Anyone who's been on the Internet more than a few months is probably aware that Digg is the number one social website in existence. I don't know why it is, I just know that it is.

I first noticed the power of free adverting on Digg when I read Mark Ghosh's article, "Check your Digg saturation", at Weblog Tools Collection. Since a few of my blog articles have been submitted to Digg over the last seven months or so, I was curious to see how many backlinks I have from Digg. I replaced their domain with my own in the following URL and checked. I don't remember how many backlinks I saw when I did it the first time (I doubt it changed) but according to Google, I now have about 165. Google always reports "about" in the link results. Could they be hiding something?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Adigg.com+www.untwistedvortex.com

Something else I recently noticed at Digg is how you're allowed to add links to the "About" section of your profile. So I did! I wish they'd had this feature available months ago. My profile has been viewed at least 2,656 times since I became a member. While I doubt the links generate backlinks, it's free advertising for your website, every time someone views your profile.

As far as I can tell, it's been some time since any of my articles were submitted to Digg, yet I still continue to see Digg as a referrer in my statistics packages. Those are some powerful backlinks. If you've never had any or your own articles submitted to Digg, hook up with your friends and get them to submit some for your website. The backlinks, and even the moderate traffic, can only help to promote your website in the search engines.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked if Digg shouts are another form of spam, which was a sort of follow-up to my question of what was with all the Digg fans about a month ago. Back then, I only had about 160 mutual friends on Digg. Today, that number is more than double, exceeding 330. I've been continuously "digging" entries for the entire month (as my DSL connection allows) and I suppose that has a lot to do with it. I don't care. That's more eyes on my profile and more eyes on my links.