I’m sure affiliate marketers can’t wait to try them, even if the image ads conversion is lower than the text ads. Though, the advantage is that the ad also includes text, below an image. Fortunately, the image has an yellow background and above it is the text “sponsored image” so the users won’t click them by mistake. But I’m not that sure they won’t, especially they didn’t expect them to be there.

Once launched, we shall see the advertisers experiences on conversions, but I’m confident they won’t be combarable with the text ads in search.

Take a look at the ads

The new version features a star rating for websites and a button you can place on your website where users can vote you directly. The button also shows how many votes the page has. Take a look at it:

Finally, they seem to have understood that people don’t like to spend time and are lazy, so they lost a lot by requiering them to install the toolbar. Now the toolbar is in a web version and it makes things easier, even if it’s not so feature-full as the install version. Check it out here, it might work for you too.

The website layout has also changed a lot and it offers everyone to vote a website directly from the review page, also it shows websites relevant to it.

The profile page has also changed, but not very much.

In conclusion, they seem to have done a great thing with it and the membership will definitely grow at a much faster rate that it was until now.

What do you think about it ? Do you see it already ?

Fortunately everything went excellent and I passed them all and got admitted to the university. After that I though I deserve a vacation and went to Greece ( Thassos ) for a week. After that, I had another problem: to rent an apartment in Bucharest, it was really hard to find the one I liked.

When everything seemed alright, I figured out that my very low internet activity inflicted in my profits and I ws almost broke, so I had to work a lot to get the traffic back and take care of the websites.

Now I’m back in business and I have more free time, so fortunately I will be able to update this blog more often. If you want to get noticed of my future articles, don’t hesitate to subscribe via RSS or email.

I have been an active Digg user for a while and I know a lot of other users, including power users and others. Also I read a lot of blog posts about Digg and other’s thoughts. I will try to share with you what I’ve learned until now and try to make you understand the algorithm, at least a part of it, because only they know it exactly.

Along with the algorithm, I will try to share with you some tips that will get the story dugg and to prevent it from being burried.

1. Headline
   It’s very important to write a headline that will attract the users to click on the story and visit the link. Try to make it attractive, but offer the users an idea of what the story is about. The headline depends on what category you submit the story in ( e.g If you submit it in comedy, then make it funny ).
2. Description
   Try to write an excerpt of the article in the description, so if the user isn’t convinced from the headline to click the link, to make him do it.
3. Thumbnail
   Digg now offers you the possibility to attach a thumbnail to the story. If you submit your own website, try to edit the photo to fit well in the thumb size.
4. Category
   If you submit the story in a wrong category, it’s doomed, so think well before submitting.
5. Time
   Don’t submit your story at 3AM, because nobody is using Digg at that hour and won’t be using it in the next 12 hours at least. Your story has to be up and fresh when Digg is most used and that’s starting at 5PM. There is an advantage if submitting at an hour Digg is less used, because you have lower competition, but also less votes. Before submitting it, check what part of the world it’s headed too and make sure they are awake and aren’t at work at that time.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors that prevent a story to get popular and I’ve figured a part of them. There are some you can deal with, while others don’t depend on you.

1. Flamers
   There are a lot of users that don’t do anything but burying all stories and posting flaming comments. Unfortunately you can do nothing about it, except submitting something that will seem perfect for them.
2. Headline, Description, Image, Category
   If you write a wrong headline or description, users might not be interested in your story and don’t even check it. Or worse, your story might get buried. Also if you submit in the wrong category, fans of that category won’t find what they were looking for and will probably bury your story.
3. Time
   If your story doesn’t get popular in the first 24 hours after submission, chances to get popular are almost null.
4. Website
   If the website is poorly designed or full of ads, it might disturb some users and leave without voting. If it’s really disturbing, it might even get buried or marked as spam.
5. Content
   The story has to be very well written, with no mistakes or typos and to say clearly what it has to say. Also pictures are very important and attract the users.
6. Moderators
   Even if Digg states that there’s nobody implied in the process, there are stories that have lots of votes and comments, being really interesting, that don’t get popular. What else could keep them from hitting the front page ?

From my experience, a story doesn’t have to be only voted positively and some buries might also help. Many votes, comments, buries and positive/negative votes on comments make a story controversial and this seems to help it a lot get popular.

Still there are stories with a lot of votes and comments that stay in the upcoming page for hours and don’t get popular - some get after many hours, some don’t at all -, in my opinion, that’s where moderators are implied. Let’s take an example: The story in the screenshot below was first in upcoming for many hours and has 332 votes with 97 comments, being submitted 23 hours earlier the sreenshot was made. This example is a lucky one, because the story got popular finally. The strange thing is that while it was just staying there, upcoming, about 20 stories got popular, some with three times less votes than this one and lesser comments.

