So that was awkward. Fortunately for Google, the infraction could be blamed on Unruly Media, the third-party company Google hired to promote Chrome. Links from the paid posts were supposed to use the rel="nofollow" tag, so they wouldn't affect page rank. At least one blogger didn't, even though Unruly "advised" them to. In order for Google to get out of this mess, it would have to punish itself as it has done to others. Sure enough, Google says it will reduce Chrome's page rank.

"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days. We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."

At least Google won't come out of this looking like a hypocrite. It goes to great lengths to punish sites that play games with search ranking, and it already takes heat for favoring its own sites. PR-wise, there was no way out of this for Google but to punish the Chrome site.

But it sure does look sloppy. Google's left hand didn't know what its right hand's hired hands were doing. If the Chrome team knew that paid links were a violation of the search team's policies, it should have been more careful to avoid this. Google is relentlessly tweaking search, its core product. It's making its other products, particularly Google+, more important. Getting caught in this old-school SEO trick is not what Google needed to instill trust.

Now that the story has broken, the results look very different, but check out what a search for "This post is sponsored by Google" turned up before:

Image, follow-up, pretty much the whole scoop via Search Engine Land

This extends the Google+-powered personalization of Google search results into the realm of images. Social search could be the greatest impact of Google+, since the +1 button now affects the way Google search results appear. For anyone logged into his or her Google account, social signals have begun to affect the results of all kinds of Web searches whether users want that or not.

But because of Google's search business, the button has some subtle but important implications. It provides feedback to website administrators in Google Analytics, and it now appears on desktop and mobile AdSense ads, allowing Google to monetize the social feedback. But the most important implication of +1 is clear from today's addition to image search: it actually affects search rank.

Google+: Social SEO

With yesterday's launch of Google+ pages for brands, some new implications of Google+ appeared. As well as allowing fans to +1 a brand, it also gives brands the opportunity to add their page's name to a program called Google+ Direct Connect. Once enrolled, users who search for "+[page name]" in regular Google search will be taken straight to a Google+ page. Google+ is not just for sharing now; it's an important part of being discovered through Google search.

Google+ has also infiltrated Google News. Articles now display authors' Google+ profiles, as well as their circle counts and the 'Add to circles' button, right alongside Google News headlines. Furthermore, search results now privilege Google profiles when searching for an author's name.

As Google continues to plaster the +1 button and Google+ profiles everywhere, these will become increasingly important factors in how each new kind of content appears in search results. Whether Google+ takes off as a social network or not, anyone optimizing content for Google search will have to adopt it.

Speaking of which, don't forget to add ReadWriteWeb to your Google+ circles.

Do you click +1 on content while you're surfing the Web?

A new study produced by Local SEO Guide, PerfectMarket and newsknife has shed some light on the factors that determine rankings on Google News. Among the top 10 factors under publishers' control are keywords in headlines and page titles, strong domain authority, social sharing of articles, and being first to publish. Citation by other sources is also a key factor, as is the uniqueness of the text.

Google closely guards its algorithms, so the study asked the SEOs for some of the world's top news sites - including NYTimes, CNN, Huffington Post and more - about their strategies and compared their answers. The consensus seems to be that authority matters most. "I think the algo[rithm] is far simpler than search," says Christopher Angus of Warlock Media. "If you have a unique article, it will rank. If you're competing for stories, the major news publishers will dominate."

The most important factor is the source's established authority in its category. The qualitative opinion of the Google News editors is another factor. There's not so much publishers can do about those except try harder. But other factors in the top 10 can be easily optimized. Here are the key takeaways about how to optimize your content for Google News in order of priority:

1. Use Strong Keywords and Brief Headlines

Do some research using Google Insights to find the strongest keywords for your stories and use them in headlines, page titles and meta descriptions, as well as in the ledes of your stories. Related words and synonyms in the content will help, but don't be redundant; that will count against the quality of your articles. Establishing context is what matters most.

2. Establish Your Domain

Use a domain that connotes your subject area and begin the long journey of establishing it as an authority. Inbound links to your domain are an important long-term factor in how its pages rank, but Google cares about quality links, not ethically questionable fake sites. It's also important to have a strong link architecture, so Google can learn the structure of your site.

