I was buried before reaching the frontpage) and 3 other social sites where you'd rather not expect any significant traffic numbers.
As this blog is obviously an SEO blog it's important to note that it can't get on the frontpage of Digg.
Digg blacklists sites that deal with SEO.
So if you're after alternative traffic sources for a topic or blog that gets blacklisted at Digg as well (and you have tried StumbleUpon already) you might want to know how these sites performed: Mixx, Social|Median, Twitter.
As the sheer traffic or number of visits does not tell you much about the real people visiting your site I combined the number of visits with three other metrics of user engagement.
| Social Site | Visits (Visits - Bounces) |
Bounce Rate | Time on Site | Pages per Visit |
| Digg | 125 (17) | 86,40% | 00:37 | 1.22 |
| Mixx | 216 (25) | 88.43% | 01:01 | 1.19 |
| Social|Median | 166 (27) | 83.73% | 01:29 | 1.33 |
| 168 (20) | 88.10% | 01:11 | 1.21 |
.
What's apparent, all of these numbers are indeed very insignificant. Still it's more than most blog links brought and the people who populate these social sites are the most active users of the social web, the early adopters and power users. Anyways having just 20 - 30 people per month really visit you without bouncing shows that these sites do not matter as much as you'd like them to.
Take also note that Digg is the worst performer of all these sites. The post I got on Digg had 200 diggs in 24h, several others have been submitted to Digg too but the traffic was so poor.
So what's the most important outcome of this not only humorous post? Even Twitter is better than Digg!
I would have long forgotten social media websites, if not for the link building effects it has. My main source of traffic is and will be search, and two of my top traffic posts have been dugg and linked to massively.
If not for links, social media is waste – search and direct/referral from other blogs is the best traffic. I learnt that after my very first Digg success :)
Well, Sumesh, it’s partly true what you say but in fact returning traffic is best. Search traffic is new people each time while returning (direct) traffic are people who already like you and trust you. Returning visitors are also best for ecommerce sites. These people buy the most.
I think if you would’ve included a more niche social site like Sphinn you’d see better traffic than the other four.
Digg is hard to get significant amount of traffic, unless you have a strong email network that’s on digg.
Yes Joshua, Sphinn is one of my more important traffic sources, in some months even more then Google. The problem of Digg is that it’s main stream everybody agrees only, everything controversial and some topics at large get buried
I have not long left Digg behind, the tipping point for me was when 4 huffingtonpost stories were on the front page at once.
@Sumesh, me and several of my colleagues have proven social media to be highly effective. If i have the time i will write it up for you guys, but basically a few votes on sites like StumbleUpon or Yahoo 360 can send hundreds of visitors to your site. And if the content is killer, the hundreds snowball into thousands.
Digg def seems to be going down hill, but compete.com estimates their traffic to be steadily rising.
I use popurls and a handful of other sites now to find fun and popular news. StumbleUpon seems to be way more fun for mee too. Digg is pulling a “George Bush” and screwing up a good thing, lol
Nice post. For the record, this is the first time that I have been here and I was sent here via Sphinn.
I agree with both you and Sumesh above. StumbleUpon can bring a large steady traffic stream if done correctly. But for me, in general, I find that social sites bring traffic but rarely customers. They are still great for links however. Just my opinion.
- Ryan
Stumbleupon is always good for traffic, and Twitter and Mixx are hit or miss. I agree for the most part with the above comments that social bookmarking is only good for backlinks for the most part. But I think that’s because EVERYONE uses the bigger social media sites for backlinks now, which is why Social|Median had a lower bounce rate and higher conversion (time on site and page per visit). Maybe they have a more genuine audience than the larger SM sites full of SEO’ers and spammers? How many people follow you on Twitter?
George
I wonder how StumbleUpon went missing in the statistics of your traffic. I have been experimenting traffic from Social Sites and found StumbleUpon to be rock solid and reliable, followed by Twitter and indeed Digg pushed back. If you have quality content promoting via Twitter & SU could bring you quality visits. I assume Digg is dominated by power users these days and they control what goes to the front page of Digg. So go ahead with other Social Sites and have fun!
Great post here… bookmarked your blog ;)! And yea.. I came here from Sphin.. :D
- Vinay
Since Buzz has been made public….I feel it has eaten away most of the traffic. I even read that it was the number one in the previous month….
Thanks for the feedback guys.
George: I got 284 followers on Twitter as of now. Follow me at @onreact_com
BTW.: You may have overlooked it but I stated that StumbleUpon and Sphinn are my favorite social media sites.
Traffic or PR? Which comes first? In the past I went for PR which lead to traffic but now social media is bringing in traffic no matter what the PR is. That’s why I spend time every day working on my social profiles. My feeling is you have to spend a lot of time on Digg before it pays off but a few well placed Stumbles can score big with traffic.
If, by absurd, your post would’ve went popular on digg, then you would’ve experience date that’s even worse. Considering your topic is a bit irrelevant to the community there, I’m guessing a 0:15 time on site would be golden :D.
Reddit and SU can also have high bounce rates, but that, of course, depends on the kind of content you’re serving. Things SEO, blogging, marketing never really work so well on social media platforms, apart from the dedicated channels. Anyway, nice to see digg sucks again. Thanks!
This isn’t surprising to me. Digg has always been that way. The traffic really sucks, unless it hits the FP. That’s one reason why I like Reddit these days. Because even if you don’t hit the FP of reddit, you’re still gonna pull in a decent amount of traffic.
I would love to see a more indepth analysis of digg vs. reddit vs. mixx. Those three seem to be the most promising.
How can websites about outsourcing or commercial storage (“boring topics”) succeed in social media websites?
Do only cool websites succeed in 2.0?
This is truly a valuable post. People blather on all the time which social sites are best – and most of their so-called information is nothing but opinion. It is refreshing to see actual numbers, so thank you for that. One thing, though – I’m truly buffaloed by Twitter. It seems to make no sense to me, so obviously I am missing something major. I twittered for a while and the whole thing seemed so pointless.
Well, I found this site with a google search :) “SEO 2.0″ My experience with Digg was my very first with any bookmarking sites. I have a lot of friends there, real ones, because I didn’t know how to do anything but socialize there and ask questions. So after a few months of that, I can shout about anything and get tons of traffic. Lucky for me I didn’t know how to post my own stuff for months :)
Yeah this great, good jobs, these web site are great to post stuff in.,