Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Digg Update

Sunday, 24th September 2006 by Alex

Hello? Can you hear me?

Well, four days later, and I can finally access the site for long enough to write an update post. Since the Major Digging on our Topless Sunbather story, things have been pretty crazy.

I posted the story on Tuesday, and on Wednesday the site became unresponsive due to the sheer number of visitors. The Digg Story which brought us down is even now still climbing the most popular this week page, and at time of writing has 2420 diggs. To make matters worse, on Thursday the Register posted their own version of the story (note that their version is factually incorrect - Dutch TV had already tried to go and see the sunbather before we ever posted about it) which further contributed to our downtime.

On Friday, just as we thought things were getting back to normal, Ekstra Bladet (a Danish tabloid newspaper) also linked to the story, which brought us down all over again!

It’s now Sunday, and the traffic really is dying down now, so fingers crossed, things really will get back to normal tomorrow (unless some other site picks up the story of course ;-) )

Thanks for bearing in there!

P.S. Google Sightseeing is very proud to now be described on our Wikipedia page as having notoriously posted a picture of a topless woman :D

11 Responses to 'Digg Update'

  1. 1. Haochi says:

    Wow, that brings you to the 6,127th most visit site on the web, according to Alexa. :D

  2. 2. Kyle Schembri says:

    Only digg could bring webmasters to there knees begging for the traffic to stop. ;)

  3. Google Sightseeing Admin
    3. Alex says:

    we can’t afford that kind of traffic!

  4. 4. rob says:

    What even with all that google ad revenue!???! :D
    No seriously, guys, nice to see the site back up.

  5. 5. Huh? says:

    What is a digg?

  6. 6. Iowa Greyhound says:

    Good to see you’re online again. Welcome back!

  7. 7. Romanov says:

    Woohoo! Back online!
    I began showing withdrawal symptoms: need… more… sights…!

    (Still, I secretly hope that all the sights I send, will become as popular as my first lucky shot :-))

  8. Google Sightseeing Admin
    8. Alex says:

    rob - nobody could get to the site to create any ad revenue!

    Huh? - huh? Seriously? I can only assume you are being facetious :)

    Everyone else, thanks, it’s good to _be_ back! And we’re looking forward to posting some new sights, although we’re a little afraid of posting all the naked sunbathers that somehow got submitted over the past few days…!

  9. 9. Tim says:

    I say we GSS people get back at them and… DIGG DIGG.COM!!! Let’s bring ‘em to their knees and see how they like it!

    Or, we could just forget about it and see some new sights. Whatever.

  10. 10. Huh? says:

    I have no idea what a digg is, this is the first I’ve heard of one.

  11. 11. Zackary says:

    Does any one know how digg does those google ads so they are just one large one at the top?
    Jump on to any digg article to see what i mean (cant post links yet)

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