3. Be Social

Do what you can to ensure that readers share your articles. Share buttons are important, of course, but having a strong, believable, engaging social presence yourself is the most important thing. If a news organization is engaged with its readers constantly on social networks, the readers will share and re-share its stories. This requires social skills, not science, but sharing matters in Google News rankings, so it's important to establish it.

4. Being First Is Not the First Priority

Yes, being first matters. But being first ranks fifth among Google News ranking factors according to this study. Clarity, authority and social reputation matter more. Once those are established, then worry about being the first to cover a story.

5. Get Cited

It would be great to wave a magic wand and create citations of your stories, but that's not the way the world works. The story with the most citations in other stories gets a ranking boost, though, so try to set the precedent of being worthy of citation however you can. Authority on a subject plays into that, as does social sharing. Think about other organizations picking up your story as they're writing theirs, and try to optimize your work so that they'll cite your article rather than reinventing the wheel. In short, be the expert.

6. Don't Copy Other People's Homework

Unique content gets preference. Don't lift copy from other people's articles. Duh.

7. Google News Sitemap. Use it.

It's not at the top of the list, but explaining your site to Google using its XML sitemaps is crucial to make sure that Google News understands the architecture of your site and knows where to find the good stuff.

Thanks to Search Engine Watch for alerting us to the study.

Understanding how users interact with mobile sites can influence a finely tuned mobile search approach. Location is given more priority in mobile search results. Most mobile users will search based on location (where they are) and a need to find a person, place or thing. Their searches could look like, "I need to find a restaurant, school, gas station, etc." or some landmark which is nearby. Users will likely look for maps, directions and a phone number on a mobile site and here you could take advantage of a device feature like click-to-call by ensuring phone numbers are linked. That said, location is a huge factor in mobile search and location-based features will get more sophisticated as the devices evolve.

Search Engines Treat Mobile Sites Differently

It's important to understand that there are unique indexes geared toward mobile users, like Google Mobile, Taptu, Yahoo Mobile and Bing Mobile just to name a few. Like all search engines, these strive to produce the most relevant search results. Many times, the most relevant result is not a mobile website (at least not yet). Search engines may show non-mobile pages, and may actually format a desktop Web pages to "look" mobile. Developers can avoid this by inserting an "alternate" tag on your website pages to direct Google to your actual mobile pages (for example: <link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="alternate_page.htm"/>).

But make sure to redirect mobile visitors to relevant mobile-optimized pages. It's the content on the page that counts. Having a redirect to irrelevant content won't make your users any happier, and Google won't like it either. Also note that even though Google Mobile will return desktop sites in search results, it prefers mobile-optimized sites. As more mobile-optimized sites are indexed, there will be less of a need for Google to include desktop results.

Keep in mind that limited screen real estate on a mobile device means fewer search results are displayed per page. So identifying concise and relevant keywords for a mobile site becomes even more important to help push a site higher in search results. To ensure that content is relevant, conduct mobile-specific keyword research to identify content that is of primary interest to mobile users. Google has a mobile keyword tool within Google AdWords that offers keyword suggestions.

Mobile SEO Best Practices

Generally, search engine optimization for a mobile website is similar to optimizing a desktop website. Relevant and fresh content will keep users interested. Be sure to use unique, descriptive and readable titles. Meta descriptions should be unique and have a strong call to action.

In addition to all of the above recommendations, there are some baseline tips for mobile SEO best practices that may seem obvious, but often are forgotten:

• Make sure your mobile site doesn't limit access to just mobile devices (because search bots are not mobile devices).
• Create and submit a mobile sitemap.
• Be sure to optimize your site's performance to render fast results for users and search engines.
• Make sure your mobile URLs are viewable on a mobile device (Google will not deliver them in results unless they are compatible with published mobile markup standards such as XHTML Basic 1.1, XHTML MP 1.2 and WML 1.3).
• Register your mobile site on Google Places, which recently unveiled a location-based recommendation engine called Hotpot.

Assessment Tools For Mobile Sites

Knowing how a site actually looks to users is the best way to find issues. There are several free mobile phone emulators that show how a website looks from a mobile device, including dotMobi, i-mode, and XHTML Mobile Profile (Firefox plug-in). Although these tools are good, nothing can take the place of viewing how a site renders through as many different devices as possible.

