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The “StumbleUpon is the best traffic in the world” thing is over. StumbleUpon stopped sending traffic.
At first I thought I it was just me or the wrong submitters stumbled me etc. etc. but I did some tests and asked people around, also from outside the SEO, meta-blogging and social media marketing niches: StumbleUpon traffic is substantially down.
What happened? I guess it’s a we don’t want bloggers anymore thing. Before I write an article about that I want to ask you:
What was your impression of StumbleUpon lately? Did it send visitors to your blog?
Disclaimer: I do not submit my own posts (just recently stumbled some of them after the traffic ceased) my readers do that. Now it seems my readers can stumble how much they want to no avail. StumbleUpon traffic stopped.
[April 2nd 2008]
This thing has 24 Comments
Hey Tad,
I noticed StumbleUpon traffic dip a little recently, but at the same time I haven’t many thumbs for about a 5 days.
I did receive a couple of thumbs on a post I published yesterday. I expected it to generate more traffic than it did, as the few thumbs I received were from power users. I had put it down to diminishing returns from users who had thumbed my site a few times previously…
Hmm, I had a post get over 2k visitors from Stumbleupon this past weekend…
I have noticed that it does tend to go in fits & spurts. I’ve had posts that have received thumbs up generate no traffic before, then a week later the same number of thumbs from similar users generates a ton…
Hey, you can always head over to http://SiteHoppin.com, a lot better traffic program than SU. SU is full of spam anyways now.
A client of mine just received 75,000 in February which is more than ever
James: Exactly, fewer people will see your post, if at all. Thus you get no thumbs up either.
Simon: Which one? Or at least what topic was it about? I also consider the explanation that some topics have gotten other thresholds. Web development for instance still worked well last week.
SH: Sorry, but the “interface” is waaay to clumsy. My eyes hurt!
Glen: When exactly? I noticed the changes in recent weeks, thus after February. Also: What topic did they cover?
Hmmm, we occasionally get stumbles, probably when the geekerati meet and find us, but we also get a regular daily trickle from stumble.
I just checked and it is well within the limits we’d expect.
You know, just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you!
-OT
I’ve not seen a dip in my SU traffic at OnStartups.com. It’s still in my top 5 sources of traffic (and generated 1,000+ visitors yesterday).
Sorry that was actually March, I forget we are in april now
Basically just latest news stuff
I’ve seen no change. SU is my biggest referrer.
My SU traffic has dropped significantly over the past few days, from 2,000 to 200. I don’t know what happen. I have checked SU and found that some of my latest posts werer stumbled, but they are not bringing in traffic like in the past.
Whereas one of my posts being stumbled could guarantee approx 500 visits overnight, recently stumbled posts have received between 250 and… ummm… 2.
I assume there are weightings in the stumble algorithm that rewards one thumb more than another, but the variance is major and it seems a hell of a lot harder tog et the same amount of stumble traffic than it did a few months ago.
Weird, you’re like the SU godfather - well, mine anyway :)
I just went and had a look at my stats and it seems that SU still sends the most traffic. Got to admit though, I suspect your numbers are way higher, but I still get approx 1000 from SU - that’s a lot for me. :)
Interesting - I’ll keep my eye out
I haven’t noticed a drop. I’ve had about 1K in the past week from SU. My blog is niche, so 1K is really good!
Interesting, my article two days ago got about 30 thumbs ups and 8 reviews within a few hours and sent me comparatively little traffic.
I chalked it up to the fact that most of those people were my SU friends and it seems SU discounts it when your friends like your stuff.
Hmmm, I wonder if there is something bigger happening?
No more traffic from StumbleUpon? Jesus I was just in the middle of writing a post about whether or not it’s acceptable for bloggers to game SU for traffic then I stumble across this.
Damn you Tad!
Hey, thank you all for adding your perspectives on the issue. So it seems that some people are affected while others are not. Tell me more. What kind of posts succeded recently on SU, which ones didn’t?
Brian Wallace and I were having a discussion about this the other day and yes, traffic has really slowed down. It could be because the same list of friends have been stumbling the same posts or the same people are discovering posts– who knows but it is frustrating.
My SU traffic is up and down, but over the course of a month it’s always the #1 referrer. I have noticed in recent months that if I only get thumbs up from friends and from people who consistently give me a thumbs up, it really doesn’t send much traffic. I did have a post 3 or 4 weeks ago that was a collection of Photoshop tutorials and it got a lot of thumbs up from users I had never seen before (I’m guessing some random stumbles) and that got a ton of traffic.
Hey Tad - I have notice a significant drop in SU traffic, even though some of my posts recently have received good reviews and quite a few “thumbs” up.
Strange…
I realized the traffic was drop,some of my stumbled doesn’t appear it was frustrated.
i guess soo many people are trying to game them now with gargabe sites they have to start cracking down.
I hope they manage to find a way to do it, cause it would be a shame for my favorite site to be lost to spammers
i think the site should be limited just to cool sh*t, and they should hand edit out all the nonsense
Eliot: So you really think all bloggers are spammers? How old are you? Expressions like “cool sh*t” make the impression of early teens. When you grow up you will realize that the world is not black and white only.
Look up this one please: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition
OK the last comment was in April, but if someone has experienced the same maybe you can post a note, as it seems to still be an issue.
Has anybody experienced SU traffic dropping to zero from one day to another? In this case, 2 days ago it was 988, yesterday it went down to a flat ZERO. I never saw this, it usually decreases step by step. From 1000 to 0 in one day is hard to believe, and today it’s still zero. This post has lots of stumbles, also from top stumblers, and I didn’t submit it myself but gave it a thumbs up as soon as it was submitted.
Did you experience this with your posts too?
1stly thanks for really good article .
and I’ve not seen a dip in my SU traffic at OnStartups.com. It’s still in my top 5 sources of traffic
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