Google, Digg And Possible SEO Consequences

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 23 of July , 2008 at 9:01 pm

Rumors have been around for months regarding Google’s possible acquisition of popular bookmarking site Digg. They resurfaced again this week, this time without any denials or comments from either party. If Google does acquire Digg, will it have an effect on search engine optimization strategies, past, present or future?

Digg has become quite a ‘clicky’ site. Either you are ‘in’ or you are not with the majority of users not ‘in’. If you are regular user of Digg you will notice that many of items that make the front page come from a small group. Perhaps a Google acquisition may resolve that little issue. However the bigger issue is whether or not SEO, and in particular, search engine rankings are going to be effected.

Will Google place a greater emphasis on pages bookmarked on Digg, particularly those that make the front page? Google is already toying with a voting system for search results so a marriage with Digg could see the Digg ‘votes’ being displayed as part of the search results.

I mentioned in an earlier post that perhaps we should change the name from search engine optimization to ‘search optimizers‘ as we now seem to spend as much time using some social sites to promote pages and gather backlinks.

Where I think a Google acquisition may hurt social media marketing due to the inside knowledge that they will have. Google will have a better idea of who are ’spamming’ the social bookmarking sites and perhaps discount links flowing from these sites. There is little doubt that Google uses the information gained from Feedburner. Digg seems the next logical step in their empire building.

Ultimately, Google wont spend a reported $200 million on a site like Digg unless they can see a clear way to get a return. Returns, whilst generally measured in dollar terms, can be also be measured in data and how much extra information they can acquire to help with their search results. Will it have a major impact on the search engine optimization industry? In the short term probably not. In the long term, that is a different question that only time will tell.

Category: SEO

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