Should Google Include Social Bookmarking Sites?

[Tromb]

Search Engine Journal recently wrote an article quoting pieces of a debate that's sprung up about digg (and more generically, the social bookmarking sites) being included in google's index.

Here are the arguments:

Allen Stern:

Quote:
My belief is that this is not enough to warrant a listing in Google. Since at its most basic sense Digg only offers a link to the actual story, then that story should occupy that position within Google, not the Digg link. I believe content publishers actually lose the chance to see that visitor because the person has to click twice and even understand that they must do that. And I am talking about mainstream non-diggers now, not the group who already understands what Digg is for.

William Burn:

Quote:
Digg.com is acting as a gateway to the great content which would (usually) have been lost in Google’s monolithic index, never to be found or stumbled upon by searchers. Additionally, as a counter to his “the person has to click twice and even understand that they must do that” statement, the Digg.com interface is very easy to use, it’s almost an exact clone of a Google result (a big blue link/title with description underneath) so the user will already be familiar with it, as a result the user would not be confused by it and will find their way to the content they were looking for; that’s if the content still appeals to them after reading the accompanying description.

Personally, I am a bit conflicted on this issue. Digg obviously has the ability to provide extra search engine exposure for content. If said content is on a site that doesn't rank well in the SE's then the Digg listing can help guide traffic to the content.

However, as Allen said, Digg is just listing a sentence or two of the content. That's not nearly enough and really that listing shouldn't come before the actual content that Digg is pointing to. So, IMO google and the other SE's should figure out a way to rank the original content before Digg's listing, perhaps with the Digg listing (and the subsequent discussion on the topic) as a sub-listing. This could be done for any and all of the major social bookmarking sites that link to that specific story.

What do you think?

[fastrealestate]

How much luck have you had getting dugg? It's not that easy but they (digg users) seem to respond if you write about them as a collective group although not always in a polite way! You could make the same argument for any type search tool ranking in another search engine. Given the size of digg now they will stand on their own no matter! It would be nice if credit for new content in the first instance would go to the original creator and the associated website but in practice that does not happen. Google is just a big scraper site at the top of the food chain and I don't see many Google pages at the top of Yahoo or MSN results. It's a tough call. The other thing to consider is that not all "Social Bookmarking" sites work in the exact same manner or scale as Digg so you need to consider where you are going to draw the line in the sand, It might be very tricky to do with "alogs" when there are so many variations of social bookmarking sites.

[Jay6]

I think it's fair for the social bookmarks to get ranked as well if for no other reason than many of the comments about the stories are on Digg no the link to the story. I enjoy reading others comments about the stories more than the stories themselves in some cases.

As for actually getting any stories dugg I have not been very successful as of yet but I am really just beginning to understand how the process works. Much of it is like a populatity contest where you need to at least have been a user for a little while before people will pay attention to your submissions.