Top websites ranked by Digg saturation
Tracking the number of times a particular blog hits the Digg homepage isn’t really a great indicator of popularity. Some Digg stories get a couple of hundred Diggs while others are far more popular and attract several thousand.
Luckily Google offers a simple way to measure the overall popularity of a site with the Digg audience by making use of its site: command. This tracks all mentions of a site including when people link to you in the comments section.
Looking at the results for BlogStorm we can see that my site has a Digg saturation of just under 3,000 meaning that the phrase blogstorm.co.uk is mentioned 3000 times on the Digg website.

“Why does this matter?” I hear you ask. Well, looking at the number of links to a site from Digg is an easy way for Google to see what sites should be ranking and which are spam. Its easy to get one low quality story to the Digg front page but to fake a Digg saturation figure of well into the thousands is totally impossible.
The Top sites by Digg Saturation
- 1. YouTube - 551,000
- 2. yahoo.com - 191,000
- 3. Google - 188,000
- 4. Ars Technica - 135,000
- 5. Engadget - 121,000
- 6. BBC - 106,000
- 7. Gizmodo - 104,000
- 8. Wikipedia - 93,100
- 9. wired.com - 89,700
- 10. CNN - 64,900
- 11. Apple - 55,000
- 12. crooksandliars.com - 54,200
- 13. Consumerist - 49,300
- 14. thinkprogress.org - 41,800
- 15. dailymail.co.uk - 38,900
- 16. break.com - 38,600
- 17. msn.com - 36,400
- 18. treehugger.com - 34,600
- 19. Kotaku.com - 33,500
- 20. macrumors.com - 30,900
- 21. Destructoid.com - 28,500
- 22. timesonline.co.uk - 26,700
- 23. Boing Boing - 24,100
- 24. microsoft.com - 21,300
- 25. downloadsquad.com - 21,200
- 26. cracked.com - 20,200
- 27. jalopnik.com - 18,100
- 28. Read Write Web - 17,300
- 29. Huffington Post - 17,100
- 30. littlegreenfootballs.com - 16,900
- 31. lifehack.org - 16,700
- 32. Tuaw.com - 15,500
- 33. myspace.com - 15,500
- 34. Smashing Magazine - 14,800
- 35. dailykos.com - 13,800
- 36. valleywag.com - 13,200
- 37. neatorama.com - 12,600
- 38. zenhabits.net - 11,400
- 39. Giga Om - 10,700
- 40. tmz.com - 10,600
- 41. TechCrunch - 9,760
- 42. FileFront.com - 9,680
- 43. techdirt.com - 8,910
- 44. wikihow.com - 8,760
- 45. CrunchGear - 8,220
- 46. XKCD.com - 7,990
- 47. menshealth.com - 7,890
- 48. facebook.com - 7,830
- 49. Life Hacker - 7,580
- 50. GamerNode.com - 7,330
- 51. michellemalkin.com - 6,440
- 52. WSJ.com - 5,970
- 53. inhabitat.com - 5,460
- 54. ohgizmo.com - 5,380
- 55. Search Engine Land - 4,760
- 56. tumbl.us - 4,560
- 57. Pronet Advertising - 4,500
- 58. Search Engine Journal - 3,560
- 59. Mashable - 3,360
- 60. alistapart.com - 3,230
- 61. Copyblogger - 3,060
- 62. getrichslowly.org - 3,050
- 63. Blogstorm.co.uk - 2,970
- 64. guykawasaki.com - 2,870
- 65. SEOmoz - 2,940
- 66. PickTheBrain.com - 2,880
- 67. simplehelp.net - 2,390
- 68. ririanproject.com2,260
- 69. imagechan.org - 2,110
- 70. ProBlogger - 2,030
- 71. profit42.com - 1,970
- 72. racketboy.com - 1,910
- 73. John Chow - 1,860
- 74. Scobleizer - 1,690
- 75. Marketing Pilgrim - 1,600
- 76. DesignVitality.com - 1,420
- 77. gameriot.com - 1,410
- 78. whenpenguinsattack.com1,370
- 79. Shoemoney - 1,260
- 80. Dailygaming.net - 1,170
- 81. roscripts.com - 1,130
- 82. wowinsider.com - 1,070
- 83. micahville.com - 1,020
- 84. Matt Cutts - 851
Some of you might be thinking that due to the way the Digg archives work this list will favour sites that have been on the Digg homepage recently. This is clearly the case but if I was Google I would want to rank sites that are popular now rather than sites that were popular a few months ago. Perhaps thats why hitting the front page of social media sites gives an immediate boost in search engine rankings.
Whats your Digg saturation? If it’s more than Matt Cutts on 851 add a comment below and I’ll update the list.













Interesting post. I just checked my site. PickTheBrain is at 2,870.
John Wesley October 3, 2007 1:28 pm | Reply
your list is sorely lacking. Kotaku.com has 33,300 results and is not on your list.