There are also validation tools such as the Mobile-friendly W3C XHTML Validator and the TAW mobileOK Basic Checker. These validators will perform various tests on a site to determine its level of mobile-friendliness and identify errors and suggested changes by category and level of severity.

On the other pole, you may be no less attuned to metrics than your counterparts at the other end of the spectrum, but you direct your focus to creating great, engaging content and building a community around it. Here, you're counting less on talking directly to search engines and more on creating the kind of traffic and organic linking activity that will drive up your rankings.

Now, I can find advice anywhere along that spectrum with no difficulty. (It's no surprise that people who do SEO for a living don't find it hard to make their content visible.) And I can find vocal, often heated arguments and very strong opinions.

What I can't find is hard data on which approach works better, and where the sweet spot lies. I imagine apples-to-apples comparisons would be hard to do, but that information would be pretty valuable. I have my preferences - I like a Web of communities and genuine voices, and I'd find pushing the ruthless-linkbait-and-keyword approach soul-destroying - and my instincts about what I'd like to believe works better, but that's just me.

Anyone out there find anything tangible?

More Noise to Signal.

To test this theory, the developers created several fake Twitter accounts tweeting out generic buzz words like "social media," "client interaction" (in Dutch) and "feedback" along with links to the Mopinion website. The result? The Mopion site moved up in the Google search results.

Apparently, they say, it pays to spam Twitter. However, the experts we consulted said that's not necessarily true.

The experiment actually started as a side project - an "art project" - by Conceptables owner Floris Snuif. Meant to be a statement on the banality of tweeting, he created a simple Twitter script called "breather" (actually @adamhaler in Dutch) that tweeted only "I'm breathing in" and "I'm breathing out." It also linked to the homepage of the server which hosted the "breather" script. Immediately, of course, the bot was followed by Twitter spammers.

But what happened next was really odd, explains Snuif via blog post (translated to English here). The breather homepage (the one hosting the bot) was ranking higher and higher in the search results the longer the bot kept up its tweeting.

Further Tests

Later, as the development team began work on the Mopion app, they wondered if the same trick would work again. Instead of re-using the same bot, though, the developers created a number of new Twitter accounts with relevant keywords for the service. Via scripts, the bots began tweeting generic buzzwords with links to the Mopion site.

They used scripts to remove the bots' followers just in case anyone accidentally followed their accounts thinking they were legit.

Some specialized Twitter search engines were duped by the fake tweeting (the developers said they received angry missives from employees of these sites.) But more importantly, Google was duped, too, the developers soon discovered.

Fairly generic queries for things like "social media" were now returning the Mopinion site ever higher in the results.

Says Snuif: "It pays to tweet the same message as much as possible."

Easy Twitter SEO or Isolated Incident?

Given that all these experiments took place on Google's subdomain for the Netherlands, we haven't been able reproduce these experiments on the grander scale of the main Google.com domain ourselves. But in reaching out to several Twitter/Google SEO experts in an informal Q&A via Twitter this morning, we heard from multiple sources that some have seen correlations like these before, just never on this scale. We were reminded, though, that correlation does not prove causation. Some of those contacted felt this may be an isolated incident.

The only odd thing in this case is that the service (Mopinion) was new, so only the developers were doing the heavy tweeting via the bots - not a multitude of independent Twitter users. And lots of tweets translated to good SEO, it seemed.

But the influence the tweets may have had over Google search results is marginal at best, said others experts. Even though the pages were ranked high initially, they will likely drop back down over time.

However, Dallas-based SEO expert Steve Plunkett says that he and others have done experiments which did prove that tweeting the same link over and over can boost a page's rank. Still, he says, Google is good at detecting and filtering spam like this. Too many tweets over a certain period of time will be noticed by Google's algorithm. Tweets are just one of many "signals" Google uses to determine rank and cannot be as easily gamed as this Dutch development firm's blog post says.

But then again, noted more than a few folks, the Google.nl domain is a different database and may operate differently than Google.com, especially when it comes to social signals.

As a blogger I routinely asked myself the same question, until I finally realized that I (as the CEO of Woopra, the Web analytics company) had access to all the data I needed to make an absolute determination about which areas deserve the most attention.

This meant looking beyond my own site's statistics and finding out what was broadly occurring across all domains. Only through a comparative analysis can we determine where our strengths and weaknesses lie as compared to the average.

