Unofficial Digg Algorithm Guide

A few days ago on Digg, once again, I had a ranking algorithm , according to which the news should get more than 100 votes 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 only my personal observations. Therefore, if you consider it necessary to add something or correct me, 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 of the categories (please keep in mind that this article does not tell about Digg's methods of cheating , but about her work).

Criteria for getting to the first page:
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1. The swiftness of voices. If you get 40-50 votes (no matter from which 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 will also most likely find yourself on the main page. If you do not get 60 votes in the first day, then you will not 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 his rating). You can also see the amount of popular news of each user who voted for your message in brackets near his nickname. Also on Digg there is a list of the most popular users , sorted by various parameters.
3. Number of comments to the news and their positive ratings. A large number of comments that have received a negative assessment, rather harm you than help. If you get 30 comments and 20 of them will be rated below -4, you will not be taken to the main page. As Kevin said in his ZDnet interview , this feature may not work yet, but I still think it is taking place.
4. The number of complaints about your news. They can complain about your news at different stages of its promotion: when it is in the preliminary news section, and when it has already reached 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, such as a complaint (recurring news, spam, erroneous heading, etc.). Thus, if your article is in a preliminary section, then 3 complaints are enough for it to reject. If it has already reached the main page and has 1000 votes, then 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 search, including rejected articles, but will not be presented in which -or categories).
5. The ratio of sent / popular news of the voting user. If 12–14 users will vote for your news with a ratio of not less than 70%, it will very quickly appear on the main page. You can find this ratio in the profile of each user.
6. Friendship. Reciprocal friends usually vote for your news, so that you get 10-20 additional votes that 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 not limited. Add friends and hope that this friendship will become mutual. After that, help your friends (and hope that they do the same) by browsing the Submitted by Friends section.
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 invention is Digg for equalizing active users, whose friends actively vote for their news, and newbies who have few or no friends. So, if you are such a novice without friends, you may need only 30-40 votes to get to the main page.

And now about the approximate number of votes required to get to the main page in each category:

1. Technology (Technology) and sub-categories - you need about 50 votes , but can increase to 90.
2. Science (Science) and sub-categories - you need about 65–70 votes , but can increase to 85.
3. World and Business (World & Business) and sub-categories - you need about 80–90 votes , 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 - you need about 55–60 votes , but it 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 - you need about 35-50 votes , but can increase to 60.

Also the time allotted for getting to the main page has been increased. If earlier, a maximum of 18–20 hours was allowed, then now on the main page there are news sent 26–28 hours ago.

An archive of popular news appeared with popular news for each month. I would like to recommend Digg, to break the archive by pages, because in some months there were 2,000 popular news. These pages are loaded forever and recall the recommendations of Google about the maximum number of links on a page - 100-200.

And at the end of three interviews with Kevin Rose (Kevin Rose - the creator of Digg) about Digg and its algorithm (after reading them you will become smarter and will better understand Digg):

Interview with Digg Creator Kevin Rose (Part 1, About 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, c Digg ranks 25th among the most visited sites in the United States and 75 in the world.

A few Quantcast statistics for Digg .

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