Some of you may be wondering why you’re not seeing the latest piece of Digg’s news-puzzle — the DiggBar — on Engadget. Let me explain.
If you’ve seen the tool in action, then you know that it appears to offer an easy way to read an article you might want to Digg by providing you with a dropdown toolbar and a shortened URL — all courtesy of digg.com. It’s certainly a super solution for making users aware of related stories on the site and generally keeping them in the Digg ecosystem… but that’s part of the problem.
In Digg’s efforts to keep you swimming in their stream, they completely obscure the original URL you’re supposed to be looking at. And no, not just the URL you follow from a particular Digg on their site — all the URLs you visit (via clicks) until you kill the bar. Additionally, if you’re browsing around a site under the bar itself and you kill it, it transports you back to the original URL you landed on, thus completely breaking continuity and making it almost impossible to know where you’ve actually browsed to.
Maybe that’s okay for users who aren’t really paying attention to where they’ve arrived or where they’re going while reading news — but we consider that information valuable, and don’t wish to obfuscate it.
In our opinion, the DiggBar takes Digg’s approach to news gathering and dissemination one step too far. By hijacking URLs, they complicate an end-user’s experience on our site, and from a publishing standpoint, we think it’s a step backwards to mask the content you’re visiting with shortened URLs from an unrelated site. See John Gruber’s excellent piece on this which gets a bit more technical, and this Search Engine Land post which gets really technical.
Ultimately, this is both a technical and philosophical decision. We believe that the work of content creators should be protected and treated as the unique product that it is, and that an end-user’s experience shouldn’t be tainted with a “catch-all” tool which diminishes context.
So here’s how our solution works: If you follow one of our links from Digg — and you have the DiggBar active on your account — it now redirects to our original URL. You’ll see the DiggBar for a moment, but ultimately end up at the original content you clicked on in the first place.
Which is how it’s supposed to work, mind you.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
even though i don’t get millions of users to my site but still it was quite annoying and i am trying to implement the method suggested by search engine land… it’s no way acceptable nor it is moral at the first place
April 10th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Use this JavaScript to do the same on pages you don’t want to use the PHP code John Gruber wrote, or to remove frames from other places (Google Images, Facebook etc.)
if(top.location!= document.location) top.location = document.location;
Example at: Digg.com/u19yk
April 10th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
I have to agree with you taking a stand on this.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Great explanation as to why Engadget isn’t using the diggbar. I actually did the same thing on three sites that I manage that make it onto their digg topic’s popular pages occasionally.
I use PHP (pretty similar to Gruber’s code). There are a few sites, though, that I have left the diggbar off (including my personal website, for the moment anyway).
April 11th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Digg bar is a choice for digg users.. be glad they send you traffic
April 11th, 2009 at 12:21 am
This sounds like the next step in the AP vs Google. “Information should be free,” oh wait, where’s my credit?!?
April 11th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Glad to see Engadget has joined the fight. There are multiple ethical reasons why you should block the DiggBar including the fact that it steals content, traffic, and potential revenue from the publisher. Another important reason is that if Digg is allowed to do it, others will follow and the Web will be nothing but frames within frames within frames.
While there’s a lot of ethical reasons to break the DiggBar, there’s also some beneficial reasons to do so….
3 Reasons Why Breaking The DiggBar Actually Increases Website Traffic:
http://tomuse.com/3-reasons-break-digg-diggbar-increase-web-site-traffic
April 11th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Engadget.com owns their own real estate, so if they don’t want to be framed they have full control over that.
Personally, though, I’d welcome digg traffic.
If only there was a way to display the true URL…
Perhaps a digg JavaScript snippet pasted on Engadget webpages that displays the diggbar organically so the URL displays the true URL. Similar to the “NY Times bar” here:
http://nytimes.com/
Think of it as an AdSense code snippet but for generic toolbars instead of just ads.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:05 am
[...] rid of it is actually remarkably simple. Engadget for example is blocking the DiggBar (an excellent post here) as are a number of other sites. So if you really, really hate it that much, add the [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 1:19 am
I can understand why publisher’s don’t like this, but if the choice was between diggbar, or NO TRAFFIC from digg, which would you choose? Yeah, you’d choose diggbar, because they send you a metric fuckton of traffic and you fucking love it. It’s their site and they can link to you however the fuck they want. In fact I think they should punish sites like Engadget by banning their domain permanently for being such a little bitch.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:28 am
@sean: Yeah, and? THIS is Engadget’s site. They have every right to determine how THEIR visitors experience THEIR content. If you weren’t such a Diggwad, you’d know we’ve been down this road before; it didn’t work then, it won’t work now.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Yay!