The Methodology

Woopra monitors well over 100,000 websites, however, all of our client's data is kept separate for security and privacy reasons. This meant the first step was to set up a new specialized server that would poll all other servers in our network in order to aggregate the data.

After building this new platform, the Woopra team provided me with the raw information that I used to create the charts below. This report is based on hundreds of millions of data points collected during the month of June 2010.

Virtually every category of Website is represented in the dataset - education, news, government, SMB, Fortune 500, blogs, adult - and while it clearly doesn't reflect all of the sites on the Internet, my guess is that it is a statistically significant and representative sampling.

Top Referrers of Traffic

For the purposes of this analysis, referrers have been segmented into different categories in order to more easily compare traffic. For example, there is no use in comparing Google to Flickr since they are not categorically related. If we're making a determination which search engine to focus on, Flickr would not be in the mix - and if we're looking for a photo hosting site, Google would not be in the mix. The four main referral categories that drive virtually all traffic are: Search Engines, Media, Social Bookmarks and Social Networks.

Social Network Referrers

Perhaps the one result that was the most surprising is the Social Networking category. Although Twitter seem to be the talk of the town, Facebook is the 900 pound gorilla when it comes to actually driving website traffic, sending nearly 7 in 10 visitors from the Social Network category. LinkedIn comes in a distant yet still respectable third place.

There is one giant unknown in this area, however. Many Twitter users access the service through applications instead of via Twitter's website. These applications do not report http-referrer data to Web servers, which makes it impossible to tell where the clicks originate. The same can be said about traffic driven by mobile apps (including Facebook).

All of the other players in the Social Networking category cumulatively amount to less than 3% of inbound website traffic.

Social Bookmark Referrers

Social bookmarking sites are also extremely sought after sources of traffic, with the highest profile member of the group being Digg. Interestingly, this is another case where a smaller source seems to receive a disproportionate amount of attention, since StumbleUpon drives nearly double the traffic to websites.

Another surprising standout in the Social Bookmark category is YCombinator's Hacker News site, which drives 12% of the traffic in this category. Reddit and Del.icio.us drive 5% and 2%, respectively. Interestingly, SlashDot (the grandaddy of them all) drives close to 0% of traffic to the sites Woopra measures - although webmasters still call the rush of traffic that can take down a website a "Slashdotting".

Search Referrers

In the Search Engine space, perhaps the only surprise is the absolute dominance of Google when it comes to actually driving traffic to websites. For example, Experian's Hitwise published a press release setting Google's share of the search market at 72% in May 2010. However, Woopra is seeing 92% of search visitors originating from Google.

This begs the question: Where does the discrepancy lie?

• Is the Hitwise data set more representative of the whole?
• Are there more searches taking place on other search engines that don't result in click-throughs to websites?
• StatCounter's Global Stats seem to closely mirror Woopra's data.

Regardless of the reason, what we do know is that focusing attention on optimizing for Google search is absolutely the right thing to do. (Here's the official Google SEO starter guide.)

Media Referrers

The media referrer category is reserved for sites that focus on various forms of multimedia, including images, video and audio. These sites are often overlooked as a source of traffic because they are destination sites; however, media sites can also drive large volumes of traffic.

As an example, world-famous HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff posts travel photos on Flickr, and includes a simple link back to his site in the description of each image he posts.

This technique generated nearly 13,000 pageviews on StuckInCustoms.com in April alone.

What's more notable is that Flickr is not the dominant referrer in the Media category. YouTube drives 900% more traffic to websites than Flickr. This is accomplished the same way, via links in the description of the video.

Amazingly, 99% of referrer traffic in the Media category comes from only four providers: YouTube, Flickr, Last.FM and Vimeo.

