Update! My results need updating as it was pointed out that I have an error in the Google command used to generate the results. I will recompile and repost later today.
[5pm update] Here is the updated and corrected ranking for digg.com given the list of sites digg was compared to in my original posting - not bad still in the top 10 at #7.
| Site | My Original rank [was wrong] | New correct rank [based on links] | Change [+ / -] |
| http://www.yahoo.com | 1 | 1 | Same |
| http://www.msn.com | 2 | 5 | -3 |
| http://www.google.com | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| http://www.digg.com | 4 | 7 | -3 |
| http://www.aol.com | 5 | 15 | -10 |
| http://www.cnet.com | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| http://www.nytimes.com | 7 | 6 | 1 |
| http://www.usatoday.com | 8 | 8 | Same |
| http://www.washingtonpost.com | 9 | 9 | Same |
| http://www.reddit.com | 10 | 24 | -14 |
| http://www.latimes.com | 11 | 11 | Same |
| http://www.netscape.com | 12 | 14 | -2 |
| http://slashdot.org | 13 | 4 | 9 |
| http://www.boston.com | 14 | 10 | 4 |
| http://www.newsvine.com | 15 | 19 | -4 |
| http://www.chicagotribune.com | 16 | 13 | 3 |
| http://www.sfgate.com | 17 | 12 | 5 |
| http://www.nypost.com | 18 | 16 | 2 |
| http://www.dallasnews.com | 19 | 21 | -2 |
| http://www.nydailynews.com | 20 | 23 | -3 |
| http://www.suntimes.com | 21 | 18 | 3 |
| http://www.washtimes.com | 22 | 17 | 5 |
| http://www.ajc.com | 23 | 20 | 3 |
| http://www.philly.com | 24 | 22 | 2 |
| http://www.miami.com | 25 | 25 | Same |
Also of note is that while digg.com is linked to by 120,000 pages its submit page found at www.digg.com/submit is linked to by more than 350,000 pages.
I would guess that in general sites linking to digg.com are blogging or talking about digg in some form or another. The number of sites linking to the submit page are more reflective of how important sites and blogs view digg in hopes of driving traffic to their sites.
If we use this number to rank digg's popularity it would again be ranked at #4 just above slashdot who has around 290,000 sites linking to it.
A lot of people have been watching the rising popularity around the social news site digg.com. In past discussions on TWiT, Techcrunch and diggnation I have heard people point to Alexa stats for gauging how popular digg is becoming related to other news sites like slashdot, NewYorkPost and even Netscape.
While these numbers are telling, from what I understand they are based on a subset of internet users that browse the web with the Alexa toolbar. This number of users are referred to as the Alexa Toolbar community and based on downloads since 1997 can include up to 10 million web users. I would image the effective number of active users of Alexa to be much lower than this all time download number, however. Thus making any popularity analysis based on these numbers, while relative, in the end less then what is representative of the web community as a whole.
So I took another approach for determining the popularity of digg.com. I do not claim to have the 'correct' approach but only a different way for viewing how popular digg has become. What is my approach? Total hyperlinks. Basically, taking a page from Google, I looked at the number of links that point to digg.com. I then compared this number to that of other sites.
Given that this is a core component for how Google determines page relevance from its 8 billion plus index I figured it is both relative and representative of digg's popularity. The numbers are below... Comments welcomed.
Rank |
Site: |
Links to site |
| 1 |
http://www.yahoo.com |
87,600,000 |
| 2 |
http://www.msn.com |
35,100,000 |
| 3 |
http://www.google.com |
33,300,000 |
| 4 |
http://www.digg.com |
|
| 5 |
http://www.aol.com |
22,700,000 |
| 6 |
http://www.cnet.com |
21,900,000 |
| 7 |
http://www.nytimes.com |
6,930,000 |
| 8 |
http://www.usatoday.com |
6,220,000 |
| 9 |
http://www.washingtonpost.com |
5,480,000 |
| 10 |
http://www.reddit.com |
2,390,000 |
| 11 |
http://www.latimes.com |
2,240,000 |
| 12 |
http://www.netscape.com |
2,030,000 |
| 13 |
http://slashdot.org |
1,670,000 |
| 14 |
http://www.boston.com |
1,530,000 |
| 15 |
http://www.newsvine.com |
1,330,000 |
| 16 |
http://www.chicagotribune.com |
919,000 |
| 17 |
http://www.sfgate.com |
880,000 |
| 18 |
http://www.nypost.com |
544,000 |
| 19 |
http://www.dallasnews.com |
378,000 |
| 20 |
http://www.nydailynews.com |
356,000 |
| 21 |
http://www.suntimes.com |
349,000 |
| 22 |
http://www.washtimes.com |
344,000 |
| 23 |
http://www.ajc.com |
290,000 |
| 24 |
http://www.philly.com |
259,000 |
| 25 |
http://www.miami.com |
166,000 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
[as of 7/28/2006] |
|
Hey, Mark... LIGHTEN UP! I love geeks that get totally heated up about nothing all that significant to begin with.. why don't you take a plane to Lebanon and stay there a while to put your life in perspective.
Posted by: Jeff Fatha | July 31, 2006 at 03:53 PM
Your data cannot be correct and who are you to say what is the most linked to site on the 'net?
For instance on google, digg.com gets 120,000 results but through msn it is 585,623.
How do you know which is correct? Whenever i look for links to my blog i never use google because it only gets around a third of the results msn does.
More the best results I'd suggest using something like DogPile (google, yahoo, msn merged).
So you don't actually have any proof that your data is correct, you're just relying on a google search.
sorry mate.
Posted by: Mark | July 29, 2006 at 06:27 PM
Oops! I didn't notice that. I got the wrong results. I will update the post to alert folks and also the digg. I will also recompile the list to see where Digg really comes at.
Credit goes to Bob Coret for catching my error. Many thanks Bob.
Posted by: Lee Cardona | July 29, 2006 at 12:10 PM
The Google URL is wrong, there are only about 120.000 sites linking to digg.com, see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=link%3Adigg.com
(make sure link: and digg.com aren't separated by a space!!)
Posted by: Bob Coret | July 29, 2006 at 08:30 AM