April 11th, 2009 at 1:57 am
[...] It is well in their rights to do so as far as I am concerned. The most predominate of these sites is the mighty Engadget. Yes folks, Engadget is blocking the [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 2:56 am
OneMonkeysUncle - wrong, I hate digg. I never use it. I also agree that the diggbar is not a good thing. I’m just saying - they can link to your site however the hell they want, and it’s hard for a site like Engadget to complain about it since they get TONS of traffic from digg. On the rare occasion I happen to visit digg’s site, I’d say there’s about a 90% chance that one of the front page stories is from Engadget.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:03 am
One of the thing commenters need to realize - Because digg does a 200, none of the traffic from digg is that useful. All links, ads, etc appear to come from digg. How is that good for engadget? It isn’t. Engadget pays the bandwidth bills, digg gets the referrers.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:10 am
@sean:
Several things wrong with your argument…
a) Engadget is still getting all the same traffic from Digg. It’s just going to the proper url’s it should have been going to in the first place.
b) This isn’t about one site being able to link to another site “however they want”. Digg is not actually linking to your content; they are showing your page in a frame on their site. That’s just content theft. Engadget gets no benefit from that.
c) Despite Kevin Rose’s proclamations to the contrary, Digg’s shortened url’s are being indexed by Google. You can verify this yourself by searching for site:digg.com in Google and just browsing through the results. Given the size of Digg, it’s highly likely that Google will treat at least some of those urls as canonical, ie. Digg will be considered by Google to be the original content source, and will show up first in the results for a search term for that content. Again, content theft.
This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Everybody should be blocking the diggbar. Digg needs to learn how the internet works.
April 11th, 2009 at 5:11 am
[...] says the same thing. But some nuance is warranted, in my eyes: big sites like Gruber’s and Engadget should block DiggBar traffic entirely to really send a message; small sites like me have enough to [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Could someone please make a wordpress plugin that blocks the Diggbar?
April 11th, 2009 at 5:59 am
@Panayotis Vryonis:
http://github.com/philnelson/diggbarred/tree/master
April 11th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I love the DiggBar and while I appreciate your stance, it’s just plain annoying. I’m sure you could have just opened a dialog with Kevin Rose or Digg regarding their implementation without having to be so petty as to block a cool (but perhaps poorly implemented) innovation.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:40 am
How come no one is saying the same thing about Facebook’s frame?
April 11th, 2009 at 8:00 am
engadget gets traffic from digg? wrong
think about it - digg (like google) isn’t adding content to the equation, so digg is the one riding the backs of content providers like engadget
and url obscuring is a security issue, which is 100% of the reasons you need to framebust
April 11th, 2009 at 8:24 am
[...] experience for digg users. In publisher point of view it is evil in its current form and sites like engadget are blocking it. One of the main concerns is that Diggbar short URLs are 200 http codes, that means [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 8:43 am
[...] EnGadget decides to block the Digg bar. [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 8:56 am
[...] out, there may be a problem. According to many sources (for the purposes of this article this source in particular) the way in which the DiggBar manipulates the URL information basically breaks the way in which [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 9:33 am
[...] we won’t make much of a difference (and more established sites such as Daring Fireball and Engadget will), but hopefully over time (and as a collective), Digg will get the idea. - [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 9:38 am
The amount of ill conceived technical assumptions and understanding posted above truly astound me.
Shortened urls indexed by google? Yes, there are now MORE URLS.
Ads being served by Digg instead of Engadget. WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Frame wars are so 1992.
