This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites.
By now most of you have probably seen the site 'Why Digg is Blocked'. For those that haven't come across it, the site is on a mission to convince webmasters and content producers to reject social media traffic. Here's a look at the incredibly flawed logic the site uses to justify its purpose.
The first argument that the site makes is that social media sites endorse the use of ad-blocking software which allegedly infringes on the rights of site-owners.This argument is flawed for several reasons. First, none of these sites endorses the use of ad-blocking software. Yes, there was a time when Digg used to be technology-centric and a majority of its user-base was tech-savvy enough to use ad-blocking software to improve their online experience. However, as the site has grown, and as social media sites in general (i.e. Reddit, Propeller, StumbleUpon and so on) continued to grow and develop a more mainstream acceptance, the demographic has expanded to the point where it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that a majority of the traffic from the sites is not actively blocking advertisements.
Without any hard numbers, I would guess that the ratio of ad-blocking to non-ad-blocking users from these sites follows the 80-20 rule. The 20% of users that are actively engaged in finding, submitting, commenting on, and promoting the content to these site's 'popular' pages probably have ad-blocking software installed, whereas the 80% that are simply browsing these sites for interesting content to read (or reading front-page news via RSS), have no such software enabled.
This argument really does more to hurt the author's case than any of the other ones (though I'm not saying the others are any less stupid). The author argues that the social media demographic is an insignificant percentage of the internet and an even smaller percentage in terms of online spending, so blocking them shouldn't matter to site-owners. But then the author goes on to argue that "users who don't click on these ads are stealing bandwidth without paying for it". Well, if the demographic is so insignificant, why block them at all? It's not as if you're losing much in the way of ad impressions or clicks, right?
Furthermore, as you will see in the next section, this 'insignificant' traffic is what actually helps put most unknown sites on the map and helps them develop any significant kind of Google traffic to begin with. Oh, and how much bandwidth are these users really stealing? At my old blog, i got dugg 7 times in a month and got 250,000+ visitors that month, while the entire bandwidth cost was just $20.00 (Media Temple + WP-Cache). So no matter how small the scale on which you're operating, as long as you're smart about your operation, social media traffic should be a godsend, not something to complain about.
The final argument the site employs is that according to a sitepoint.com survey, Digg users are 3 times less likely to click on an advertisement. What this site and Sitepoint both fail to factor in, is that even in the best case scenario (for search) Digg traffic usually comes in numbers 80-90 times more than Google traffic to the same content. Once you consider those numbers, even at 1/3 the CTR, the total number of clicks you get are still 30 times as many as you would get from Google traffic.
Furthermore, where social media sites really shine is in giving increased visibility and otherwise unattainable exposure to relatively unknown sites. For a site that is generally unknown, has little or no PageRank and no inbound links or RSS subscribers, you may be lucky to get 10-20 Google visitors a day. Once you get submitted to social news sites, however, not only can you expect tens of thousands of visitors in the next 24 hours from those sites, but your average long-term search traffic and visibility will increase dramatically. So even if you completely discount the social media traffic and the low CTR there, the fact that your Google traffic may quadruple following social media success, is alone worth the effort.
For more discussion, don't forget to follow the topic at Reddit (here) and Digg (here).
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Please dont reduce the quality of articles by inviting people like above to write guest posts...
Posted by: geekgod | November 25, 2007 9:56 PM
Well that was an unnecessarily angry comment. I think Muhammad brings up a good and generally applicable point about Social Media misconceptions. The public at large, or more specifically in this case, many webmasters have a hard time understanding the long term benefits of social media exposure.
It is similar to the case of those who block Firefox users. It feels like there is an increasingly vocal minority of webmasters who can't seem to grasp the fact that in almost all cases, traffic in and of itself is useful and that the "leeching my bandwidth" argument is almost moot unless this was 1995 and you were paying by the MB or something obscene like that.
Good article and nice to see you bring something new to the table MS.
Posted by: Steve Spalding | November 25, 2007 11:48 PM
Although some of your assumptions are true I miss some crucial statistical data to back them. For instance how many users use adblockers approx.? Moreover this sentence here is simply not true:
"Once you get submitted to social news sites, however, not only can you expect tens of thousands of visitors in the next 24 hours from those sites, but your average long-term search traffic and visibility will increase dramatically."
Only if you get really popular it might happen. When you submit in most cases nothing happens, unless you get submitted by someone else on StumbleUpon.
Besides it's generally known that social media users are often extremely "anti-ad", especially Digg and Reddit users will "bury", offend, insult and slander you if they sense any marketing whatsoever on your site.
They assume that social media are some kind of altruistic endevour where only the company offering the service is allowed to earn money while at the same time they get exploited without due payment for their user generated content.
I wrote an article about that:
http://seo2.0.onreact.com/why-social-media-are-like-slavery-and-smo-equals-abolitionism
Posted by: Tad Chef | November 26, 2007 12:41 AM
@geekgod, thanks for the completely idiotic comment, backed with a link to a socially driven site.
