StumbleUpon’s New Webmaster Friendly Referral Page

I regularly check our traffic referral sources, and StumbleUpon is often a large one. Today I noticed that the StumbleUpon referral page has been changed to make it easier for site owners to understand how they got StumbleUpon traffic — plus StumbleUpon uses the new format as an opportunity to push its ad program. More on this below, plus how to add StumbleUpon links to your blog or through FeedBurner FeedFlares, using a new XML file I’ve created.

When someone visits your site from StumbleUpon, the visit leaves behind in your logs a URL that looks similar to this:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=
http%3A//searchengineland.com/070129-130949.php

The part in bold is your URL that’s listed. The first part is what StumbleUpon uses to track the click for those using the StumbleUpon toolbar, which seems to be how most people get to sites using StumbleUpon.

Anyone clicking on that tracking URL from outside the toolbar (such as from a web analytics program) used to get taken to a fairly sparse "lookup" page, where the URL was shown within a form box. It looked fairly similar to the review lookup page like you’ll see here:

Clicking the button on this page brought up the site review of your content within the StumbleUpon tag directory, like this:

This review page is what people see if they submit a page review using the toolbar or if they are just browsing sites that have been reviewed using the tag directory.

Now the lookup page is gone. Instead, you get a page like this:

Notice how the top makes it much easier for those who are new to StumbleUpon and getting traffic from it to discover what’s going on. It says:

Your page is on StumbleUpon

One of our members added your page to the Travel topic in StumbleUpon.

Each time our members who are interested in Travel "stumble upon" your page using our toolbar, it will record an entry on your referral logs.

1 reviews about your page

I like how you’re also told that the page has been added to the "travel" area in StumbleUpon. Unfortunately, that’s a glitch. In this example, the page was actually added to the search area of the site. I checked on another page I have reviewed in StumbleUpon, and the new lookup page for it also said it was in travel by mistake. I suspect all pages are being misreported this way.

The middle of the new lookup page has a push to advertise on StumbleUpon:

Advertise with StumbleUpon to deliver your page directly to interested members. You can select specific demographics and categories to target the exact audience you want to reach.

A button will start you up with a campaign, and there’s also a link to more advertising information.

Down at the bottom of the page is information on adding StumbleUpon links to your blog or to your site using buttons. The various blog instructions are more useful, because they are designed to have the links automatically include your post URLs and titles in them.

If you go the button route, you have to figure out the blog coding to automatically add the information yourself. Unfortunately, instructions for MovableType aren’t included, but the Typepad should work for MT users.

The same information on buttons and blog links is also listed on a dedicated button page here. Scroll down, and you’ll find the blog info.

I wanted to have StumbleUpon as part of my FeedFlare units that FeedBurner provides. Those are the various social media links you see at the bottom of posts here at Search Engine Land. Two weeks ago, I couldn’t find support for StumbleUpon through FeedFlare in the catalog of links or the extended 101 FeedFlares guide. I messaged FeedBurner about this but haven’t heard back.

Feeling motivated today, I thought maybe I could do it myself. I looked at the code for the Digg FeedFlare from Ross Belmont and altered it to make one that works for StumbleUpon. You’ll find it here:

http://searchengineland.com/stumble.xml

I tested it out by adding it to our FeedFlare units, then submitted yesterday’s More Letters Of The Social Media Alphabet article using the new "Stumble It!" link. The article showed up just fine in StumbleUpon here. So, I think it works! If you use FeedFlare, just copy and paste the URL above into the Add New Flare box.

For an introduction to StumbleUpon, see our article from last week, Forget ABCs - The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS. We also have a future Q&A Land column that will be taking a closer look.