Getting on Digg increases Google traffic in real time

by Patrick Altoft on August 17, 2007

BlogStorm hit the front page of Digg again yesterday, sending even more traffic than the last time.

This time the story got 2100 diggs in the first 2 hours after hitting the homepage before being buried (not quite sure why, maybe because people reported it as being not safe for work). In these 2 hours Digg sent just over 50,000 unique visitors! My hosting couldn’t handle most of the traffic so maybe more people tried to view the page but couldn’t.

The most interesting part of a week in which we have seen slightly under 150,000 visitors in 5 days is that Google traffic has shot up. Take a look at this report on the weeks search traffic (pdf) and you can see a big jump in traffic from Google.

Proof that linkbait works.

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.

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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

Paquito 17 Aug 2007 at 3:09 pm: Amazing…

I wish I could make that

Anyway, I’m learning and trying to catch up )))

This battle is yours but “the war” is not over ))))))

Just kidding: I love your blog

Regards from Spain,

Paquito.
http://paquito4ever.blogspot.com
Adam Thompson 17 Aug 2007 at 4:58 pm: Are you doing anything to encourage/get these diggs? Or is it just an operation of quality posts x a large readership = lots of diggs?
Glen Allsopp 18 Aug 2007 at 1:00 am: I had a site where someone submitted something as NSFW

The domain was banned instantly…is yours OK?
Glen Allsopp 18 Aug 2007 at 11:40 am: I hate it when you never answer your comments
Patrick Altoft 18 Aug 2007 at 1:23 pm: Glen, as far as I know the domain is still OK. Its hard to tell for sure though.
Tibi Puiu 18 Aug 2007 at 2:53 pm: At times like this i regret i’m banned from digg :<
inform-o-scope-usa 03 Oct 2007 at 9:18 pm: Elsewhere you have mentioned removing ads from heavily Dugg articles.

Is this a server load issue? Or do blog readers really turn up their noses?

(I ignore ads I have seen before, sometimes read ones I haven’t, especially AdWords.)
Patrick Altoft 03 Oct 2007 at 9:21 pm: Its not usually a matter of server load, most ad servers can handle the Digg effect fine.

Bloggers are simply less likely to link to a site full of ads.