Come back StumbleUpon, I never meant to hurt you

December 18, 2009 12:49 AM

Okay internet ninjas, can you help me figure out what the crap happened to all this static website's traffic? At the beginning of February '09, visits dropped to about a quarter of what they once were and stayed there, literally overnight.. The culprit looks to be StumbleUpon - referrals went from quadruple digits to doubles even though there was absolutely no change in the site or its (non-existent) marketing. Though I've read up on SU, I still don't really get why this happened. Can you explain and/or offer advice on fixing it?

I took over managing the site recently and I'm trying to reclaim its former glory. From what I understand, neither the site nor its marketing has changed at all since, like, 2001, so why the sudden drop in SU referrals?

I redesigned it about a month ago and the traffic quadrupled pretty much instantly, yet the SU referrals remain basically the same as they were after the drop. How do I get them back? Everything I've read emphasizes the social aspect, stumbling others' stuff, etc., and though I'm willing to do that I know nobody did before. It seems like I must be missing something fundamental, especially given that referrals disappeared overnight.

Thanks!

posted by borkingchikapa to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I don't know what kind of website you have, but could it be that someone marked your site as having adult content? That would stop almost all stumblers from getting to your site.
posted by bjrn at 2:48 AM on December 18, 2009

Response by poster: Hmm, there's nothing in the site that could be at all considered adult content... I'll check and see if that's the case, though.
posted by borkingchikapa at 2:57 AM on December 18, 2009

On January 30, 2009, they changed StumbleUpon.com - that might be it.
posted by milkrate at 2:58 AM on December 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Oh, that's definitely it. So they page lost its ranking or... something? It's still got the same appeal, so what do I do to get it back up?
posted by borkingchikapa at 3:01 AM on December 18, 2009

It may be reassuring to know that StumbleUpon visitors are pretty low-quality, with high bounce rates and short visit times. You're not losing much.

I had a similar experience which freaked me out at first, but turned out to be nothing in the end.

Thanks for the info, milkrate. I still didn't know why it happened until now.
posted by Nameless at 5:53 PM on December 22, 2009