If you choose to remove the diggbar from your site, that’s your choice too. Breaking a frame is 1993 technology. When you start sending digg users to a different page - the only penalty is less traffic for you.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:12 am
For those arguing that the people should gladly welcome the DiggBar, due to the massive traffic Digg produces, let me remind you that Digg is not a content creator. Digg is nothing more than a content aggregator, reliant upon user input to determine the order of it’s directory listing. Where is their leverage? Digg is fortunate that publishers create content. The reality is that most of the stuff featured on the front page of Digg comes from destinations that have plenty of traffic already. Without these destinations, Digg has no business. It is not the other way around.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I’m currently working through sites to block the DiggBar too.
The reasons for this include:
Incorrect implementation of the canonical URL in its script (all URLs within a site are given the canonical reference of the page that is linked by the short URL);
Dilution of link juice by the above, as well as by search engines indexing the Digg short URL;
The DiggBar sends an IE7-compatibility header to IE which can potentially put the site onto the Microsoft master IE compatibility list, potentially resulting in every IE8 user seeing the site rendered in compatibility view. Since this overrides the site’s MS meta tag for setting the compatibility rendering it has potential to cause sites to display incorrectly.
Note to all those who suggest using the JavaScript method to break out of the iframe - this does not work if (a) JavaScript is turned off, or (b) visitors are using the No-Script plugin on Firefox, or (c) visitors are coming from corporate sites where JavaScript is disabled at firewall and therefore cannot work even though its enabled on the workstation browser.
I try to make the sites I manage accessible to all visitors. iframes are not accessible and Digg seems not to give a damn about people who use assistive technology to access content. Shame on them!
April 11th, 2009 at 11:27 am
[...] script for Firefox and a javascript plugin-in for end users. And this weekend, Engadget.com began blocking the DiggBar. All of this happened — as far as I can tell — without coordination or collusion. Users [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
You think people should welcome digg traffic? What is this, 2007?
Sites want quality vistors, not moronic Digg users.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
“Additionally, if you’re browsing around a site under the bar itself and you kill it, it transports you back to the original URL you landed on, thus completely breaking continuity and making it almost impossible to know where you’ve actually browsed to.”
Indeed, this is a usability problem. Unfortunately, from what I know we are constrained by security restrictions in browsers here – one frame cannot know the URL of another if it’s not on the same domain. Google’s image search toolbar does the same thing, FWIW.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
If you use WordPress, the “Remove the DiggBar” plugin not only removes the DiggBar, but also other such bars from Facebook, Ask, etc. (or any framing page, for that matter) — works for me:
http://valums.com/wordpress-plugin-diggbar/
April 11th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
[...] [via Joshua Topolsky] [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Thanks for making the choice for me. It’s easy enough for users to remove the bar for good. Chances are, if you’re a Digg user you’re smart enough to turn this on or off…but you went ahead and just did it for me. Uh, thanks…
April 11th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
[...] has done little to quell the controversy surrounding the DiggBar, however. Engadget has now blocked the DiggBar. In addition, one popular article, on how to block the DiggBar, received over 1900 diggs but at the [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
[...] Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar (Joshua Topolsky) [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
All of your end-user experience points are ridiculous. Valid, but simply ridiculous because the user can simply turn off the bar if they find those things to be annoying. So please do not act like you are doing this even a little bit for the Digg user. You’re not.
The average Digg user is technically proficient enough to make the two clicks required to turn the Digg bar off completely. You do not need to do it for them.
For those that want the Digg bar on, you’re ruining an experience. I want to go see what people on Digg are saying about this (as I got here from RSS, but I can’t just type digg.com/ in front because you’ve removed that feature.
If you really want to make everyone happy and at least control the Digg bar some, you should allow the Digg bar, but use JS on all the links that remove it. So the user can land on the page and receive the benefits of the Digg bar, and use the Digg bar to Digg from an article, but if the user explores your site further, the bar is removed.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
@xurizaemon “and url obscuring is a security issue, which is 100% of the reasons you need to framebust”
The Digg bar displays the page’s URL. Yes, it’s not in the address bar where a URL “should” be, but if you are choosing to use the Digg bar, then you will know where to look for the page’s URL. You know you can trust that URL because you see digg.com in the real address bar.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
[...] has done little to quell the controversy surrounding the DiggBar, however. Engadget has now blocked the DiggBar. In addition, one popular article, on how to block the DiggBar, received over 1900 diggs but at the [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Amen! my feeling exactly!
