Digg Stats: How & What we are digging

2006-07-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

We can generally categorize sources/submitters of all the digg stories into two types

General diggers : Those who submit news link from other sites. These people submit news articles whenever they find any interesting ones from any other web sites. The deciding factor is that they have to be the first one to submit this news to make it to the front page.
Publishers : Those who mainly submit link to their own blog or web sites (unfortunately some of these people just link their blog to other stories or else post a youtube video). Imagine how much can you make from the ad revenues if your website has a traffic of around 30 - 50k unique visitors in one day (depending on many factors explained below) and about 25 -30k next day and 10 - 25k the next next day. One front page article per week is good enough to make your web site very popular and rank very very high on alexa.

Below are some of the important factors which affect the traffic and how fast they make it to the frontpage

Title of your story
Content of your story
Category of the story
Time & day promoted to homepage

In detail... Both Title & Content of your story are THE MOST important things, these are not covered in this article. We will post another article about keywords in Title. To check how traffic and probability of a story making to front page depends on the time and the day you post, we have run some scripts on our database and gathered some valuable information through the various statistical tables and graphs.

	Total Stories Submitted	Stories Made to Front Page	Stories Buried(after making it to front page)	%age stories made to frontpage
Sun (25/06)	1077	98	23	10.99
Mon (26/06)	3566	317	30	11.25
Tue (27/06)	4018	256	23	15.70
Wed (28/06)	3759	227	33	16.56
Thurs (29/06)	3498	234	29	14.95
Fri (30/06)	3178	177	25	17.95
Sat (01/07)	1969	145	23	13.58
Sun (02/07)	1592	141	15	11.29
Mon (03/07)	2507	196	41	12.79
Tue (04/07)	2292	127	15	18.05
Wed (05/07)	2978	202	23	14.74
Thurs (06/07)	3348	177	19	18.92
Fri (07/07)	3158	161	33	19.61
Sat (08/07)	1920	78	18	24.62

Table 1: Stories submitted The above table shows 2 week report on how many stories submitted, how many of them made to front page and how many were burried. But what we really care about is about the percentage of stories making to the front page which defines and delineates the pattern of how stories get to front page and their dependency on the day they are submitted. By sorting the % column which depicts the rate at which stories make to front page, you can clearly see Sunday and Monday being the least active days. Also you can see that apart from the number of stories submitted being less even the percentage of stories making to front page is less. If I were a publisher I would avoid publishing those days. Chart 1: Total Stories Submitted in Two Weeks (June 25th - July 8th) (Click on image to enlarge) This clearly shows there is a big variation with sunday being the least active day and thursday (graph here is little skewed because of the digg v3 release) as the most active day. Below is a chart of Total Stories Submitted & Stories made to FrontPage plotted over a 24 hour period(UTC Time). As you can notice a big spike from 13:00 (i.e 9:00 AM EST). This clearly tells many office goers start digging as soon as they step in office, probably 9:00 AM EST is the best time to submit a story. Chart 2: Total Stories Submitted & Stories made to Frontpage on 24 (UTC) hour period (on July 6th) (Click on image to enlarge) With the release of digg V3, now we have more options in selecting a category while submitting a story. Since there is a new option of viewing only selected categories, selecting the right category has now become very important. Below are tables & graphs which show category wise statistics.

