Stumble Upon - is it legit, and are the referalls accurate?

[Lau]

I recently developed a site for city gardeners (link in my sig), and have been happily pootling along with 30 or so new visitors a day, which is great. However, a week or so ago, I could see in the stats that I had been linked to by someone on www.stumbleupon.com, which again, was great. Now, suddenly I get 350-400 new visitors a day! This is also great, but I will have to start thinking about upgrading the hosting if it continues.

So, I have two questions.

1. Is this Stumble Upon thing a good thing? And if it says I've had 300 or so visitors in my stats yesterday from them, is that true? All I can find on the site is that two people have listed me as a good site, and the only link back from my stats is a referral page - http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.html, that is obviously masking where the clicks have come from.

2. Has anyone here been listed on the site, and if so, will the visitor numbers drop, or will it continue at this level? Are sites listed at the top of a list and then drop down the list, or is this likely to carry on?

Obviously I'm chuffed to bits that I'm getting so many visitors and that the word's getting out, but it seems strange suddenly have so many hits, and to come from one place like this that I've never heard of before. Please help to quell my paranoia! Thanks.

[cgratti]

Originally Posted by Lau

I recently developed a site for city gardeners (link in my sig), and have been happily pootling along with 30 or so new visitors a day, which is great. However, a week or so ago, I could see in the stats that I had been linked to by someone on www.stumbleupon.com, which again, was great. Now, suddenly I get 350-400 new visitors a day! This is also great, but I will have to start thinking about upgrading the hosting if it continues.

So, I have two questions.

1. Is this Stumble Upon thing a good thing? And if it says I've had 300 or so visitors in my stats yesterday from them, is that true? All I can find on the site is that two people have listed me as a good site, and the only link back from my stats is a referral page - http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.html, that is obviously masking where the clicks have come from.

2. Has anyone here been listed on the site, and if so, will the visitor numbers drop, or will it continue at this level? Are sites listed at the top of a list and then drop down the list, or is this likely to carry on?

Obviously I'm chuffed to bits that I'm getting so many visitors and that the word's getting out, but it seems strange suddenly have so many hits, and to come from one place like this that I've never heard of before. Please help to quell my paranoia! Thanks.

IMO, anything that hijacks your site or links itself to you without your permission or knowledge can't be a good thing.

[Lau]

Originally Posted by cgratti

IMO, anything that hijacks your site or links itself to you without your permission or knowledge can't be a good thing.

Hmm. I just had a poke around the site, and it seems to be a bit like deli.cio.us crossed with a blog. Seems like a good idea and all.

It's not really hijacked my site, it's just directing a lot of visitors there. This is great, as long as their relevant, I guess. I think I'm just a bit freaked out by having a few blogs say "nice site" and getting a few customers, to suddenly have one giant blog saying "nice site" and getting a ton of visitors!

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has had this happen to their site, or if anyone uses StumbleUpon themselves and can shed some light on what it is!

[munkle]

1) If they're just linking to you, isn't that a good thing?

2) Chances are the number of visitors will drop over time but hopefully your number of regular readers will have increased because of it.

I haven't been "stumbledupon" but have been dugged and delicioused (?!). After an initial spike it tends to go down. Last week I got linked to by what I guess is a German links site (a la Fark et al) and have had nearly 15,000 uniques from them alone in a space of a few days, and went through 82GB of bandwidth in just one day

[Lau]

Originally Posted by munkle

I haven't been "stumbledupon" but have been dugged and delicioused (?!). After an initial spike it tends to go down. Last week I got linked to by what I guess is a German links site (a la Fark et al) and have had nearly 15,000 uniques from them alone in a space of a few days, and went through 82GB of bandwidth in just one day

That's great, thanks for the reassurance (although I may actually cry if I have to pay for 82GB of bandwidth!). I thought it probably was a good thing, so, great. Hopefully it'll start taking off. I think the thing that seemed odd was that I'd been delicioused (!) too, but hadn't had a sudden spike like this.

Oh, and I like your site. Looked at it a while back, as it happens, adding to that giant bandwidth bill (but only a little bit ).

[munkle]

Originally Posted by Lau

Oh, and I like your site. Looked at it a while back, as it happens, adding to that giant bandwidth bill (but only a little bit ).

Ha,ha! It's ok my host offers 1Tb a month (Dreamhost, although it comes with stipulations the cheeky buggers) so feel free to ferret away Although not too much as I'm getting dangerously close to my limit

And the next time I feel like donning my wellies I'll be stopping by to get some hints!

[The Past]

If we are talking about the same stumbleupon, then this s a good thing! You should be pleased. It is a collaborative tool, so if you do not live up they will forget about you in no time anyway.

[nfs2]

As a webmaster i can assure you that stumble upon is a community driven thing that directs people who are interested in your topic to your site. Its members use a toolbar that lets them give a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down" to any site they visit. The fact that so may people are being refered to your site means people like your site, and are recomending it

Its a very good thing

[Lau]

Fantastic! Am chuffed to bits now. Thanks, The Past and nfs2.

[superbovine]

Originally Posted by cgratti

IMO, anything that hijacks your site or links itself to you without your permission or knowledge can't be a good thing.

if websites didn't have hyperlinks to other website, for instance GOOGLE, how would we share information on the world wide web?