Steve D October 3, 2007 2:33 pm | Reply
Nice way to measure digg success. I never thought of this.
Aditya Kumar Singh October 3, 2007 2:57 pm | Reply
My site, simplehelp.net, has 2,800.
Ross October 3, 2007 6:11 pm | Reply
My site, micahville.com, has 1,020..
Micahville October 3, 2007 6:59 pm | Reply
Jalopnik - 17,400
Ray Wert October 3, 2007 7:30 pm | Reply
Mine, ohgizmo.com, is at 5,060.
That should put me at #32…
david ponce October 3, 2007 8:13 pm | Reply
I hope to get us up there soon. We’re close with 675. OnMyList, The only place to list your pants off.
Noah October 3, 2007 8:13 pm | Reply
My site, profit42.com has a digg saturation of 1910, would be great if you added it to the list.
Jan October 3, 2007 8:14 pm | Reply
imagechan has 2,210
Also an image from it is the 35th most dugg article ever
heffo October 3, 2007 8:15 pm | Reply
Here’s a few:
timesonline.co.uk
dailymail.co.uk
I could go on all day.
British Dude October 3, 2007 8:16 pm | Reply
Wired has 43,300
Darg October 3, 2007 8:18 pm | Reply
My site has seen the Digg affect quite a bit. According to Google my site, DesignVitality.com, has 2,160 which puts me higher than Matt Cutts and quite a few more on your list.
Mustafa October 3, 2007 8:22 pm | Reply
Inhabitat has 5,460.
User October 3, 2007 8:23 pm | Reply
John,
I bet if you were to hit ctrl-f and type ‘Kotaku.com’ you would find it nestled just below treehugger and just above macrumors at number 13 on the list with 33,500
Me October 3, 2007 8:24 pm | Reply
Just checked two that should have hit the list:
FileFront.com - 10,200
GamerNode.com - 7,800
Chris Pereira October 3, 2007 8:24 pm | Reply
mine has 1360, whenpenguinsattack.com
Justin Silverton October 3, 2007 8:25 pm | Reply
racketboy.com has 1,800
Destructoid has 27,200
Nick October 3, 2007 8:27 pm | Reply
http://www.microsoft.com, 20,500
.
Somehow not in the list
Karthick R October 3, 2007 8:29 pm | Reply
Way to miss Maddox, his articles regularly make it to the front page of digg, and his iPhone one alone has over 14,000 diggs (posted about a month ago).
maddox October 3, 2007 8:38 pm | Reply
Dailygaming.net has around 1100. It’d be at the very bottom, but it’s still there.
Andrew October 3, 2007 8:42 pm | Reply
Hey we beat Matt Cutts! I work for Gameriot.com
1,420.
Brad Dickason October 3, 2007 8:42 pm | Reply
Maddox doesn’t have enough saturation for the list.
Patrick Altoft October 3, 2007 8:45 pm | Reply
myspace.com
facebook.com
break.com
wikipedia.org
msn.com
just read alexa.com if you want to have a comprehensive list.
more and more October 3, 2007 8:47 pm | Reply
Cracked?
XKCD?
Surely these belong.
Dan Russell October 3, 2007 8:59 pm | Reply
www.tumbl.us has a saturation 4,520
Naresh October 3, 2007 9:04 pm | Reply
Uh, MSN.com has almost 60,000. What’s the point of this unless you input every website on the internet. Your list only contains the sites that came to your mind while making it.
Daniel October 3, 2007 9:11 pm | Reply
Daniel, I see MSN.com at 36,400. Maybe you are hitting a different Google datacenter or something.
If you want to suggest some sites that are missing please feel free. I made the list based on my own knowledge as a long term Digg user and by looking at the Technorati top blogs.
Patrick Altoft October 3, 2007 9:17 pm | Reply
WoW Insider, 1130.
Eliah October 3, 2007 9:33 pm | Reply
670 + 342 (I have a domain alias that ppl submit as well)
paulstamatiou.com + pstam.com
so I guess you could say my saturation is 1012
Paul Stamatiou October 3, 2007 10:01 pm | Reply
Who cares about Digg? A bunch of navel-gazing douches.
no October 3, 2007 10:41 pm | Reply
http://menshealth.com has 8,730
seth October 3, 2007 11:27 pm | Reply
Cool list! You missed wikiHow, which would have been #37 on the list with 11,300.
Jack H October 4, 2007 12:26 am | Reply
It’s a nice idea, but you’re not measuring it correctly. Right now, you’re simply searching for any pages that Digg that have the domains as words on the pages, not as links. I mean, look at [site:digg.com yahoo.com]. That’s bringing up pages where people are putting in yahoo.com email addresses, among other things. Plus, in other cases, you’re getting pages that have links from profiles rather than stories.
A better way would be to do something like this.