Maybe you noticed that power users need more votes to get their stories popular. That’s because Digg’s algorithm tries to keep users away from exchanging votes and tries to offer everyone equal chances.

Now it doesn’t only count on the number of votes, but it also depends who’s the voter. If someone is voting your stories frequently and doesn’t vote many others, their vote counts less or doesn’t count at all. So you need to get your story voted by a variety of users.

Power users need more votes from two reasons. Having many fans and many stories submitted, there is a high chance that the same users vote some of their stories and this reduces the votes’ value. Also having more fans it means more chances to get their stories popular and Digg requires them more votes for this, while users with less popular stories, fans and friends need less votes.

One more thing that might keep power users from getting their stories popular with less votes is because fans’ votes might also count less.

Though this is no brainier and I didn’t offer you any secret way to suck Digg’s traffic, I hope it will help you better understand Digg and avoid making mistakes.

Please share your thoughts and opinions !

Yet he stated clearly that URLs ended in .exe or .0 were not indexed at all until a few days ago. Now it seems Google does index them but we can’t be sure it gives them full trust and doesn’t penalize them.

SEOmoz has faced this problem with their Web 2.0 Awards, that had the url “http://www.seomoz.org/web.2.0″, which finished in .0 .

So take care how you format your URL to be search engine friendly and don’t get penalized.

Have you ever faced an issue with an improper formatted URL not to be indexed by Google ?

Now it shows how much a keyword is searched, in comparison to the average searches since 2004 until the time you perform the query. For example if today the keyword ‘iPhone’ has been searched two times more than the average times it was searched daily from 2004, Google Trends will show ‘2′.

Along with this, now you also have the possibility to download the trends as a CSV file. All you need is to be logged into your Google account.

via Google Blog

ReadWriteWeb has written a very interesting post about Mixx. Now it’s one year old and traffic seems to grow really fast, but still can’t be a liable competitor for Digg, receiving less than 5% of Digg’s traffic.

Still, it seems to be on the good road and might grow, especially that Digg is full of spam stories, flames and unsatisfied users.

Currently, this only works for image ads, so you will see no change if you are opted out. If you are currently using or going to use image ads, then you have to update your privacy policy to let your visitors know about the third-party ads you’re serving.

We’re happy to announce that the Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors. During this initial release, only ads in English are eligible, although we look forward to offering more options in the future.

By accepting third-party ads, we can attract a greater variety of advertising on the Google content network, which we believe will result over time in increased revenue for publishers and more relevant advertising for end users.

More on Google’s Official Blog

I will try to point the advantages and disadvantages of both traffic sources, so we figure what’s the best option. Of course all traffic is good, more or less, but let’s see what should we concentrate more on.

1. Quantity

• Social media traffic is much more easier to get and stumble can bring thousands of visitors from only a few votes on one page. Also a Digg front page is not so hard to reach, if you write quality content and it can bring tens of thousands of visitors. You only need to build strong profiles on social networks and the traffic will come, if you respect the quality guidelines.
• Search engine traffic is usually less favorable to be compared with social media, because you need to have a very well optimized website, with many quality inbound links. The content also must be good, as in social media’s case, but you also need to write it seo-friendly. Also the website needs to be old and established, with many pages and the inbound links need to come on a constant basis.
• Conclusion: Social media can bring more, easy traffic than search engines.

2. Quality

• The visitor that comes from social media usually doesn’t know what he will find on your page, especially on StumbleUpon, so the conversion is really low, because he might not like your page and close it. Also social media users are looking for news, entertainment and don’t intend to buy anything, so it’s hard to convert them into clients. All stats show that the CTR generated from social media is much lower than search engines.
• Search engine visitors are very targeted and the chance to find on your website what they are looking for is higher. The chance for those visitors to buy your product or click your ads is much higher, so monetization chances and possibilities are better.
• Conclusion: Social media doesn’t offer quality traffic and isn’t relevant, search engine traffic is better.

3. Monetization

• There aren’t many ways you can monetize social media traffic as well as search engine traffic. Due to the quantity, the better option is to use CPM ads, that pay for every impression and not for click, sale or lead.
• Search engine traffic can be monetized in a lot of ways. If you have a website targeted on products, like a review blog, you can easily place affiliate ads and get a sale commission. Also chances for the user to click on the CPC ads are much higher.
• Conclusion: social media traffic has more limited monetization options, only working good with CPM ads, while search engine traffic being better on CPC and CPA ads, that pay more.

So search engines bring visitors really interested in your website, while social networks bring visitors that will read a bit and then leave. But you have to use social media, because all traffic can be monetized in one way or another and you have to waste nothing. One more advantage of social media is you get your website noticed and this can bring readers and a lot of inbound links, that will help search engine traffic.