Got some details on Digg's ranking algorithms from MarketingShift's interview with Kevin Rose (President)and Jay Adelson (CEO) of Digg yesterday. While Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson would not give out the exact formula, he gave out enough of it that you can deduce most of the Digg Ranking Algorithm.
Metric 1: The more active you are on Digg, up to a point, the more weight your vote on Digg has:
"Digg factors in the length of time that a person has been a digger as well as the amount of their activity, so stories boosted by old-time frequent diggers will rise above stories that are dugg by newbies to the site. "
Metric 2: The longer you have been an active member of Digg, the more weight your vote on Digg has:
"Digg users have to participate for an unspecified "short" period of time before their diggs will carry the full weight. So the most senior diggers (including the editors) do have more influence, but according to Jay (per a follow-up email) "there is general sense of a maximum" weight that the most senior diggers can carry."
Metric 3: Digg keeps track of all the Diggers who vote on a story - should the same group vote on stories in a short period of time, Digg will detect this and penalize the group.
"....Digg will soon update its algorithm to further prevent gang activity. Kevin said that while friends who track each others diggs shouldn't be discriminated against, "20 people who always vote together need to be treated as one mind" by the algorithm. (Jay said today's outage at Digg was for a software update, but he said he didn't know all of the features that were being added)."
Metrics 4: There's a Digg Sandbox in effect (or if there's not - there soon will be):
"...just as new websites are "sandboxed" by search engines that lower their rankings until they have been established, new digg users must become active participants and wait a while until they count as much as other users. This is good business practice for Digg (it motivates people to come back often, thereby ".
It sounds like Digg is doing all the right things; yet, the Digg Ranking Algorithm is still perceived to be unfair by many.
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