UK SEO Specialists
I’ve had a lot of people ask me - Why is SU so good? - Where does the traffic come from? Will the traffic be targeted? Plus another 101 questions, so I decided to do a bit of explaining (with diagrams woohoo!!).
Why is SU so good?
SU is different from the other players in the online social industry. People as a whole can customize what news they can see on their profile page each day. By becoming a fan of another stumbler you will in effect receive updates each time they stumble a page. I obviously like to know about SE’s and SEO so most of my friends or people I call a fan are in that industry. So you can see that in all other social bookmarking scenarios you are not targeting a themed audience but “the whole world” - In SU you make your audience whatever you need them to be - very unique indeed.
Where does the traffic come from?
Like I mentioned I have created a simple flow chart thingy (excuse the technicalities) - First is a simple explanation of how you actually get visits to your website from SU:

Don’t be fooled into thinking however you can sign up to SU and add 10,000 friends and you will start getting more traffic than God himself - it ain’t gunna happen! You need to create a reputation online, review fans stumbles if you genuinely are impressed, PM people, generate a tue fan base, this way you know everytime you stumble a page your fans will click on it!
For a more detailed look on how you get big volumes of SU traffic:

I hope this helps people understand a bit more what SU is really about and how it works.
26 Responses for "Where does Stumbleupon traffic come from - explained"
Great post, Matt. Like the diagrams. The trouble with SU, I find, is that although it can indeed shift a great deal of people in your direction, it’s very poor for actual conversions, the ‘traffic’ is too unfocused. People tend to read the article they land on then move along to the next thing. Saying that though, it’s certainly great for exposure, branding, and getting links.
Thanks for the post nick.
I have to disagree with you on the point that traffic is “unfocused”. It does depend how you setup your SU profile, you can specify what kind of traffic comes through by selecting like minded people as your friends and fans.
In terms or quality of traffic, on an average only 40% of people leave after reading - in terms of a bouce rate. I would have to agree though in terms of branding its A*
Great post but I still don’t get it. I have 126 mutual friends and I don’t get updates every time they stumble a page. Could you explain further?
Ok, what you need to do is click on your profile page - then on that page click on “whats new” this shows you all the latest stumbles from your friends. Its the first page you look at when you login.
Hope that helps!
Something is missing, I do not find the words “what’s new” anywhere in:
http://bartthebear.stumbleupon.com (Pages)
http://bartthebear.stumbleupon.com/about/ (Main profile)
http://bartthebear.stumbleupon.com/friends/
or anywhere in Stumbleupon.
I don’t think this diagram is correct at all.
The mass of traffic is delivered as a result of tagged reviews, the number of votes and the number of times a page is delivered using the Stumble button on the Stumbleupon! on the Stumbltupon toolbar which is based on Stumbleupon’s algorithm. This article does not take the Stumbleupon tool bar traffic into consideration at all.
Stumble whales will increase the number of times the page is displayed by the Stumbleupon! button.
What freaking buzz page?
Give me a url…
What is it that makes one day have huge traffic and others nothing? Is all this traffic originating from friends/fans?
I like your Stumble whale. It sounds like it can be a new term for Gladwell’s Tipping Point!
I think im going to have to write a “how to use SU” guide - http://buzz.stumbleupon.com/ get listed on these pages for long enough and you get listed on many websites automatically (some scripts use them)
This post was done quite quickly so I appologise - I will write an in-depth guide before the weekend for you all.
Regardless of what people think, the majority of traffic does not come from the “stumble button” at all.
You can target your traffic as mentioned above.
I will go into it deeply in the SU guide!
Can’t wait to read more. Thanks for the great info!
Great article. I feel more informed now. I have used Stumbleupon for a while and am totally hooked.
Great piece Matt! The illustrations are absolutely fantastic! Great work!
Thanks for the good feedback guys, I hope to have more detailed and more accurate graphics on my guide!
Hi. Nice post - thanks:). As for “stumble” button - I think miss something. You can get visitors from “stumble” button - and if they like your post - they’ll stumble it (link becomes visible for their fans). So - even weeks after you&your friends stumbled it - you can have “second wave” of visitors - just because one person “stumbled” on your story. Cheers
Great explanation. I get residual traffic from SU for one of my posts getting on the Buzz page. SU really needs to make their Buzz more visible. It always has great stuff and is a few clicks deep off of the home page.
Thanks for the info on what your friends have stumbled, I didn’t know this existed. Very important if you want to be part of the community; other wise Stumble will have a limited effect.
This article is right on the money, I keep getting hit weeks after the initial stumble weeks later. You do have to have content that stands out like my reminiscing site http://www.yourememberthat.com/ and repetition sure helps. StumbleUpon is the reason my site has become so popular within 5 months. I do get a great deal of members from them.
Now, has anyone figured out Digg or delicio?
Thanks for the Diagrams & for taking the time to make your brief researches to figure out this great theory :)) !
My favorite (main) topics or tags are: Travel, Budapest, Hungary, Europe…
They aren’t very popular tags and just a poor traffic generated by SU.
So I’d like to complete this brief writing with one thing:
If your site is relevant to a very popular tag, and has been tagged under it, than you have better chances to gain big traffic, but with that there’s a problem: less and less genuine tags will be in use. Sites will be tagged under popular tags…
Otherwise It’s cool
Thanks again,
DNYL
http://dnyl.stumbleupon.com/
[...] “Where does StumbleUpon traffic come from” is an interesting post, which explains how SU functions (with the help of two very helpful graphs). Take a look at it, if you’re willing to participate in this community. [...]
Very nice job of breaking down how and why SU works!
Well, it is from a different point of view anyway.
The High Authority Social Network’s Drama…
It happened to digg, it happened to Netscape, it happened to all the popular social networks: the magic influx of traffic sent by a simple submission to these networks attracted the leeches, the traffic suckers, those people who abused the systems for…
Hi - just wanted to say good design and blog -
The quality of “visitors” Stumblebum sends is pure unadulterated crap. I know from personal experience both from paid advertising with them and from tagging site pages w/ SU.
SU users seemingly blind to content, haphazardly click their toolbar’s Stumble button visiting websites at speeds up to 10 sites a minute. Zero to minimal prequalified visitors is the norm - and you can forget about any conversions - it’s a celebration of mindlessness.
Their tagging system is a complete joke - you can only see 7 sites for any given tag - sometimes none. Sites disappear only to be replaced by those maybe a year older without even any reviews. Searching SU is even worse - results contain a mishmash of irrelevant nothingness.
Stumblebutt has a really good thing going - for them that is - they sell advertising for a nickel a click - and with millions of users they’re making a killing. Only problem though is that advertisers get zip in return for their money - only elevated uniques in the site stats - no sales, no comments, no clicks, no conversions whatsoever.
Essentially, Stumbleblunder sucks. There are far more productive and measurable means by which to garner traffic - read - visitors that have conversion potential.
Nice diagrams - that seems to make more sense than other diagrams I have seen. Thanks for explaining it.
Interesting read about Stumbleupon.
Problem is I went to your profile and you are under review? This article takes the morale highground so what did you do wrong to get potentially banned there?
Hey nice post. I get lots of traffic from stumbleupon, never knew now it worked. This post pretty much explains everything.
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