Lessons Learned

The only question we are trying to answer with this analysis is where it makes sense to focus resources and attention in order to drive traffic. So here's what we know:

• Search engine optimization specifically targeting Google's index is key. Working hard to satisfy other search providers probably won't pay off as much as spending the time elsewhere - like Facebook and Twitter promotion.
• If multimedia isn't part of a site's strategy to drive traffic, it should be. Adding photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube will not only pay off in terms of adding content for your brand, but will also drive eyeballs to your site.
• Sites that are not seeing traffic from Facebook, Twitter, or both, are missing out on a major traffic-generation source. Additionally, if the balance is not in Facebook's favor, you are likely under-utilizing this channel.
• Don't waste time promoting your site on any Social Media network other than Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Your time is better spent elsewhere (like YouTube or Flickr for example).
• By all means, submit articles to Digg in the hopes of making it to the homepage, but more importantly make sure articles work their way into StumbleUpon, which can bring a larger, more sustained and less server-crash-creating stream of traffic.
• For those looking to more accurately track Twitter click-throughs, some service providers such as Bit.ly enable tracking of short links. The bad news is that the tracking is not aggregated into existing Web analytics provider data.
• This analysis doesn't take into consideration back-links (which Web authors should pursue whenever possible) because on the aggregate they do not drive global traffic. However, links from related or high-traffic sites can not only dramatically increase site traffic, they can positively impact search result listings.

Questions, comments or alternative interpretations? Drop a comment below and let us know!

Top photo by Lars Sundstrom

This change was initially discovered by Chris Pirillo, founder of the Lockergnome network and former TechTV personality, who noted that after running a routine vanity search for his name:

"Over three-quarters of the results didn't have my name anywhere in the tweet. Instead, there were shortened links in the tweets... such as those from bit.ly and ping.fm. Those links went straight to one or another of my sites, such as geeks.pirillo.com or lockergnome.com."

We've now done some tests of our own and have found that it doesn't appear to be a fluke - it's happening across the board no matter what search term we enter.

Good News for Publishers

For publishers, this change is welcome news. Most writers who produce content for the Internet take care to make sure their URLs include important keywords that allow the links to be easily indexed by major search engines. But when those same links are sent to Twitter, the carefully crafted, keyword-packed URL is obscured behind a shortened link, a necessary evil due to Twitter's 140-character limit on tweets.

Now the time writers spend making SEO-friendly URLs will pay off in Twitter, too.

This makes it easier for publishers' content to be found, of course, but it also makes it easier for publishers to find who's retweeting their content. Often, people tweet a link without including the "RT" or @ symbol that allows the original Twitter poster (the publisher) to know that someone found their content worthy of sending to Twitter. This is done either because the re-tweeter wants to claim credit for discovering the link themselves or because they honestly did just that - they found an interesting link on the Web and posted it to Twitter, without realizing the publisher had tweeted it first.

In any event, the change seems like a win-win situation for all involved. Publishers can better track their content and have it appear in more searches and Twitter users can more easily find relevant links.

Update: Twitter has confirmed the new feature, saying: "We are constantly evolving and improving Search, and this is a small improvement. More will be coming."

These tasks comprise a quick to-do list that will leave you feeling competent and prepared for the decade that approaches. Also, you can play the condescension chip and start chiding friends who haven't checked off these items yet.

Facebook's maelstrom-causing privacy changes have given quite a few of us a head-scratching good time trying to figure out just how much of our private lives are to be made public. Before the new year begins, take a look at your settings on sites such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LiveJournal and any other places you might be sharing personal content to make sure what you display is consistent with the public image you want to project. As more recruiters and employers hit the Web in search of info on individuals, it's becoming ever more important to monitor and control our own identities. If you look back to the origin dates of some of your accounts, you might be surprised at what you thought was appropriate to share online in 2005.

Also, while considering what's private and public, take time to evaluate what a "friend," "contact" or "follower" means to you and what types of information you share with different groups.

2. Change your passwords.

Safety first, friends. Social web security threats in 2009 were sweeping and surprised more than a few users with spam DMs, hacked accounts and malware of all kinds. Check out the password management tools recommended by a recently high-profile hacker (scroll to the last few paragraphs); for free or cheap, they'll help you generate strong, random passwords and manage them from your computer.

3. Own your name.

I've conducted many a web search on many a professional geek this year, and I've been disappointed by how few of us have staked a meaningful claim to our online identities. If you haven't already, buy a URL - preferably one that relates to the name you use professionally - and make friends with Google. If you don't show up in the first results when you search for your name, get a crash course in SEO and ask friends to link to you. It's good for your social life and your career if you seize the opportunity to tell the searching world about yourself rather than relegating that responsibility to LinkedIn, Facebook or some weirdo with the same name as you.

