StumbleUpon - Demographics and Returning Traffic Spikes
The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Like most SEOs I know, I have a couple of sites that act as my side projects. They aren't monetised and I plan to keep them that way: I like to keep an eye on them for the purpose of experiments. By this, I mean that I like to mess around with them and if one of them drops completely from every search engine, loses all of its PageRank and its server catches fire, it doesn't matter all that much.
Given the experimental nature of the sites in question, I was intrigued this morning when I was doing my regular rounds of the Internet and came across this:
Given the experimental nature of the sites in question, I was intrigued this morning when I was doing my regular rounds of the Internet and came across this:
What happened? Did the little blog, whose mantra is thus, suddenly become twice as interesting overnight? Since its content is updated infrequently - once weekly at best - I doubted it. I had a fairly good idea as to the source of this extra traffic, and I was right. StumbleUpon, my fair weather friend, had returned.
This is not a huge increase in traffic by any means - when a really big StumbleUpon day happens, the chart looks a lot different. However, the interesting thing is not the fact that StumbleUpon happened, it's that it keeps coming back to the same page and yet that page's reviews never change.
While Google Images has a long-term love affair going with the site in question, StumbleUpon visits about once every few months, and always to the same URL. Funnily enough, Google Images prefers the pictures on this particular page as well. The really strange thing about the on-again-off-again relationship that StumbleUpon has with this piece of content is that the reviews don't change and, as far as I can tell, few people are particularly impressed with the page. According to its reviews, only three people like the site and it has only been written about twice. And yet, every once in a while, StumbleUpon is back outside, throwing stones at the window and asking us out.
I know that the StumbleUpon reviews pages are supposedly far from accurate: the service has always been a bit cute with its numbers and I've never seen a review page that has accurately portrayed how much traffic the site in question will receive. However, it amuses and surprises me that StumbleUpon does not work like most other social media sites, which will not "re-promote" content after it has been popular. So far, StumbleUpon has revisited this page four times.
It's great for us - writers, publishers, linkbaiters, and SEOs. The do-or-die aspect of Digg is negated by the notion that not only is StumbleUpon popularity and traffic not a ticking clock, but that even once the first wave of SU traffic dies away, it may return again. I am not entirely sure what sets off the subsequent influxes of stumbles (I assume it is a tag or a thumbs-up from a prominent account), but there is one theme in common with each wave of Stumble traffic: every time it comes back, it brings with it more visitors.
However, my analysis of StumbleUpon traffic has been really interesting for more than just the fact that it can't leave my one page alone. A common idea I've heard from the Internet marketing community - and one that I used to spread - is that StumbleUpon is the everyman's social media site. "Regular" people - people who don't get FAIL or Rick Rolls and who squint at me when I go out in this tee-shirt - were thought to use StumbleUpon, at least in higher volumes than they do any other social media mainstay.
I can tell you from my little blog's stat counter that this really isn't as true we we'd like to believe. This morning, I went through the stats and analysed my StumbleUpon audience in comparison to my regular visitors.
Firstly, the graph of browsers is telling. I check this graph relatively often and rarely does Firefox 2.0.0 come out on top. In fact, the last time Firefox eclipsed Internet Explorer 7 was the last time StumbleUpon showered us with affection. Needless to say, the MSIE 5.5 users (yes, omg wtf, etc) were not Stumblers.
This is not a huge increase in traffic by any means - when a really big StumbleUpon day happens, the chart looks a lot different. However, the interesting thing is not the fact that StumbleUpon happened, it's that it keeps coming back to the same page and yet that page's reviews never change.
While Google Images has a long-term love affair going with the site in question, StumbleUpon visits about once every few months, and always to the same URL. Funnily enough, Google Images prefers the pictures on this particular page as well. The really strange thing about the on-again-off-again relationship that StumbleUpon has with this piece of content is that the reviews don't change and, as far as I can tell, few people are particularly impressed with the page. According to its reviews, only three people like the site and it has only been written about twice. And yet, every once in a while, StumbleUpon is back outside, throwing stones at the window and asking us out.
I know that the StumbleUpon reviews pages are supposedly far from accurate: the service has always been a bit cute with its numbers and I've never seen a review page that has accurately portrayed how much traffic the site in question will receive. However, it amuses and surprises me that StumbleUpon does not work like most other social media sites, which will not "re-promote" content after it has been popular. So far, StumbleUpon has revisited this page four times.