@Tad Chef, it is implicit in the original article and my response that we are talking about content made popular. If it doesn't go popular then there isn't any reason to block the traffic either because 5 visitors aren't worth worrying over and the entire reason for the 'why digg is blocked' site fails.
As for: "Besides it's generally known that social media users are often extremely "anti-ad", especially Digg and Reddit users will "bury", offend, insult and slander you if they sense any marketing whatsoever on your site."
That is completely false as is evident in popularity of any site from Condenet, Gawker Media, or Weblogs Inc. These are some of the biggest blog or content networks, and in spite of the fact that they are all ad-heavy, they enjoy enormous success on social media sites. Or forget those, just look at TechCrunch, the RWW blog network, or the GigaOm blog network. Again, all ad-heavy and all popular on social media sites.
Posted by: Muhammad Saleem | November 26, 2007 1:03 AM
Personally, I thought the funniest part was about social media sites not obeying robots.txt.
Yep, I have to come clean I *do not* and *never have done* checked the "relevant" robots.txt before clicking a link on a social media site. And I declare here and now that I intend to continue in my evil ways ;)
Not perhaps directly relevant to whether a site should be blocking Digg traffic but a nice simple indicator of the low quality of the analysis.
Posted by: Status 203 | November 26, 2007 1:05 AM
Muhammad: True, TechCrunch and other well known accepted sites won't get bashed but the little guy does. Even StumbleUpon users will spit in your face if you want to "make money online" as a normal blogger or website owner. They assume that only big guys are allowed to do that. Just check this apalling example:
http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/who-would-have-thought-the-idea-of-a-thank-you-could-illicit-such-an-abusive-response/
Posted by: Tad Chef | November 26, 2007 2:26 AM
I think this is pretty stupid.. why would you want to block it?
Posted by: Michael Woo | November 26, 2007 7:12 AM
Good summary I think. Personally I don't care too much about ad clicks et al because I also have a real job ;)
Posted by: Russ @ bombay potatoes | November 26, 2007 8:59 AM
If we are 'a somewhat small and insignificant percentage of the internet', why should webmasters care about our online spending?
This looks awfully similar to 'Why Firefox is Blocked'...
Posted by: Moduliz0r | November 26, 2007 9:20 AM
@TadChef: That Caroline M. article is good for displaying how NOT to interact with Social Media traffic.
I think what you're referring to about big sites being allowed to be marketable has nothing to do with size.
People are willing to commit "marketing visibility" sacrifices (like signing up for a newsletter) to sites they truly love and cannot live without. These are usually big sites only because they the resources to post more and have better content and become more important to the user.
The "no digg" guy and Caroline M. and even the author of this article seem to want to shoehorn the social media user into regular terminology.
This is not regular traffic, they are not marketable by traditional means. This is influential traffic, this is the traffic that starts viral exposure.
If your site is a phenomenon, every digg user can be counted on to send a link to your site to at least one other person.
The "no digg" guy and other of his ilk are just mad that they exposed their site to the wrong crowd. Digg is not a super marketable network of middle aged women in which to plug a shoe sale at.
Digg is where something will be judged on a specific set of merits and gunning for massive exposure to influential, literate young nerds. Marketing to that group traditionally exposes your weaknesses, not theirs.
Posted by: Carlos D | November 26, 2007 9:43 AM
It might just be because I spent too much of my younger years on Star Wars websites, but the "why firefox/digg is blocked" sites strike me as a little bit too inflammatory to be anything other than trolling. I mean, I've read plenty of blog posts that give them nice SEO-friendly links, but I've yet to find a site that actually *redirects* to them...
Posted by: Scott Thompson | November 26, 2007 9:50 AM
That site was created as a viral marketting ploy - it's basically a nice way to get easy traffic. Anger up the Digg community and get both backlinks, and traffic as blogs talk about you discouragingly and provide you with links, traffic and exposure.
I think I'll start a "Don't Link To This Page site" - so it can get on Digg, and everyone can laud at the idea of a site not wanting to be linked to - meanwhile I can put some ads up or sometime later sell the domain and reap from the fact that people don't have the foretaught to realize that this is nothing but a viral marketing scheme.
The site makes reference to SitePoint - an SEO forum for webmasters. Also it provides a link to a site called DrewMckinney.net - both domains are registered at GoDaddyhost (nothing significant but just suspicious). It's viral marketing, just like that block firefox site (probably by the same persons/s)
Posted by: Psychotic Ape | November 26, 2007 9:59 AM
Actually, to me it looks like this is the same guy that wanted to block Firefox users.
He is allegedly a webdesigner, which is why this worries him so much, but according to meta tags all his webdesign is done in Frontpage, which should worry his customers more that getting on Digg.
Posted by: anonymous | November 26, 2007 10:12 AM
I don't personally use ad-blocking software, nor have I made any tweaks to disable ads.
I don't mind ads, that being image, text or flash/other ads. I'll click an ad if I see something that catches my attention. If I just see ads for Viagra or something I'm not going to click it.