OK, that’s searching Digg itself for all stories to the youtube.com URL. Look at the bottom, and you’ll see there are around 1525 pages of results, 10 stories per page, so a saturation of 15,250 stories. Tick the buried option if you want to get more accurate. Even better, you might scrap and total the raw number of Diggs earned for all stories. Now that would be a metric — which site has the most cumulative Diggs over time.
Danny Sullivan October 4, 2007 12:39 am | Reply
littlegreenfootballs.com has 10,100
LizardDude October 4, 2007 1:16 am | Reply
My site is Get Rich Slowly, and it has a saturation of 3,800!
J.D. Roth October 4, 2007 1:18 am | Reply
techdirt.com 10,600
JON October 4, 2007 1:54 am | Reply
Check out natewhitehill.com He’ll soon pass up John Chow and Pro Blogger no problem. He own’s blogdesign.com which is taking off. Profits up over 1000% in first month!!
Josh Mullineaux October 4, 2007 2:29 am | Reply
I thought my site got a lot of Diggs, but that’s wild… # 12
John October 4, 2007 3:10 am | Reply
Wow, this is a very different concept. I never thought to check for Digg links to see if a site is spam or not. Great article.
Craig October 4, 2007 4:44 am | Reply
Danny, I agree that posting Yahoo email addresses will skew the data but I was trying to measure the popularity of a domain by seeing how many times it was mentioned on Digg, not just how many times it was Dugg. The two are not going to produce the same results.
Also I wanted to bring up results that would be very easy for Google to incorporate into the algorithm, totalling the raw number of Diggs wouldn’t be as easy.
Finally there are some sites that are always Dugg by the same group of people which would mean less Digg saturation using my method. Sites that have Diggs from a wide range of people would appear in more categories and in more peoples profiles and therefore should be thought of as more popular.
Patrick Altoft October 4, 2007 7:14 am | Reply
Josh, Nate might be great at designing blogs but his Digg saturation is only 185 so he doesn’t make the list.
Patrick Altoft October 4, 2007 7:20 am | Reply
Nice concept, my blog ririanproject.com has 2280.
Ririan October 4, 2007 8:34 am | Reply
BBspot.com has 5,710.
Brian October 4, 2007 10:50 am | Reply
i cant find mine anywhere …
guess i need to work on it better …
spend some time informing people of my blog …
hehe …
subcorpus October 4, 2007 11:57 am | Reply
You use to be able to do this with MSN Search using linkfromdomain… alas they shut it down due to spammers (and broke a lot of end user efforts, very lame). Read more at http://blogs.msdn.com/andyed/archive/2006/10/17/search-macros-recap.aspx
Andyed October 4, 2007 1:39 pm | Reply
linuxtracker.org has 2070.
mcangeli October 4, 2007 3:01 pm | Reply
mine has 1,800
racketboy.com
racketboy October 4, 2007 3:10 pm | Reply
Hi Patrick! Thanks for this, but I’d like to address one thing:
>>totalling the raw number of Diggs wouldn’t be as easy.
Well, here it is for you! Top 100 Sites on Digg.com ordered by the Nett No. of Diggs. Hope you find it useful…
Yuvi October 4, 2007 5:23 pm | Reply
Phoronix.com has 5,390 in Google at Digg.
David October 4, 2007 5:36 pm | Reply
My best friend’s dog’s uncle’s sister-in-law’s horses’ barn manager’s site has 324234 links: http://www.gabbr.com
Maxivida October 4, 2007 6:23 pm | Reply
Techcrunch has this story as
who spams digg the most
some of those on this list are very ethical and would never be likely to spam
Search Engines WEB October 4, 2007 6:47 pm | Reply
HowtoForge has 7,520.
Falko October 4, 2007 9:06 pm | Reply
itsecurity.com at 1250
Owen October 4, 2007 9:35 pm | Reply
mine is at 487 link
Hem October 5, 2007 5:30 am | Reply
It would be interesting to compare rankings for submissions to homepages
Hollywood October 5, 2007 8:31 am | Reply
Adobe has 6,400.
Jennifer Apple October 5, 2007 5:26 pm | Reply
EcoGeek.org has 8,320
Billy Shih October 5, 2007 10:01 pm | Reply
Great post idea with some interesting stats, good work.
Glen Allsopp October 6, 2007 10:48 am | Reply
interesting way of looking at things - my site pfadvice.com comes in a 1,140
pfadvice October 7, 2007 5:02 am | Reply
Great little article. I found it very amusing.
I checked, and it looks like One Man’s Blog is currently sitting at 1,930.
I had to check it like 3 times because I couldn’t believe it… but it’s there.
Incidentally, I’ve got a way you can embed this search in your page, so drop me an e-mail and I’ll share it with you. I’m going to link to your post including an embedded search in OMB tomorrow morning.
Take care, and thanks for the amusement.
John P.
John Pozadzides October 7, 2007 7:24 pm | Reply