April 11th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
the digg bar still shows up if you type in digg.com/engadget.com - it only seems to work if you have the http:// in front.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
[...] has done little to quell the controversy surrounding the DiggBar, however. Engadget has now blocked the DiggBar. In addition, one popular article, on how to block the DiggBar, received over 1900 diggs but at the [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
[...] has done little to quell the controversy surrounding the DiggBar, however. Engadget has now blocked the DiggBar. In addition, one popular article, on how to block the DiggBar, received over 1900 diggs but at the [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
[...] Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar | Joshua Topolsky [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
[...] backlash against URL shorters and site framing (e.g. DiggBar) is all about who controls the links, and which links Google is going to read and [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
[...] to the DiggBar. How to Block the DiggBar | DaringFireball JavaScript DiggBar Killer | Faruk Ateş Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar | Joshua Topolsky DiggBar is a Howl of Desperation - Ted Dziuba Share [...]
April 11th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
TeQ, Your timeline is off. Netscape launched in 1994.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:24 am
[...] by the way, even Engadget, a gadget blog that hits Digg on a regular basis, has blocked Digg Bar. If a top publisher should block the DiggBar, I hope Digg does some serious thinking over it. [...]
April 12th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
[...] has done little to quell the controversy surrounding the DiggBar, however. Engadget has now blocked the DiggBar. In addition, one popular article, on how to block the DiggBar, received over 1900 diggs but at the [...]
April 12th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
[...] has done little to quell the controversy surrounding the DiggBar, however. Engadget has now blocked the DiggBar. In addition, one popular article, on how to block the DiggBar, received over 1900 diggs but at the [...]
April 13th, 2009 at 4:27 am
[...] Digg bar is terrible. Now that that I got that out my system! What ticks me off more than anything is the unfavorable [...]
April 13th, 2009 at 4:34 am
haha The Diggalotti??? that’s great
April 13th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
[...] Some Sites Just Say ‘No’ to DiggBar Some sites are so offended by the appearance of the DiggBar that they are completely circumventing it. Attempt to access their content through a Digg-shortened URL, and you’ll be automatically redirected to the original URL. Take that, Digg! Engadget is one such site the blocked the DiggBar; you can read a defense of their actions here. [...]
April 13th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I just make sure that my blog is not framed at all, and call it good.
April 13th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
[...] this. Which led to this. And this. And this. Oh, hell, just link to Gruber. He’s aggregating the @#$% out of [...]
April 13th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
[...] Frame eingebunden. Die eigene URL bleibt verborgen. In der amerikanischen Blogwelt ist dies schon aufgestoßen und nach dem Vorbild von John Gruber mit Daring Fireball tauchen immer mehr Plugins auf um die [...]
April 13th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
[...] has led some content providers to block the Diggbar. Engadget, for once, decided to block it last Friday, stating, “We believe that the work of content creators should be protected and [...]
April 13th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Put this between the tags for DiggBar-escaping joy:
if (top.location != self.location) {
top.location = self.location.href
}
April 13th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
^^^ comment feature ate the script tags around this, you’ll need them ^^^
(greater than) script language=”javascript” (less than)
and the /script end tag
April 14th, 2009 at 1:11 am
If Digg was not being indexed I wouldn’t give a rats turd. Except Digg IS being indexed.
Someone coming to my blog with the diggbar activated gets a DIGG generated page title and no meta description - that is so wrong I want to puke.
When one of my subscribers tries to log into my blog if they got there through the Digg process and have the diggbar there, they can NOT log in. THAT is fukkd.
April 14th, 2009 at 8:01 am
[...] a content producer and SEOer, what alternatives do you have? Well, Endgadget has come up with a solution that works for them. It basically forces a redirect to the original [...]
April 14th, 2009 at 9:07 am
[...] Engadget Joshua Topolski ha hablado del tema y ha explicado porqué este famoso blog de tecnología ha bloqueado el uso de este componente: In [...]
