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Today I was surprised to see that over at StumbleUpon 4 users reviewed my ode to the SEO community in the 20 Sphinn stars post and overall 12 stumblers liked it. Why was I surprised?
I was taken off because I did not notice any traffic whatsoever on this post from StumbleUpon. Usually so many “like its” bring something like 1000 visitors.
At first I thought that probably just my StumbleUpon friends voted for me and SU did not count them to prevent spam. Then I took a closer look at those who stumbled and reviewed SEO 2.0 here: The only thing they all have in common is: SEO. Only roughly 50% are my friends at SU. 5 of them are my friends, one is a fan of mine, and I am fan of one those 12 stumblers. So it’ still 12 vs 7. So it can not be about the friends.
All of them are SEO stumblers, people who stumble SEO posts from several well known SEO sources. None of them is a “SEO spammer” though. All of them are genuine active StumbleUpon users. So why didn’t I get any traffic? Did StumbleUpon decide to give us some AIDS 2.0 like the SEO haters who bashed me there?
It’s no mistake unfortunately, I checked all three stats that run on SEO 2.0. The numbers are valid. Moreover I still get significant traffic for other posts who have been stumbled before so this is not a ban against the SEO 2.0 blog by itself. It’s a crackdown on the SEO stumblers it seems.
Did you experience something similar on SU? Or am I the only target? If this is true, it seems that StumbleUpon strikes against the good SEOs instead of the bad ones, those who truly contribute to StumbleUpon get punished for practicing SEO.
Btw. sometimes the SU traffic takes a while after a posts get stumbled, something like 2 hours. The Sphinn stars post was stumbled by Lyndon 24 hours ago in this case.
This thing has 18 Comments
Hmm, weird stuff. Only 10 referrers is exceptionally low.
I just stumbled you (someone else beat me to it, btw), let’s see if this happens again ;)
4 other posts which have been for a while on SU got more traffic than this one, each one of them got more than 10.
I’ve been noticing the same thing on a variety of sites whether I submit them as SEO content or not. Going to keep an eye out over the next couple of days.
Could it be Stumblers thumbing down your article? I mean 10 does seem extremely low but if you get enough thumbs down maybe?
Just follow the link, no thumbs down at all it seems:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/seo2.0.onreact.com/20-sphinn-stars-who-make-the-seo-community-truly-great
That does seem strange…but I’ve been noticing some weird stuff with SU traffic lately on posts that have nothing to do with SEO. I was thinking it was looking like things were getting back to normal today…hmmm…
(dwweb on SU)
On the article I wrote on about Sphinn it got a whole load of stumbles and reviews, but they sent next to no traffic on the day they were made. The next day however, the traffic hoarded in. See what the situation is like it another 24 perhaps.
I’m pretty sure thumbs down only show if they’re accompanied by a review. Perhaps some Sphinn haters thumbed it down?
I don’t see why SU would target SEO, so the above seems more likely to me
I think a time scale of three days is the best to apply with Stumble. Check your data against what Tim Nash did over at http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/, he’s crunching the numbers.
I’m not too worried as the only people who come across an seo stumble are those who chose to, so as spam there is not much that we get out of it.
I don’t think there is a penalty, although as we are used to dealing with Google a little paranoia is helpful.
It was because I didn’t stumble it ;)
this one is actually an interesting case, it keeps sending me decent traffic but it is not gaining more votes.
There seems to be some kind of sweet spot
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/andybeard.eu/2007/08/29-of-technorati-top-100-never-on-digg-home-page.html
I’m trying to find out why I can’t submit my own pages to StumbleUpon anymore.
A week or so ago I started a photoblog and I published a post everyday (except these past two days). I would submit the to StumbleUpon every morning. But my last two posts can’t get through the submission process…
I even tried it from both my home pc and work pc. But no luck.
I get to the submit page, I click submit and newurl.php returns a blank page, with nothing in the body tag.
I haven’t been able to figure out what is happening.
Hello John,
great blog, I really like the images you choose to show. I submitted you’re last post and it worked all right:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/photoblog.mrjmw.com/digital-photo-editing-that-inspires-hdr/
Anyways I think my and your problem is similar but not the same. Maybe someone “flagged” you or your blog. There are some spammy image blogs out there that steal other photographers images and put ads around them without attribution. Maybe someone mistook you for one of those bastards.
You’re subheadline is sounds a little like those guys beacuse “interesting images” is a tagline they would use.
Call them unusual or something.
Yeah, I may have got flagged somehow.
What’s interesting is that my site is not totally banned. I still get traffic to my other posts from “Stumbles” . I’m just not able to submit pages from that particular site anymore. I can still submit pages from other sites.
Maybe I’m in some kind of hold until someone manually reviews my site.
Just thought I’d follow up and post a reply to an email I sent to StumbleUpon regarding the situation mentioned in my comments above…
Here’s my email…
“I have tried to submit my last few blog articles and my submission gets stuck at this url … http://www.stumbleupon.com/newurl.php
It simple shows up as a blank white page, with nothing in the body tag. What does this mean?”
Here is the response…
“Hello John,
Thanks for contacting us.
We have a limit in place that prevents multiple posting from a single source. Having reviewed your pages, it seems likely that you are encountering this limit.
If you wish to actively promote a site, business or service - you might find this service more appropriate: http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads/
Regards,
Barry
http://www.stumbleupon.com“
Perhaps each thumbs up continues the stumble views until x amount of time has elapsed since the last thumbs up.
12 instant thumbs up and 30 seconds without one may mean lights out if you understand what I’m trying to say.
Stumbleupon seems to be working as intended and even if its a human limiting page vies intentionaly - it’s still a great service.
Hi there,
I’ve been having problems submitting my own posts to StumbleUpon too. This explains it …
“We have a limit in place that prevents multiple posting from a single source. Having reviewed your pages, it seems likely that you are encountering this limit.”
Thanks! :)
Clare
Yeah Clare, this is well known though. My post does NOT deal with this well known issue. I do NOT submit my own posts on SU.
I’m a little late to the party, but SU gave in to the trolls and have banned SEO ads from the search category!