Digg gives in to DiggBar complaints

After widespread complaints about Digg's new URL-shortener/toolbar, the DiggBar, Digg has responded and agreed to change the way the DiggBar behaves to address the problems people had with it. Number one on the list was the way the DiggBar framed other sites and used Digg's new URLs for everything, never revealing the URL of the actual destination site. Number 2 was the problem of DiggBar URLs turning up in search results and bookmarking services, sometimes ahead of the original domain. Creators of original content were understandably peeved.

Here's how Digg plans to address the problem, according a post from their official blog:

1. New treatment to the behavior of Digg short URLs. All anonymous users, on or off Digg will be taken directly to the publishers content via a permanent redirect (301), no toolbar, straight to the site. Logged in users that have not opted out will continue to see the DiggBar (200). These changes ensure that content providers receive full search engine 'juice' or credit for all links on and off Digg. They also ensure that Digg short URLs won't appear in the indexes of any major search engines.

2. Because we want to ensure the best user experience, the DiggBar will soon only be shown to you when you are logged into Digg. While the vast majority of Digg users find the DiggBar valuable (only a very small number of users have disabled the feature or hit close with any frequency) we understand that many folks were confused when opting out. We want you to be able to have the option to permanently disable the DiggBar with ease. For registered Digg users receiving the bar, we are also making a few changes to make the process more obvious.

Certainly, some people would rather the DiggBar disappear altogether, but these two moves make sure that people who don't like it can opt out, and people who do like it can opt in. More importantly, they make sure the DiggBar isn't some kind of uncouth relic from the late 90's. I'm not sure why they ever thought people would be ok with blatant framing of other websites in the first place, but at least they're fixing the problem now.

[via Daring Fireball]

Tags: complaints, digg, diggbar, news, url-shortener