	Total Diggs for week	Sun (02/07)	Mon (03/07)	Tue (04/07)	Wed (05/07)	Thurs (06/07)	Fri (07/07)	Sat (08/07)
Apple	649	44	89	55	133	144	118	66
Design	616	42	81	81	115	116	113	68
Gadgets	687	55	84	78	112	186	120	52
Hardware	471	36	70	62	81	84	86	52
Tech Industry News	2184	163	328	226	358	448	438	223
Linux/Unix	339	36	49	40	47	58	61	48
Mods	135	12	25	16	21	25	19	17
Programming	470	29	80	68	68	90	75	60
Security	498	49	47	61	76	107	88	70
Software	986	81	141	126	162	188	180	108
Tech Deals	292	20	46	28	45	46	66	41
Space	331	30	71	70	46	50	33	31
Environment	340	34	45	40	78	69	56	18
Health	613	57	92	105	84	109	101	65
General Sciences	536	51	74	91	86	97	89	48
Business & Finance	929	65	114	95	217	167	186	85
Politics	919	88	134	125	165	165	141	101
World News	1287	144	174	229	229	183	197	131
Offbeat News	1077	134	182	132	170	178	178	103
Animation Videos	127	15	24	21	16	18	15	18
Comedy Videos	734	76	96	103	97	107	157	98
Educational Videos	200	16	33	33	36	24	34	24
Music Videos	162	18	20	28	29	17	32	18
People Videos	395	32	45	55	73	87	55	48
Gaming Videos	119	15	21	18	16	17	22	10
Celebrity	377	43	45	50	50	64	72	53
Movies	410	41	52	46	66	79	73	53
Music	334	34	41	28	61	73	67	30
Television	295	29	50	33	52	62	39	30
Gaming News	990	67	123	119	135	234	203	109
Playable Web Games	293	36	31	30	54	56	44	42

Table 2: Stories submitted by categories (Click on headers to sort the table) "Tech Industry News" is the most popular one with about 2184 stories submitted in one week, next being "World News" and is just about half of it. Stories submitted in this category probably will have fewer chances to make it to FrontPage. Most of the time these stories get pushed back in Upcoming Stories within few minutes. Below table shows no of stories made to FrontPage by categories.

	Total Diggs for week	Sun (02/07)	Mon (03/07)	Tue (04/07)	Wed (05/07)	Thurs (06/07)	Fri (07/07)	Sat (08/07)
Apple	55	6	11	8	12	8	5	5
Design	29	1	6	7	4	4	5	2
Gadgets	13	1	3	1	1	5	1	1
Hardware	21	0	6	1	4	5	3	2
Tech Industry News	120	16	22	6	23	22	17	14
Linux/Unix	51	8	7	9	7	8	6	6
Mods	13	3	4	1	1	2	2	0
Programming	23	2	6	3	5	3	0	4
Security	35	5	2	4	10	4	4	6
Software	42	9	9	7	6	4	3	4
Tech Deals	3	0	2	0	0	0	1	0
Space	22	3	4	2	5	3	4	1
Environment	33	6	6	0	6	5	9	1
Health	35	2	9	7	8	3	4	2
General Sciences	58	7	13	8	7	9	10	4
Business & Finance	70	4	12	9	13	11	14	7
Politics	100	19	14	10	16	15	13	13
World News	77	8	14	5	15	13	11	11
Offbeat News	55	10	7	7	14	5	5	7
Animation Videos	4	1	1	0	0	1	0	1
Comedy Videos	68	10	7	11	6	10	16	8
Educational Videos	26	1	8	3	5	3	2	4
Music Videos	3	0	0	0	1	0	1	1
People Videos	27	2	3	6	2	6	3	5
Gaming Videos	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Celebrity	10	2	1	1	2	3	1	0
Movies	17	1	2	2	4	2	3	3
Music	17	1	3	2	6	3	2	0
Television	15	1	4	2	2	3	3	0
Gaming News	62	7	10	6	11	14	11	3
Playable Web Games	18	4	0	0	6	4	3	1

Table 3: Stories made to frontpage by categories (Click on headers to sort the table) Chart 3: Total Stories Submitted By Categories in One Week (July 2nd - July 8th) (Click on image to enlarge) Below table shows % of the stories making to front page, this clearly tells about the digg audience. 15% of stories submitted in Linux/Unix category has made it to home page 2nd and 3rd being new categories Educational Videos & Politics. One notable point is Gaming News category though is one of the popular ones, only one story from Gaming Videos made it to front page in one week. From four categories Gaming Videos, Tech Deals, Music Videos, Animation Videos Only 11 stories in total made it to home page.

