Earlier today, I posted some comment spam on Digg to see what effect it would have on my website. I only posted the URL to my blog in about 5 comments on the site. I didn't want to do a huge spamming operation because that is not the point of this study.



This is a non-scientific study. I'm using a 10 hour block of time.

When this part of the study is over, I'll report back on the Digg Effect when you have a story submitted to Digg. Whether or not it turns into a "front page" story or not will greatly affect the next, and final, posting in this series.



Either way, thank you for helping me out with this study.


Day Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
01 Sep 2006 67 329 644 16.92 MB
02 Sep 2006 48 171 280 5.25 MB
03 Sep 2006 55 372 470 8.96 MB
04 Sep 2006 56 270 437 12.55 MB
05 Sep 2006 50 311 414 6.58 MB
06 Sep 2006 40 203 421 11.65 MB
07 Sep 2006 268 1377 2587 13.64 MB
08 Sep 2006 0 0 0 0
Average 83.43 433.29 750.43 10.79 MB
Total 584 3033 5253 75.56 MB
Hours Pages Hits Bandwidth
00 23 36 1.27 MB
01 32 45 6.29 MB
02 74 176 725.18 KB
03 104 197 2.48 MB
04 90 150 3.67 MB
05 60 138 767.13 KB
06 58 115 3.22 MB
07 116 195 2.19 MB
08 173 287 8.23 MB
09 192 371 1.86 MB
10 335 589 4.00 MB
11 461 900 3.46 MB
12 207 339 2.64 MB
13 194 334 4.80 MB
14 186 301 1.26 MB
15 233 314 7.25 MB
16 152 222 2.37 MB
17 60 85 1.41 MB
18 106 147 2.63 MB
19 57 132 3.72 MB
20 64 98 4.99 MB
21 15 23 126.34 KB
22 29 47 6.11 MB
23 12 12 129.43 KB



Well, there is a vast increase in hits, but not in bandwidth.



The hits peaked near lunch time PST.



From this short bit of information I can see that comment spamming on Digg is something that can be easily abused and I'm glad signature lines are not allowed. At the same time, why would you blindly click a link in someone's comment that just points you to their blog?



I can see this being abused by a person who purchases multiple domains and points them all to a page of advertisments. By using multiple accounts they can easily steer a few thousand hits a day to these sites with only a minimum of work.