Last week the social news site digg released its new DiggBar tool, rolling a URL shortening service together with a related content engine to help you find other stuff on digg. At first blush, reception was largely positive as the technosphere unwrapped and started to play with its shiny new toy. Shortly thereafter, concerns were raised about the implications of widespread use of the new toolbar to publishers and web surfers — it was already pretty clear that the DiggBar was of enormous personal benefit to digg by actively sequestering more of the traffic surrounding the links in its ecosystem. This further sparked a debate surrounding the utility and potential concerns over URL shortening services more generally, with some net heavyweights weighing in on some of the problems they introduce.

According to Danny Sullivan, one of the major problems with the DiggBar specifically is its use of a 200 server code instead of a 301 redirect, the latter of which is far better for preserving search engine credit or "juice" to the original site than the former. Although digg has stepped in to do damage control and insists they've taken steps to ensure they're passing search engine credit to the original sites, concerns remain. Moreover, the debate surrounding URL shorteners is regardless still one to watch, as the services — used increasingly as a method of link-passing on character-restrictive microblogging site Twitter — add a layer of indirection to the fundamental operation of the web. They also obscure the actual source of the link as well as offering incredibly juicy targets for spammers, who notoriously take advantage of every trick in the book to trick users into getting to their wares.

Venerable tech blogger John Gruber took the DiggBar matter into his own hands and now freely offers the code he wrote to block the DiggBar on your website, if you likewise feel as strongly about the negative implications of the toolbar. Interestingly, despite garnering over 900 diggs at the time of this writing, John's piece has yet to appear on digg's home page, fueling long-held rumors of editorial censorship being practiced by digg itself.

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