Ah, the raw, unyielding power of Web 2.0. My friend, Lee Odden, learned his Top Rank blog site was banned from Digg. He discovered this unceremoniously and is justifiably angry.
Lee writes,
The site or blog owner has little control over whether other people submit stories and/or vote on them, bury them or report them as spam. Even if they’re not.
Sites can be banned from having their stories submitted to digg based on the activities of others having nothing to do with the site owner.
Lee is a man who has spent YEARS covering an industry and working within it with integrity. Sitepoint, another huge web properly, was banned at Digg.
Apparently at Digg, if Digg members want you out of the Community, they can do it with ease. No facts, no mercy and no responsibility. As a forums owner, I see spam the likes of which most of you will never see, with the exception of my friend Alan Webb. He was forced to shut down his forums because of the volume of spam.
A look at Digg’s FAQ provides a little insight into just how easy it is to get a site dumped if you really want to.
However, if any URL within Digg is consistently flagged as spam by the Digg community, that URL may be blocked from future submissions.
Nowhere does it say there is an investigation for PROOF that the site is a spammer. For members who are sensitive to what they may read online, Digg offers a way to put filters on what you are exposed to. That sounds fair. Nowhere did I see it say, “If you disagree with a Digg post, you can have it removed or get the domain banned.”
By allowing freewill banning of sites, Digg prevents us from an unbiased experience.
Digg’s Terms states:
“Digg may remove any Content and Digg accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all.”
For no reason at all?
Lee writes,
“I recently learned from a top digg member that certain digg community members decided to start getting rid of SEO sites by emailing spam complaints to digg. These community members’ definition of spam blogs is not what you might think. As long as the site has to do with SEO, they apparently consider it spam because the digg community generally detests anything to do with SEO.”
I tried three times to end this blog post on a calm note. Every ending I wrote was filled with fury. I had to stop and think. Am I PMS? And if so, I can’t even write in my blog. I’d scare you to death. Heh. (Not really. I think I have a handle on that now. But you never knowso I just choose to be cautious, to spare you.)
So, I’ve removed my Digg This Post thingy’s. It’s an action I can take, as someone who supports the SEO industry and recognizes their contributions to web sites and search engines and especially Web 2.0.
Digg must earn my trust again.
Good luck with that.
Update: Chris Winfield has a writeup on what’s happening, with a list of well-known web sites who have been banned by Digg, called And the List of Domains Ditched by Digg Keeps Growing.
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Uability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com, Cre8pc.com, and Cre8asiteForums. Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development.
