In a post on the official Digg blog, John Quinn has announced several changes to the controversial DiggBar, including two changes that are aimed at appeasing Webmasters upset with the bar appearing on their site.

First, the DiggBar will no longer show up on users that are not logged in to Digg. This means most visitors that click Digg-shortened URLs, such as those posted on Twitter, will be redirected (via a 301) to the original site and will bypass the Diggbar. This makes Digg URLs function the same as TinyURL and other URL-shortening services.

Likewise, links on the Digg homepage will not display the DIggBar for users who are not logged in.

Second, they are making it easier for Digg users that don’t want the bar to opt out. They are working on making the process more obvious. This comes in response to some who complained that the option was difficult to find.

The end result is that those who are not logged into Digg and those who are but have opted out of the DiggBar should never see it again. Only users who are actively logged into Digg and opted to view the DiggBar will see it and they will continue to do so both on Digg’s site and on shortened Digg URLs.

Digg hopes to push these changes through next week though the homepage has already stopped linking to the DiggBar for users who are not logged in. However, shortened Digg URLs still, in some cases, show the Diggbar whether the user is logged in or not.

This is actually the second round of changes to the DiggBar since it was announced. The first saw Digg switch to JavaScript based linking, so search engines would not see the DiggBar when indexing Digg’s homepage, and use Meta tags to block search engines from indexing DiggBar URLs. Though these changes were a positive step forward, they were not enough to completely quiet the criticisms about the DiggBar.

Digg hopes that this new round of changes will finally satiate the bloggers and other webmasters that have railed on it for the past two weeks.

Is It Enough?

For those that have been concerned about SEO issues, this should finally put those problems completely to rest. Though the previous round of changes should have prevented DiggBar URLs from appearing in the search results, this round will ensure that “link juice” flows correctly, including over the shortened URLs, which now will use a 301 redirect.

For those who hate framing on principle and all of its forms, these changes will be slightly less than satisfying. Though this is definitely a good step forward, the fact is the DiggBar will still be framing sites, albeit in a much more limited capacity.

Regarding the legal issues, the trademark issues have likely been lessened as there is less likelihood of confusion when the Bar is only shown to existing Digg members that understand what the bar is and does. The potential copyright issues and interference issues, however, remain though the likelihood of them being seriously raised are much less.

All in all, I don’t think this is going to put an end to all of the controversy over the DiggBar, but if Kevin Muldoon’s post on BloggingTips (a site I also write for) is any indication, it has gone a long way toward mending bridges. Muldoon even added back the Digg button after removing it due to the DiggBar.

Bottom Line

Though I don’t think this will completely end the controversy over the DiggBar, it will likely put the vast majority of it to rest. Most webmasters that were upset about the DiggBar will likely be satisfied by these changes though there will be some who take an absolutist view on frames that will not.

However, for those that don’t want even this very limited use of the DiggBar on their site, I would encourage you to add a frame breaking script to your site to ensure it doesn’t appear.

The sad and worrisome news though is that Digg was not the first and will not be the last site to use frames in this manner. Several others do right now.

The larger issue of framing is not going away any time soon. As content creators and webmasters, we need to be ready for it.

In a post on their blog this morning, Digg answered many of the concerns and accusations that have been filed over its new DiggBar service (previous coverage) in an attempt to quell some of the backlash.

In their response, Digg claims that they took several steps to ensure that the DiggBar was fair to publishers, including the following:

• JavaScript-Based Linking: The links on Digg’s page are actually links to the original source, but they are modified using JavaScript for visitors that have that option selected. Search engines can’t see JavaScript and, theoretically, should only be directed to the original content. Registered users can turn this off by visiting their Settings and editing their Viewing Preferences.
• Canonical Links and Meta Tags: In an update earlier this week, the DiggBar now identifies the source URL as canonical, indicating that it is the original source of the content, not the DiggBar URL. Furthermore, the new Digg URL pages now also include a meta “noindex” tag to ensure that the Digg page is not indexed in the major search engines.
• Working with Web Analytics Companies: Digg also said they have worked with many different Web analytics firms, including Comscore, Nielsen, Quantcast and Compete to ensure that the source URL will be credited for the traffic. They have confirmed, on all of those sites, that it should work as planned.

The reaction to this has been very postive, include articles both on Mashable and on TechCrunch that are supportive of the changes, the latter even saying, “So crisis averted… Whew, no [sic] I can go back to using the Diggbar.”

However, the comments on both posts have been less enthusiastic. Both sites have commenters that are still critical of the change and are not satiated by the fixes.

Clearly this controversy is going to be continuing for quite some time.

My Thoughts

There isn’t much doubt that this is a step in the right direction. Though I’m going to withhold judgment until I see evidence that these steps are actively helping Webmasters, especially those who had already seen some of their links in Google get replaced by Digg’s, the “noindex” alone shows a willingness to at least make some concessions to publishers.

Though, theoretically, the Digg URLs should not be making it into any search index anywhere, it would still clearly be better for publishers if those URLs didn’t exist at all or forwarded the traffic on directly.

Furthermore, this doesn’t do anything to address the legal concerns listed in the previous post on the topic. The copyright, trademark and tortuous interference issues remain as do all of the non-SEO related ethical issues, including advertising and visitor interference.

Though I’m going to sleep better tonight knowing that the DiggBar has at least done what it can to resolve the SEO issues, which were at least the most immediate of the concerns, there are still many other issues that need to be addressed.

However, I think the best comment on the subject came from Kevin at ToMuse, who reminded me that the reason framing was abandoned in the late nineties, when it first became popular, was because it caused problems with visitors and the Web at large. As more sites used frames, frames began to open up within other frames, creating a mess.

Since only a few sites use frames now, the problem isn’t there yet. But with Digg and Facebook both using the technique, it is only a matter of time before more sites take it up. As this frame monster I created with help from friends on Twitter shows, it’s already possible with a little effort (special thanks to @jfredson).

Though the immediate problems with the DiggBar seem to have been dealt with, the longer term ones remain. Let’s hope that the problem is averted as I don’t think anyone who developed sites in the mid to late nineties wants to go through the “frame wars” all over again.