It's the ads that intrude, ads that scream at you or make annoying noises while you *try* to read what you came to read that annoy me.
Also, ads that start streaming videos without any interaction. It's my bandwidth. I have a limit on it sadly, and I don't want to lose it all to ads.
Popups, ads that expand over your page, make noises, or do something else that intrudes and makes your visit a bad one, should be a no no.
If advertising companies / webmasters want users to stop using ad-blocking software, they need to consider making less annoying and less intrusive ads before blaming users for blocking them.
In the end, is a site really worth visiting if they are going to block Firefox or social media hits?
Posted by: Moduliz0r | November 26, 2007 10:18 AM
Furthermore, where social media sites really shine is in giving increased visibility and otherwise unattainable exposure to relatively unknown sites.
This is the #1 reason that blogs and websites should submit content to social media sites. 90% of the RSS feeds I subscribe to are blogs I found through digg.
Posted by: Chris | November 26, 2007 10:38 AM
It's fairly amusing, (the block digg page) I'll give it that, I'm presuming however that the code for blocking digg could easily be subverted by using a the referrer spoofing plugin for Firefox.
Personally I do use adblock plus, (V5 with Div blocking) It makes pages so much more legible, when you can cut the ads right out of the text, even better most such ads seem to have common markup text so a few rules will clip them all. That said, even prior to Firefox I rarely if ever clicked on ads. I guess I'm just a freeloading bum :P
Posted by: praxis22 | November 26, 2007 10:39 AM
They've still said to save it to "fftest.php" - same as the old Firefox is Blocked site - you would think that this genius would at least change it to something like "diggtest.php".
It's all the fault of intrusive advertising. This guy should stop blaming users.
Posted by: Moduliz0r | November 26, 2007 10:44 AM
I have an issue with the blanket statement "it is generally known that". It in no way is proof of anything. That argument could be used against any group of people for any reason, without having any real proof. It's a statement that tries to appear to be common knowlede and fact, but is neither.
If anything, it can only be "general knowledge" that there is a vocal group supporters for ad blocking. Anything beyond that is pure speculation and shouldn't be the basis for any sort of evidence, only hard facts and numbers should be.
But as was stated, if ad blocker users are an insignificant number of people, then whats the point of blocking them? Something that keeps getting said in my line of work(casinos) that if you tick off one person, you are losing 10 customers because that one person is going to tell several of their friends about their experience.
Now lets put that in terms of the internet and social networks, and by being a douche you run the risk of ticking off hundreds to thousands of potential customers, many of whom might not even use ad blocking software, but they know you're a douche and now won't bother with your site.
If you're running a site to make money, you had better start selling something worth buying, expecting to make money off of advertising revenue is stupid. That's like opening a brick and morter store and just expecting to suddenly have a huge customer base, and then banning anyone who walks in but doesn't buy anything. Hell, he could even put up a donation option to help keep the site up if that's all he's worried about. That would also be a great way to keep cash flowing into the site by people who don' click on the ads.
Posted by: Lee Decker | November 26, 2007 11:24 AM
Carlos D.: So you really want to tell me that it's Carolines own fault that she was verbally assaulted? Just for writing an article about being nice to stumblers? You certainly have some valid points to back that bold statement, don't you?
Posted by: Tad Chef | November 26, 2007 11:58 AM
WhyDiggIsBlocked.com is a scam. It's a rip off of my site, WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com in order to gather traffic via social networking sheep who seem to believe anything they're told. If they really had a message, they'd do it without plagiarizing my site.
Posted by: Danny Carlton | November 26, 2007 6:39 PM
I went to the WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com and found it full of the same stupidity as WhyDiggIsBlocked.com
It is depressing to know that there are two such idiots roaming the Internet, and not one.
Coming soon to an internet near you:
WhyTivoIsBlocked
WhySunglassesAreBlocked
WhyEarmuffsAreBlocked
WhyAirbagsAreBlocked
Posted by: Hugh Toppe | November 26, 2007 8:24 PM
Oh, and props to Muhammad Saleem,for having the patience to wade through idiocy and respond with thoughtful, reasoned argument. Someday I may reach that elevated state of consciousness, but today I am happy to snark at the idiots.
Posted by: Hugh Toppe | November 26, 2007 8:27 PM
I have yet to see one blog that redirects there.
Might as well wait for WhyTheInternetIsBlocked and WhyYouAllAreBlocked
Posted by: Moduliz0r | November 27, 2007 1:49 AM
All of you that want to block Digg: just redirect them over to my site instead ;) If you dumbasses can't understand the long term value of getting your stories Duug, increasing traffic to your site, and the link building that comes as an afterthought by all means send it my way.
Can't believe people are even arguing MS's points.
Posted by: Oggy | November 27, 2007 11:27 AM
Nice site. Thanks.
Posted by: led christmas lights | December 7, 2007 1:16 AM
Nice site. Thanks.
Posted by: nightmare before christmas | December 10, 2007 1:47 AM