It’s no secret that mainstream news sites are experiencing increased exposure on social news sites like Digg. Back in March Soshable noted that 46% of the Digg front page is controlled by 50 websites.
Major news sites have seen strong increases in social media referral traffic over the past couple years, and Digg continues to be among the top referrers. But I was curious what kind of push back some of these sites might be experiencing from Digg users.
Using di66.net’s list of the top sources in Digg in the past 30 days, I pulled out 22 general news sites from the top 100 or so sources. Then using Digg’s advanced search I checked how many submissions from each domain had been buried.
CNN wins the prize for the most buried news site, with Yahoo News not too far behind:
| Site | Buried | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | cnn.com | 3064 |
| 2 | news.yahoo.com | 2723 |
| 3 | news.bbc.co.uk | 1580 |
| 4 | nytimes.com | 1500 |
| 5 | huffingtonpost.com | 1311 |
| 6 | msnbc.msn.com | 1220 |
| 7 | reuters.com | 1105 |
| 8 | foxnews.com | 889 |
| 9 | washingtonpost.com | 749 |
| 10 | abcnews.go.com | 611 |
| 11 | latimes.com | 423 |
| 12 | usatoday.com | 417 |
| 13 | guardian.co.uk | 403 |
| 14 | dailymail.co.uk | 387 |
| 15 | telegraph.co.uk | 373 |
| 16 | online.wsj.com | 289 |
| 17 | timesonline.co.uk | 260 |
| 18 | time.com | 258 |
| 19 | chicagotribune.com | 234 |
| 20 | independent.co.uk | 114 |
| 21 | upi.com | 105 |
| 22 | newsweek.com | 70 |
Of course some news sites have a lot more content submitted to Digg than others, so it stands to reason that sites with more submissions will have more buries. So I also looked up the total submissions for each, and ranked the news sites by percentage of submissions that were buried.
CNN and Yahoo News are still the most buried news sites by percentage of content, but ABC News and MSNBC are pretty close:
| Site | Buries | Total Submitted | Percentage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | cnn.com | 3064 | 58360 | 5.25% |
| 2 | news.yahoo.com | 2723 | 54621 | 4.99% |
| 3 | abcnews.go.com | 611 | 12427 | 4.92% |
| 4 | msnbc.msn.com | 1220 | 25136 | 4.85% |
| 5 | huffingtonpost.com | 1311 | 31169 | 4.21% |
| 6 | foxnews.com | 889 | 24138 | 3.68% |
| 7 | usatoday.com | 417 | 14298 | 2.92% |
| 8 | dailymail.co.uk | 387 | 13313 | 2.91% |
| 9 | upi.com | 105 | 3715 | 2.83% |
| 10 | washingtonpost.com | 749 | 29609 | 2.53% |
| 11 | news.bbc.co.uk | 1580 | 64745 | 2.44% |
| 12 | time.com | 258 | 11494 | 2.24% |
| 13 | timesonline.co.uk | 260 | 11859 | 2.19% |
| 14 | latimes.com | 423 | 19388 | 2.18% |
| 15 | reuters.com | 1105 | 51784 | 2.13% |
| 16 | chicagotribune.com | 234 | 11067 | 2.11% |
| 17 | guardian.co.uk | 403 | 21421 | 1.88% |
| 18 | independent.co.uk | 114 | 6113 | 1.86% |
| 19 | telegraph.co.uk | 373 | 20267 | 1.84% |
| 20 | nytimes.com | 1500 | 86120 | 1.74% |
| 21 | newsweek.com | 70 | 4042 | 1.73% |
| 22 | online.wsj.com | 289 | 20590 | 1.40% |
Going back to the di66.net list of top Digg sources, out of the 22 news sites I pulled out, CNN was the 10th most popular source and Yahoo News was 9th. So their bury rankings are probably higher than they should be. By contrast Telegraph.co.uk was the 2nd most popular source but it ranks 19th in bury percentage in this group. BBC News was the most popular source out of the 22; its bury percentage is right in the middle at #11.
It should also be noted that what’s most important is social news success is quality of content and user appeal, not to mention who the submitter is. But it does appear that some major news sites are more likely to be buried than others.
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