Unofficial Digg Algorithm Guide

Original author: Cristian Mezei
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A few days ago , Digg once again used a ranking algorithm , according to which the news should receive more than 100 votes in order to get to the main page. And since Digg does not disclose the details of its algorithm (by the way, for the same reasons as Google - so that people could not complain), I decided to share my own observations. This is not official information, but just my personal observations. Therefore, if you consider it necessary to add or correct something, write a comment.

In this article I want to share my findings about the Digg ranking system and how many votes are needed to get to the main page in each category (please note that this article does not talk about methods of cheating the Digg system, but about the principles of its work).

Criteria for getting to the first page:

  1. The swiftness of votes. If you get 40-50 votes (no matter what users) in the first 30 minutes, you will most likely find yourself on the main page. If you get 60–70 votes in the first 18 hours, you are also likely to be on the main page. If you do not get 60 votes in the first day, then you won’t get anywhere.
  2. Rating of users voting for your news. The higher their rating, the better (go to the user profile and you will see its rating). You can also see the number of popular news of each user who voted for your message, in brackets next to his nickname. Digg also has a list of the most popular users , sorted by various parameters.
  3. The number of comments on the news and their positive ratings. A large number of comments that have received a negative rating are more likely to harm you than help. If you get 30 comments and 20 of them will be rated below -4, you will not get to the main page. As Kevin said in a ZDnet interview , this feature may not work yet, but it still seems to me that it does.
  4. The number of complaints about your news. They can complain about your news at different stages of its promotion: when it’s in the preliminary news section, and when it’s already on the main page. Of course, the number of complaints affects the fate of your news, but it also seems to me that it still depends on the rating of the user who complains, the type of complaint (repeated news, spam, erroneous headline, etc.). Thus, if your article is in the preliminary section, then 3 complaints are sufficient for rejection. If she already got to the main page and has 1000 votes, the number of complaints for rejection increases to 10-15 (by the way, the news will remain on Digg and will be available through a direct link or in a search that includes rejected articles, but will not be presented in which any categories).
  5. Ratio of the sent / popular news of the voting user. If 12-14 users with a ratio of not less than 70% vote for your news, it will quickly appear on the main page. You can find this ratio in each user's profile.
  6. Friendship. Mutual friends usually vote for your news, so you get 10–20 extra votes, which can play a key role. You can add a maximum of 4 friends per hour (due to the fight against spam), but the total number of friends is unlimited. Add friends and hope that this friendship becomes mutual. After that, help your friends (and hope they do the same way) looking to " Added Friends " (Submitted by Friends).
  7. Very, very important: if you have a lot of friends (50-100 or more), you need 2-3 times more votes than new users. This is proven and confirmed by 2 users from the Top-10. Naturally, this is Digg’s invention for equalizing active users whose friends actively vote for their news and newcomers who have few or no friends. So if you are such a newcomer without friends, you may need only 30–40 votes to get to the main page.


And now about the approximate number of votes needed to get to the main page in each of the categories:
  1. Technology and sub-categories - about 50 votes are needed , but can increase to 90.
  2. Science and sub-categories - about 65–70 votes are needed , but can increase to 85.
  3. World and business (World & Business) and sub-categories - about 80–90 votes are needed , but can increase to 100.
  4. Sports (Sports) and sub-categories - you need about 30-40 votes , but can increase to 50.
  5. Video (Videos) and sub-categories - about 55-60 votes are needed , but can increase to 80.
  6. Entertainment (Entertainment) and sub-categories - you need about 50–55 votes , but can increase to 70.
  7. Games (Gaming) and sub-categories - about 35-50 votes are needed , but can increase to 60.


It also increased the time allotted for getting to the main page. If before it was allowed a maximum of 18–20 hours, now on the main page there are news sent 26–28 hours ago.

There was also an archive of popular news with popular news for each month. I would like to recommend Digg, paginate the archive, since in some months there were 2000 popular news. Such pages are loaded forever and Google’s recommendations about the maximum number of links per page are recalled - 100-200.

And finally, three interviews with Kevin Rose (Digg's creator Kevin Rose) about Digg and its algorithm (reading them will make you smarter and better at digg):

Interview with Digg creator Kevin Rose(Part 1, on the ranking system) - ZDnet
Interview with Digg creator Kevin Rose (Part 2, on spam protection) - ZDnet
Kevin Rose on Digg: facts and fiction - MarketingShift

According to Alexa, Digg is now 25th among the most visited sites in the USA and 75 in the world.

A few statistical indicators of Quantcast for Digg .

PS This news on Digg was rejected. What makes me (and not only me, but also other popular users) wonder: “Why?”. (I'm not worried about traffic, but I don’t understand the reluctance of Digg users to know the details about the main page).

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