The bloggosphere is abuzz today about the new DiggBar but I have my reservations about the new, admittedly cool, multi-purpose link sharing tool. The concern is its impact on SEO ranking for links shared using digg short URLs. URL shorteners like is.gd are popular on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed because they look better and save characters. Most URL shorteners use an HTTP 301 redirect to forward browsers to the final URL which is the method recommended by Google. The DiggBar URLs on the other hand point to digg.com/<code> and use framing (nested iframe) to display the target page, a technique that was considered to be a cheap dirty trick to steal content back in the '90s. Example: http://digg.com/u13iq.

framing increases Digg's page rank, not the target

Framing has its advantages, for instance adding a digg button to any page, but it's bad for SEO page rank because search engines will see those URLs as links to digg.com, not the actual page. I thought that Digg might be checking the user agent string to detect the Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp or other indexers but after testing with the User Agent Switcher Firefox add-on and with Javascript completely disabled, DiggBar URLs always use framing.

If page rank is important to you I would suggest that you not use the Digg URL shortener. Instead, choose from one of these that use 301 redirects.

Update 2009/4/10

Digg posted a blog in response to some of the the negative response to the Diggbar. In it they state that, prior to release, they worked with search providers and content creators to be as "content-provider-friendly as possible". They go on to state "We launched a few additional updates early this week to address some lingering concerns in the SEO and publishing communities...".

I re-ran my user-agent tests to see if their "additional updates" now detects bot user-agents and redirects using the HTTP 301 response but it still does not. I'm not sure exactly what they and the search engines are doing but I guess we'll just have to take their word that their URLs, while still framed, aren't negatively affecting SEO rank (Google juice as they call it). Content providers are probably breathing a sigh of relief since Digg and Google generate a lot of traffic for many sites. Unfortunately there are still some concerns inherent in the framed method still in use by Digg and BurnURL.

Update 2009/4/22 Digg drops diggbar

Labnol.org just posted a blog stating that Digg has finally caved in to complaints and dropped the Diggbar (framing) for "users who aren’t logged into their Digg accounts". This is a big win for content providers but Digg's reputation is still tarnished in my opinion.