The Reddit New Page - A Great Source of Traffic

For many websites, Digg has become the de facto site for submitting content in an attempt at driving traffic. Today we take a look at an underappreciated source of traffic and a great resource or anyone interested in social news: The Reddit New page (yes, not the front-page).

Visit the Reddit New page and, aside from aesthetics, you'll quickly see several ways in which it differs from Digg's Upcoming page. The following lists several significant differences:

1) Reddit has a far slower rate of submission on their New page than Digg has on their Upcoming page. Digg often has new submissions several times a minute, whereas on Reddit, several minutes can go by before a new submission occurs. A big reason for this is that Reddit simply has less users in absolute numbers than Digg does. This lends an air of stability to the Reddit New page that Digg's Upcoming page does not have.

2) Unlike Digg, Reddit doesn't show you the number of points a story has accumulated for the first hour or so. Theoretically, this allows for a more impartial perspective when users are deciding what to vote on and gives users a better chance at judging a story on its own merits.

3) Stories that receive up votes actually appear higher up on the Reddit New page than other stories submitted at the same time or even afterwards. Conversely, stories that receive down votes vanish down the list much more quickly.

Together, these factors make the Reddit New page a potentially more appealing place to submit content. First of all, stories submitted to the Reddit New page are more likely to be read by more people, since less work is required by readers to actually get to the story. A new Digg submission, on the other hand, is usually driven off of the Upcoming page within minutes and could require several clicks to get to.

Secondly, people's votes on a story actually effect whether or not more people see it. Although one could argue that diggs have the same effect since people can "sort by most diggs," this isn't really a good argument for a story has only a few diggs, since it would be hard for it to get noticed amongst the dozens of other upcoming stories that have many more diggs.

All things considered, content producers shouldn't give the Reddit New page short shrift. Even submissions that don't make it to Reddit's front page can often garner dozens, even hundreds of hits from Reddit users, a surge in traffic that doesn't occur for stories on Digg's Upcoming page nearly as often.

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Paul, August 22, 2007

To be honest, I prefer Reddit over Digg. I'll use Digg for traffic, but I rarely surf it. However, I can find myself lost in both Reddit and SU for an hour before I'm back on schedule.

It's a great tool and I wish more people were aware of it :).

Glen Allsopp, August 22, 2007

I've been using reddit for a while now and i'm still impressed at how much traffic it can bring

Stephan Miller, August 22, 2007

I have had luck with Reddit in the past, then forgot about using it. Its pretty easy to find or write a story that will make it close to the top.

Auto Parts for Brains, August 23, 2007

One down side to Reddit, (this keeps me off the site sometimes) is the design. Many times, it hurts my eyes to try to absorb much of the content already published there. And if one has a wide screen screen the list just screams of overload.

Still, I cannot deny that many times, I have found articles in Reddit that are already a few pages back at Digg. I may be mistaken, but it looks to me like visitors at Reddit cast their vote not as loosely as Diggers do. This allows stories to climb at a more organic pace and gives exposure to more choices at their "New" page.

I guess, that gives me, the reader, more options. :)

Mikael, August 23, 2007

I think it is a great initiative to look into the other services available. Digg has been getting awfully much attention lately and it has been like it is the only place to have your articles show up if you want to see massive amount of traffic driven to your site. Sometimes it even seems like it is more a coincident when and article shows up and once a few people have started voting for the post more and more tends to follow in their trail.

Chip, August 23, 2007

Every time I post an article from my site on Reddit, Netscape and Digg I always get more visitors from Reddit even if nobody votes up my story. For one submission with no votes, the average is: 30 - 40 visits from Reddit 5 - 10 from Digg 2-3 from Netscape

Jason Peck, August 23, 2007

I've almost given up on Digg. Some of the articles I see on the front page are crap, so I always wonder if someone didn't just make 100 Digg accounts and digg their own story to the top.

I agree with what people are saying about Reddit. It usually gets me the most traffic compared to Digg and Netscape.

Sports Business Blogger, August 23, 2007

I've almost given up on Digg. Some of the articles I see on the front page are crap, so I always wonder if someone didn't just make 100 Digg accounts and digg their own story to the top.

I agree with what people are saying about Reddit. It usually gets me the most traffic compared to Digg and Netscape.

Peteris Krumins, August 26, 2007

"Unlike Digg, Reddit doesn't show you the number of points a story has accumulated for the first hour or so"

Not any longer! I just found out a method to reveal the score of any post through a hack!

Check it out: Revealing Reddit Score

David Chen, August 26, 2007

You can also see how many upvotes/downvotes a story has received by clicking on a story's "Comments" and then clicking on "Details." However, even though it's still easy to get access to this information, I appreciate that Reddit adds this extra step, so that hopefully some people will still vote on a story based on its merits, and not how many votes it's received.

Karol Krizka, August 29, 2007

I agree that I get a LOT more traffic from reddit news page on the first day, but I think digg has a better effect. After a post gets modded down to 0, it disappears from reddit. But if your post is not successful in digg, it still stays there with 1 digg, and drives traffic for a much longer time.

dyhlgif jaqwmk, September 9, 2007