There's a debate over the benefit of massive short term traffic hitting one's website. Kim Krause Berg agrees with Matt Bailey that it's a "sugar rush" with little lasting benefit. Rand Fishkin and Andy Beal disagree.

What do you think of your linkbait visitors from Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, etc?

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There is no doubt that there is a 'sugar-rush' effect from this... but it's more like a fortified sugar-rush. maybe a "vitamin B rush" would be more accurate?

yes, a link on the social sites will quickly fade away. but if it's genuinely a good article (worthy of actually publishing, and not just a bunch of spammed hype), people will pick up the article and republish it on their sites.

If the article follows the premise of good SEO and uses meaningful titles that include keywords, if it genuinely helps people... and just 'happens' to contain a link back to your site using good keyword anchor text, it's a webmasters dream! Both for the author and for other webmasters who will use it and place it on their sites... linking back to yours.

This is a long-term (permanent?) benefit to authors. of course, if it's garbage or fluff and self-promoting, all you'll ever get is a sugar-rush.

If Google fell away tomorrow, many websites would be crushed. Others hedge their bets on Google with alternative sources of traffic. I only get about 25% of my traffic from Google with many #1 spots and what seems like endless first-page spots (if not #1). While they are the SINGLE greatest source of traffic for me, most of my traffic comes from elsewhere... predominantly the articles that I've written months ago that are still being republished on new sites at least weekly. I know this thanks to Google Alerts which tells me when my titles pop up and where they are being shown.

I agree that my best traffic comes after I publish an article, but I disagree that it 'goes away' entirely. Good articles linger. I'm living proof.

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i've got to agree with andy beal on this. it happened to our site once so far, and resulted in something like 40,000 hits in one day....extraordinary! Then of course it tapered off back to normal within two days.

So yes, there's a sugar high aspect to all this....and much of the attention is transitory at best, rude at worst. BUT....from a PR standpoint - and good PR has been key with our site since day one - it was a coups. There definitely was a bump in overall traffic after that.....perhaps even substantial. It clued a lot of folks in about us....that we existed. And we seem to have many more coming back to the site each day.

In a sense...it's great advertising for your site. And the rudeness....well the old PR axiom stands true: there's no such thing as bad press. Or..."at least they're talking about you."

They did say some awful things....and my feelings were a little bruised. But a fellow Pr professional reminded me of the above sayings. And then the increase in regular traffic simply justified it all.

I certainly noticed no huge increase in click-through's on our google ads, however. So the part about attention being transitory and "not engaged" certainly seemed to hold true.

But as i said, the PR/advertising aspect behind this was incredible. Apparently, our article that got "dugg" was also mentioned on TV somewhere. So i'm going to continue to shoot for this and other sites, like hugg.com, etc.

As a former Management Consultant (i.e. all rounder) I often despair of the naivete of the web.
This whole argument is irrational as it questions the unquestionable rule of advertising;
"The more you tell the more you sell"
Yes the traffic surge from getting on the power list does have little lasting benefit and few people engage with the content, but isn't that also true of a newspaper or T.V. ad.Lots of people look, a few will engage by seeking further information.
So we need those rushes and we need eye catching headlines (not cutesypie little creastures dancing, that is not eyecatching, its just irritating) and we need quality content to engage the minds that own the eyes we catch.
Each of the rushes puts the name of your website into more people's minds though, and slowly quality traffic builds.
Webheads should stop deluding themselves that the web rewrites the rule book. The Web just has learning difficulties that prevent its opinion leaders understanding nothing they have done so far is very original (and most of it is not very good to be honest). Constantly reinventing the wheel is a pointless exercise.

machiavelli.blog.co.uk/main

Duh, its both. You get the quick rush of traffic and you also get the link love from those who are bloggers and want to spread the word further.

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I also think sometimes links stay there for months, so it's not too short. So what do you think neighbor? Just noticed that you are from D, I'm from W.

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