It's great for us - writers, publishers, linkbaiters, and SEOs. The do-or-die aspect of Digg is negated by the notion that not only is StumbleUpon popularity and traffic not a ticking clock, but that even once the first wave of SU traffic dies away, it may return again. I am not entirely sure what sets off the subsequent influxes of stumbles (I assume it is a tag or a thumbs-up from a prominent account), but there is one theme in common with each wave of Stumble traffic: every time it comes back, it brings with it more visitors.
However, my analysis of StumbleUpon traffic has been really interesting for more than just the fact that it can't leave my one page alone. A common idea I've heard from the Internet marketing community - and one that I used to spread - is that StumbleUpon is the everyman's social media site. "Regular" people - people who don't get FAIL or Rick Rolls and who squint at me when I go out in this tee-shirt - were thought to use StumbleUpon, at least in higher volumes than they do any other social media mainstay.
I can tell you from my little blog's stat counter that this really isn't as true we we'd like to believe. This morning, I went through the stats and analysed my StumbleUpon audience in comparison to my regular visitors.
Firstly, the graph of browsers is telling. I check this graph relatively often and rarely does Firefox 2.0.0 come out on top. In fact, the last time Firefox eclipsed Internet Explorer 7 was the last time StumbleUpon showered us with affection. Needless to say, the MSIE 5.5 users (yes, omg wtf, etc) were not Stumblers.
That search traffic, visitors referred from non-StumbleUpon sites and people accessing the site directly or via bookmark aren't using Firefox is plainly obvious. Normally, Internet Explorers 6 and 7 battle it out for supremacy. I broke the last two days' worth of visitors down by browser further, showing Stumblers next to their "regular" peers.
StumbleUpon makes a toolbar for Internet Explorer browsers. Either no one uses it, or StumbleUpon serves different content to people based upon their browser. I highly doubt the likeliness of the latter scenario.
People who didn't arrive via StumbleUpon show the regular distribution of browsers for the site. In my opinion, my Firefox visitor count is higher than normal as well, since I've linked to the site from SEOmoz and most of my SEOmoz traffic comes in using this browser.
Without making too many sweeping generalisations, I'd say that the Firefox dominance from StumbleUpon suggests that StumbleUpon is still catering to a very web-savvy audience - a far more savvy audience than I'd previously thought. This isn't such good news, because the content on StumbleUpon always suggested that more and more regular people were using the tool. Since it's "regular people" we're often trying to reach, it's a bit disconcerting to realise that StumbleUpon isn't as diverse as we'd like to think. The blog I'm citing in this post isn't in the least bit "geeky" and I'm now thinking that the Stumblers who've found it interesting are simply typical social media users who happen to also have an interest in my non-geeky content.
I don't want you to think this is a new lesson to me, as anyone who's seen social media traffic has seen this type of thing before. What strikes me as interesting during the latest couple of rounds of StumbleUpon traffic is the complete lack of diversity in users' browsers. Even previous Digg and Reddit outings didn't result in this complete Firefox domination.
Do forgive the dual topics of this post: it can be said that I've investigated two entirely different StumbleUpon phenomena in the recent past. The things I've learned in playing with Google Images recently are a different post entirely.
Without making too many sweeping generalisations, I'd say that the Firefox dominance from StumbleUpon suggests that StumbleUpon is still catering to a very web-savvy audience - a far more savvy audience than I'd previously thought. This isn't such good news, because the content on StumbleUpon always suggested that more and more regular people were using the tool. Since it's "regular people" we're often trying to reach, it's a bit disconcerting to realise that StumbleUpon isn't as diverse as we'd like to think. The blog I'm citing in this post isn't in the least bit "geeky" and I'm now thinking that the Stumblers who've found it interesting are simply typical social media users who happen to also have an interest in my non-geeky content.
I don't want you to think this is a new lesson to me, as anyone who's seen social media traffic has seen this type of thing before. What strikes me as interesting during the latest couple of rounds of StumbleUpon traffic is the complete lack of diversity in users' browsers. Even previous Digg and Reddit outings didn't result in this complete Firefox domination.
Do forgive the dual topics of this post: it can be said that I've investigated two entirely different StumbleUpon phenomena in the recent past. The things I've learned in playing with Google Images recently are a different post entirely.
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