April 14th, 2009 at 9:17 am
[...] dear. Digg launched a new ‘feature’ last week which has rather upset a few [...]
April 14th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
[...] Why Engadget is Blocking the Digg Bar [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 1:46 am
[...] good clarifications, but he seems to be downplaying the large amount of criticism towards it. Many sites have disabled the bar on their sites, but this Diggnation may have been recorded before this [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
[...] the first wave of controversy. Despite his assurances last time, huge sites like Engadget opted to block the DiggBar. Other sites, like The New York Times already block iframes, which means the DiggBar [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
[...] the first wave of controversy. Despite his assurances last time, huge sites like Engadget opted to block the DiggBar. Other sites, like The New York Times already block iframes, which means the DiggBar [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
[...] Par to varētu uzrakstīt pat atsevišķu rakstu, bet pāris saites Jums pašiem, ko rakt: 1 2 3 4 5. Vispār cilvēki ir baigi sacepušies par šo lietu, neesmu manījis praktiski nevienu labu vārdu [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
[...] the first wave of controversy. Despite his assurances last time, huge sites like Engadget opted to block the DiggBar. Other sites, like The New York Times already block iframes, which means the DiggBar [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
[...] — Joshua Topolsky, “Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar” [...]
April 16th, 2009 at 10:56 am
[...] seems like a good idea to me. Though there have been very loud cries of outrage at the Diggbar and how to kill it. Digg has largely been forced to make changes [...]
April 16th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
[...] Engadget.com still deleted the Digg button on their blog explains why. In a sentence, that’s a good try for readers but not a good thing for [...]
April 18th, 2009 at 10:28 am
[...] to the Digg Bar and have taken steps to block the which Engadget describes directly from this post. But what I want to focus on in this post is the last paragraph quoted [...]
April 19th, 2009 at 3:28 am
[...] Why Engadget is Blocking the DiggBar (Engadget) [...]
April 19th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I understand the contempt for the Digg bar and read both of the articles list. Although in Digg’s defense, the bar does indicate the actual URL you are visiting and you can click through directly to the URL and go to the site with the frame removed - but the URL is NOT prominently displayed so you can actually see what site you are visiting. If Digg were to change that part of the framed in bar, more sites would probably decide to allow the view of their content. But, in reading your articles and the others, I have to agree with your assessment, for now unless Digg does something different with the bar and displaying of the actual sites URL.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
It shwos a exit and the link, so you can exit and show the real content without being on Digg itself. Mind removing that redirect? It looks more pointless now if you see this, otherwise why are you redirecting users when we should be allowed to use this or not? The web savvy users use Digg and know these and can get to your site with no problem. Please look at this and fix it, they give you these options. So here, use it.
April 24th, 2009 at 9:17 am
[...] “shouldn’t be tainted with a “catch-all” tool which diminishes context.” as Joshua Topolosky of Engadget.com writes on his personal blog, but I think we are seeing a highly important advertising tool for the social [...]
May 5th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
[...] you’re viewing, which defeats Digg’s purpose in my eyes. There’s a great article here about why Engadget is blocking the Digg [...]
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
[...] backlash against URL shorteners and site framing (e.g. DiggBar) is all about who controls the links, and which links Google is going to read and [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 12:24 pm
[...] Likewise, usability is a big concern, and DiggBar-like tools do little to actually improve usability. Actually, it can be argued rather convincingly that they greatly reduce usability, as explained in Engadget’s reasons for blocking the DiggBar. [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
[...] backlash against URL shorteners and site framing (e.g. DiggBar) is all about who controls the links, and which links Google is going to read and [...]
June 27th, 2009 at 9:23 am
[...] entirely. In a statement, they explained why they have a fundamental problem with the way digg is implementing this new feature: Ultimately, this is both a technical and philosophical decision. We believe that the work of [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 2:05 am
[...] Endgadget blocks diggbar [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
[...] months back, Digg introduced a product called DiggBar and there was a lot of hungama (buzz) around the world wild web. If you wonder what’s a framebar, then let me [...]