Stumbleupon (or not, in our case)

Hi there! In case you didn't know, I created newgrounds. No, it wasn't made by some giant company - just some dumb kid who now has help. I also co-founded the Behemoth; we made Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Icon by Pegosho, banner by OmenaKettu.

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Stumbleupon (or not, in our case)

Posted by TomFulp - November 5th, 2012

This is why I need to follow our analytics more closely - I was checking our Google Analytics data for referrals from third party sites and realized Stumbleupon was no longer in the top 10 summary. This was strange because Stumbleupon used to be our top referrer!

At first I chalked it up to the changing fads of the web; maybe everyone moved on to Pinterest and Tumblr and whatevr. But then I isolated the Stumbleupon graph and did a long-term view. Last October Stumbleupon was sending us 80,000 visitors PER DAY. Then in mid-may 2012, they simply shut it down... Less than 1,000 referrals per day.

This is really chilling, that was a considerable amount of our traffic! Also those daily visitors could have become repeat visitors, long-term fans, could pass links to friends, etc. This change had a real impact on NG and I never noticed it.

I couldn't find an email for stumbleupon so I've just Tweeted them so far. I read some stuff about how they blacklist sites that abuse their system but we've NEVER abused their system or tried doing ANYTHING to improve our results there.

So it's like WOW, it sure would be nice to get that traffic back! If anyone knows anyone at Stumbleupon, please ask them what's up. Hopefully this post can get their attention and they'll look into the matter. If anyone has any further info on their policies, let me know! Maybe too many people were stumbling on the wrong kind of submissions.

UPDATE: Some bad ads had come through our ad company for a few days in May and in that moment someone reported it to Stumbleupon and we were indeed blacklisted. They are reviewing the site now and we may soon return to Stumbleupon! Damn I wish I had noticed this sooner.

UPDATE 2: We are now back on Stumbleupon! Hopefully that graph will pop back up.

860026564_stumbleupon.png.png

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ToonCastleTV 2012-11-05 12:42:00

Yikes O_O

FrozenFire 2012-11-05 12:58:32

Wow that is ridiculous. Definitely looks like a blacklist though, good call.

pumpernicklegawd 2012-11-05 12:59:17

Thats a big ass dropoff

Kajenx 2012-11-05 13:01:08

Maybe they found those naked pictures you have stashed on the site...

TomFulp 2012-11-05 13:01:08

DAMMIT

BoMToons 2012-11-05 13:37:10

I think Drawception de-listed you too! (your link on the left)

TomFulp 2012-11-05 13:37:10

HOLY CRAP! I wonder if it was for having boobs in some of my pictures or if he just flushed the system at some point. That's a bummer. Removing link now. :(

bigjonny13 2012-11-05 14:03:51

Maybe BoM, but his link is wrong, it should be this.
<a href="http://drawception.com/player/12309/tom/">http://drawception.com/player/12309/tom/</a>

TomFulp 2012-11-05 14:03:51

Oh look at that, I STILL EXIST! Just after I cleaned up my links.

RamUrMother 2012-11-05 14:40:59

I think it's time you started whoring yourself out Tom :P

SerPounce 2012-11-05 14:53:29

This is some bullshit, hopefully you figure out what their issue is.

bigjonny13 2012-11-05 14:55:01

Also, although there may not be an email to reach them at, there is a contact us page.
<a href="http://help.stumbleupon.com/customer/portal/emails/new">http://help.stumbleupon.com/customer/portal/em ails/new</a>

TomFulp 2012-11-05 14:55:01

Contacted!

Jester 2012-11-05 15:02:39

This is a declaration of war on their part. Prepare the armies.

straberrykiler6789 2012-11-05 15:35:28

make movies that say Stumbleupon is shit

if we can get some good content fabricators on board we can kick ass

and a full army of trolls to fuck up their site
operation Stumble2theGround

TomFulp 2012-11-05 15:35:28

Or just hope they stop blacklisting us!

Saminat 2012-11-05 15:54:02

That is complete rubbish! If It's involved with content that people were being turned off by, then that shouldn't even matter, there's a warning for adult submissions before you can even play them. I hope this gets straightened out!

Budj 2012-11-05 16:48:54

Those meanies! :<

kwecky 2012-11-05 16:57:55

Does this mean that NG may go down?
You can't! I love this web page, you just can't go down.

veselekov 2012-11-05 17:03:02

Maybe you could ask Chris, Arin etc to give you a shout out?

VulpesHilarianus 2012-11-05 17:28:50

It's my belief that maybe their servers (god knows where THOSE are), might be redirecting people to a similar site or even glitching in an address check. I've seen sites that have had redirecting codes or links and sometimes when the servers get near capacity (especially if they're old), they sometimes lose or delete bits of memory. These can be simple things like the number '1' in an html address that can damage traffic to the site. Otherwise, if it IS the adult content, I agree with Saminat. Besides the warning system, it's clearly in the user agreement when you join the site that there might be offensive content. My advice tom is that you check the link an see if ANYTHING at all is missing, even down to the huge jumble of letters and numbers at the end. It's usually something simple.

TomFulp 2012-11-05 17:28:50

I set up an account with stumbleupon to investigate and as far as I can tell, Newgrounds NEVER shows up anywhere. It's really sad too because you look for Flash Games and you find a lot of really shitty sites, with NG nowhere in sight.

kinggila 2012-11-05 20:11:03

Don't you just hate the internet at times?

TomFulp 2012-11-05 20:11:03

How about ALL THE TIME?

RicePirate 2012-11-05 20:50:30

Jeez, yeah this needs some rectifying ... that's no chump change. Keep us posted on your dealings with this stumbleupon situation ... :'/

TomFulp 2012-11-05 20:50:30

It really is crazy, like I had always been suspicious about why our traffic seemed to dip more dramatically than it ever has, but for some reason never noticed it was THAT. Really gotta wonder about the long-term impact, the number of NG fans that just don't exist right now because of it.

ramsmash102 2012-11-05 21:08:42

Holy shit...
I just hope this is some big accounting or moderation error,
Or in the worst case god is afraid of your progress, but hey
It should be rectified soon...I hope.

ForNoReason 2012-11-05 21:43:40

I use stumbleupon a lot and I have noticed the lack of Newgrounds pages I have been getting. I always like Newgrounds pages in general because I love the content here. This is also a blow to Newgrounds' artists because they aren't getting the exposure from outside sources as well. I can't see why Newgrounds would be blacklisted when I have been routed by Stumble to sites that have stolen newgrounds content on them. I hope it all gets squared away because it is just not right.

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