	Total Submitted	FrontPage	%age stories made to frontpage
Apple	649	55	8.47
Design	616	29	4.71
Gadgets	687	13	1.89
Hardware	471	21	4.46
Tech Industry News	2184	120	5.49
Linux/Unix	339	51	15.04
Mods	135	13	9.63
Programming	470	23	4.89
Security	498	35	7.03
Software	986	42	4.26
Tech Deals	292	3	1.03
Space	331	22	6.65
Environment	340	33	9.71
Health	613	35	5.71
General Sciences	536	58	10.82
Business & Finance	929	70	7.53
Politics	919	100	10.88
World News	1287	77	5.98
Offbeat News	1077	55	5.11
Animation Videos	127	4	3.15
Comedy Videos	734	68	9.26
Educational Videos	200	26	13.00
Music Videos	162	3	1.85
People Videos	395	27	6.84
Gaming Videos	119	1	0.84
Celebrity	377	10	2.65
Movies	410	17	4.15
Music	334	17	5.09
Television	295	15	5.08
Gaming News	990	62	6.26
Playable Web Games	293	18	6.14

Table 4: %age of FrontPage Stories by categories (Click on headers to sort the table) If you like this article please digg it. If you are looking more stats and have any ideas, please use our idea-box or feedback form to submit us your valuable ideas and queries and we will surely work on them. Disclaimer: Most the numbers quoted here might not be 100% accurate but they sure do represent the trends.

DiggTrends listed in various news sites

2006-06-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

We are glad to see diggtrends.com listed in a couple of popular tech news sites. On June 25' 2006, diggtrends listed on waxy.org. On June 26' 2006, diggtrends listed on lifehacker.com. On June 28' 2006, diggtrends mentioned on searchenginewatch.com. and a couple of more references on various sites like bloglines, stumbleupon & delicious and digg.com itself. We thank everyone. :)

DiggTrends Updated for Digg Version 3.0

2006-06-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

Today morning Digg released its version 3.0. We updated our DiggTrends accordingly to add the new categories. There were 16 categories and in the V3.0 release there are 31 categories. We were able to upgrate our whole system with almost no downtime. But since we couldnt update our system instantly there are few digg links which may show weird graphs like sudden spikes and a few category mis-matches. But after the update, the links are just fine. You can use the category filters on the right hand side of the page for quick viewing. We are soon going to provide a much better interface for the filters and some exciting stats please visit back to find updates. Please send us your feedback.

DiggTrends - Beta Release, Quench Your Thirst of Curiosity

2006-06-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

Hello World.... Today we are releasing our DiggTrends.com. Diggtrends is not a "digg clone" but it complements digg.com. Our main goal is to provide more insight of what & how we are digging. Heres is what you can find on our site:

Mirror: We mirror the Digg.com site each digg tagged with some intuitive information like the Graph which visually shows you how your digg story reached and thrived since you posted. Also, we show with how many diggs did it reached the front page along with time-stamp. Ofcourse, cache link and AJAX-way of updating every 10 mins.
Buried: We have always been curious what, when and how links get buried. Here we present you this information. We track the buried links for you.
Forecast: Again, out of curiosity we show here diggs which we predict to make the front-page.
Missed: These are just missed diggs which almost made to the point to reach the front-page. We surely miss some useful and interesting links but now you dont.
Stats: We have a bunch of ideas which are still in pipeline. This is going to be an interesting part. Please wait and see.
Idea-Box: This site is the result of 2 diggers. Now guess what it could be possible with all the diggers ideas. We can innovate things. So please submit your ideas and lets discuss using the comments and the digg the ideas.
Misc: Innovative paging ability, fetch diggs by calendar, filter your diggs everything the ajaxian way. Not to mention, we have two themes blue & orange theme.

To end this post, we are buckling up for the V3.0 release of Digg.com and will keep you updated thru this blog.

Dugg Trends

Digg Stats: How & What we are digging

DiggTrends listed in various news sites

DiggTrends Updated for Digg Version 3.0

DiggTrends - Beta Release, Quench Your Thirst of Curiosity