The new Digg bar has been a major piece of news in the last few weeks, since it’s launch on April 2nd.
For any regular internet user it might be helpful and even welcomed, but to someone who owns a website, it’s not something you’ll like.
The way the Digg bar works is by placing your site within a frame when someone clicks on the link going to your site from Digg.
The first problem I see here is that with that bar at the top of the page, those users are only one click away from leaving your site.
Another major issue is linking. The main idea of you trying to get your site on Digg is to build traffic and links. The more links you get the better off you are.
When someone finds your site through Digg though, they are viewing it in a frame and are served a shortened Digg URL.
It’s highly likely they will link to that page using the Digg URL and not the URL of your actual site. You lose all link benefits if this happens and Digg gets it all.
If you check the source of the page, you’ll see that they have included the rel=”canonical” tag which is supposed to direct all link juice to the specified page.
The problem with this is that the canonical tag only works on pages of the domain it’s on. Since Digg is not your website, this canonical tag is doing nothing.
You can still submit your site to Digg for traffic, but most Digg users want to see something pointless and entertaining. They rarely turn into buyers and you probably won’t get any benefit from this traffic.
I also don’t know how this will impact your analytics tracking. Since Digg is still accessing your site, you should still be able to see how many visits you’re getting, but what about when the user is navigating to other pages?
Will you be able to track the funnel? Can you see which pages they are using to go to other pages of your site. I haven’t looked into it so I’m not sure, but it’s something I’ve been wondering.
If you do decide to keep using Digg, I’d recommend throwing in some frame breaking code on the pages of your site.
When someone finds your page through Digg, they’ll see the Digg bar for a quick second and then the bar is closed, showing them the real page.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
if (top !== self) top.location.href = self.location.href;
</script>
Put that code into the Head section of every page of your site and this will break the frame of any page trying to use the Digg Bar method, for example Facebook who does the same thing with links.
If you have a Wordpress blog, there’s also a handy plugin called No Frames.
Learn More
Well poo-poo on Digg!
Thanks for the info and especially the WordPress plug-in.
[...] DiggBar is Bad for SEO [...]
No problem Kandra :) I have quite a few WP blogs I need to add the plugin to now.
Excellente information.
Thanks for the code>
I am doing some research on DiggBar today and I found this information very valuable. Thanks, Alex.
what are we, not too clever folks, gonna do without you clever people :) thanks.
Well then….I just added a couple sites to Digg, and then found your article…oh well, thanks for the heads up and the WP plugin!
[...] for some background on the SEO effect this change can have I recommend the following articles. seOverflow write a nice article on the damage this move makes for site owners and Digg has an article up on what they did to make [...]
@ Nerf Bars, you can still add the frame breaker code.
Great article, never thought Digg could be bad, but you have convinced me, nice work, I am sure this article is going to make some big waves.
Thx Again!
I don’t care. Anyways if Digg used to be part of your link building strategy, you suck.
Google still indexes the content with DiggBar, so Digg remains effective for getting new sites indexed fast.
@Jesse Wallace, it’s too bad Digg went this route. If they had released a bar for the browser just like StumbleUpon has, we’d all still be happy.
@CasinoSpammer, I think you need to use a variety of ways to build links to your site and Digg is only one of them.
[...] The Digg Bar is Bad For SEO – seOverflow The new Digg bar has been a major piece of news in the last few weeks, since it’s launch on April 2nd. For any regular internet user it might be helpful and even welcomed, but to someone who owns a website, it’s not something you’ll like. (tags: diggbar) [...]
[...] This will give you no benefit whatsoever. Read all about the controversy currently raging here: http://www.seoverflow.com/blog/seo/the-digg-bar-is-bad-for-seo/ Bookmark [...]
This is really valuable thanks for the info.
If you are concerned about being indexed by Google, submit your site through Googles Webmaster tools and include a Robots.txt file, these are both candy for bots.
Check your website status with www.websitetrafficrankings.com
follow me @ www.twitter.com/andrianmarketin
It is just another way to keep that user contained within the walls of Digg.
That a bunch for sharing, especially the WordPress plugin link. Suck it, Digg. ;)
This code does not appear to work for Firefox. Has anyone found code that does? To demonstrate the problem, I put this code on my blog: http://persimmontelecom.blogspot.com/
Then I submitted a couple of my blog pages to DIGG. See:
http://digg.com/business_finance/This_Economy_makes_some_Businesses_More_Profitable
If I click the link “This Economy makes some Businesses More Profitable” in IE, the code works as indicated. However, if I click that link in Firefox 3.0.10, it doesn’t work.
Hey Joe,
How about this code. I’ve tested it on one of my sites and it works in Firefox 3;
if (top !== self) top.location.replace(self.location.href);This still goes between the javascript tags, but I can’t get them to show up in my comment.
Alex – I inserted your code on my page given above. It still works on IE but not on Firefox.
That one didn’t work for you either? Hmmm. I tried it on my site and seemed to work fine. Here’s another code. I haven’t tested this one, but I pulled it from the No Frames Wordpress plugin:
if (top.location!= self.location) {top.location = self.location.href}