For many people, Digg is the definitive source for driving traffic to their content or services. And if they don’t have success with Digg, life for them becomes a lost cause. If you ask me, it doesn’t have to be that way, at least not according to the statistics I’m going to present to you.
Not only is Digg not the end-all for socially driven news and content, neither is it the only site with the power to drive thousands of visitors to your site. While the obvious limitations and conditions for content popularity apply, sources that are usually considered only secondary – Netscape, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Reddit – can drive just as much traffic (and sometimes even more) as Digg.
Have a look at the following statistics collected by eBizMBA for the number of unique visitors going to each of the above-mentioned sites per month.
For each site, we show unique U.S. monthly visitor data as well as respective rank. For entries where a wide range exists between the two data sets the highest numbers were used for ranking purposes. Although no traffic metrics are completely accurate we do believe the data below to be useful for gauging relative audience size.
12,156,271 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 61 – Compete
4,800,000 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 180 – Quantcast
5,832,349 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 179 – Compete
5,300,000 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 159 – Quantcast
909,091 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 1,965 – Compete
923,442 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 1,671 – Quantcast
390,523 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 4,793 – Compete
386,470 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 4,647 – Quantcast
433,070 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 4,311 – Compete
100,398 Unique Monthly Visitors (United States) – Rank: 19,070 – Quantcast
What we see here is that although Digg is by far the leader in socially driven sites, there are many alternatives that (especially when combined) can get the same result. It is in the best interest of anyone trying to maximize exposure to not get wrapped up in the hype regarding any one outlet, rather to exhaust all available options to get the best results.
You can see the complete list here.