4. Prune your feeds.

When going through your RSS feeds, do you find yourself impatiently scrolling more than you're intently skimming? Is your list of unread items becoming unmanagable? The end of the year is a perfect time to get rid of the content you're not reading and group the stuff you are. Take some time this week to organize, delete and add feeds, thereby optimizing your feed-reading experience. Try tools such as NetNewsWire's "dinosaurs" and "least attention" features that weed out unread or dormant feeds, and consider implementing tools such as Lazyfeed or Guzzle.it that can bring relevant results from fresh sources. And make sure the feeds you own are easy for others to find, too.

5. Find a better mobile.

If you don't have a smartphone already, chances are you'll desperately need one next year. And if you already have one, think long and hard about whether you're happy with your service, network and interface.

While you might not be able to run out and buy your dream device before 2010 rolls around, visit a few retailers, read some reviews and have your eye on a good mobile to purchase next year. Mobile tech keeps on booming, and you'll want to ensure a frustration-free year as new apps and OSes roll out.

6. Update copyright notices on your website.

Here's a simple, obvious and necessary reminder. Does your website currently claim a copyright year of 2007? While it doesn't put you on the foul side of the law, it does look a bit silly as we head into a new decade. The Next Web has a good bit of dynamic code for site owners.

7. Revisit your blog.

That poor, neglected old beast might be long overdue for a design facelift, a blogroll refresh or even just a few new posts. While you're at it, why not set automatic reminders to periodically bug you about posting in the new year? On a more mission-critical note, you'll also want to make sure you're using the most updated version of your CMS; not doing so can can lead to problems from broken plugins to getting hacked. And while you're at it, the year's end might also be a good time to consider switching up your CMS service altogether.

8. Back up your data.

Hacks and hardware failures happen. Before 2010, make sure as much of your data as possible is protected. From calendars and contacts to blog posts and work projects, more and more of us are relying on networks of servers and startups to keep us running. So, now might be a good time to download and back up files of LinkedIn contacts and WordPress posts - anything that's valuable to you and portable. Think of it this way: You - or at least parts of you - live in the Internet. If the Internet caught on fire, what would you grab to carry with you out of the blaze?

We hope this list helps you all get a few housekeeping items squared away in time for a great New Year's Eve filled with peace of mind and a smug sense of superiority over your fellow nerds. If you can think of any must-do year-end tasks, please let us know in the comments!

There has been quite some discussion about whether this actually turns out to be true, though. Judging from this new study by Summit Media, there really haven't been too many changes to the rankings in Caffeine, though the Summit Media team did notice some interesting differences.

There was no major difference between the kinds of categories of sites Caffeine prefers compared to Google's 'vanilla' search. Caffeine, for example, doesn't give any more weight to price comparison sites than Google's current search infrastructure. One slight difference that the Summit Media study noticed was that slightly more co.uk domain names now appear in searches that originate from the US. The difference there, though, was only minor.

Difference: News Sites

One area where Summit Media noticed a difference, however, was sites that fall into the 'Information,' and 'News' categories. Here, at least for generic search terms, Caffeine shows a bias towards more timely information and seems to punish sites that don't update often and mostly consist of archived material.

Does it Help to Have a Keyword in Your Domain Name?

Summit Media also tested another popular SEO theory: does it help to have your keyword in your domain or page URL? Summit didn't find a difference between the Caffeine and 'vanilla' search results and maybe more importantly, having a keyword in your domain name doesn't seem to make a real difference when it comes to search rankings. According to Summit, only about 6% of all search results on the first three search results pages actually contain the specific keyword in the URL. That's a very small number, and, as the report concludes, it is also "a demonstration that SEO needs to be based on actual research - rather than perceptions over browsing a few pages of results."

That approach has been afflicting newspapers for some time, as clever headlines give way to the kind of blandness that only a machine could love (which is no coincidence, because machines are the target audience). And many pro bloggers who rely on AdSense for their revenue have been doing it for years.

Maybe that's just me, great cartoon funny social media. What do you think?

More Noise to Signal

For more details about the 'Diggate' controversy, have a look at our earlier coverage of the DiggBar's implications with regards to SEO and copyright.

Lots of Activity on the DiggBar

Digg also announced that an astonishing 45% of all the activity on Digg is now happening on the DiggBar, and 25% of all DiggBar users are using the toolbar to discover new content by looking at related stories. According to John Quinn, only a very small number of Digg users have disabled the toolbar.