Social network SEO spammers complain Digg closes playground

May 19th, 2007

At popular news site Digg users vote stories up and down. Stories either rise to the front page or top of category pages or are buried.

Some of my SEO colleagues are bemoaning their lack of success in getting their annoying marketing materials to the front page of Digg.

They justify their indignation with a chorus of "the others are doing it, the others are doing it".

In the words of Andy Hagans:

Nearly every story that makes it to upcoming/most - whether it makes it to the homepage, or gets buried -has a 'gaming' group that votes together. Like I said even top users without site affiliations will plug stories to friend, and nevermind the 'fanboys' that vote together.

It's rather amusing if it weren't so sad. These SEMs support their position with convenient libertarianism:, accusing Google or Digg or hypocrisy for trying to keep them out:

Just admit to regularly doing hand jobs Digg, it's not the end of the world, lying isn't very Web 2.0.

With all the marketeer-spammers trying to game Digg, Digg needs to have both:

1. automated tools to catch collusion as Brian suggests
2. manual checks going on

Think about the alternative - from the Digg perspective - you let the marketers and colluders form their groups and control the front page of Digg and many of the highly trafficked subpages. I.e. you become a playground for spammers.

An Internet Marketer's History of the Web:

1. keyword spam
2. email spam
3. link spam
4. directory spam
5. article spam
6. video spam
7. social network spam
8. press release spam

Why do many SEOs and SEMs think they have some god given right to freely spam the entire internet?

Good for Digg. Whether they are killing social network spam with either algorithm or editorial review - this is a job well done.

By Alec

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