Unintended effects of Stumbleupon

[JeremyMorgan]

Here is something to think about with Stumbleupon.

A lot of bloggers use it, myself included. But here is one thing I've noticed: a higher bounce rate on any page that is stumbled.

This could affect your SEO on the long run. How?

Assuming you are using google analytics, and assuming google factors things like visitor time and bounce rate, you could be setting yourself up for trouble. If someone is "stumbling" along, they might be going through 10-15 sites a minute, until something catches your eye. What does that mean for you? It means they only stay on your site for 5-10 seconds. And this is logged in your stats.

Many SEOs theorize (myself included) that google factors in bounce rate and page time into your ranking. If they see a high bounce rate, and see that people only stay on your page for 10 seconds, they make an assumption that your site is bad, irrelevant or dangerous. By stumbling your own pages, you may be inviting this type of traffic, and might suffer a penalty in google.

I haven't done a lot of extensive testing on this, but this is a theory I have, and should be considered. Just something I was thinking about while checking over my stats the other day.

What do you guys think?

[Ferox]

Or is Google is logging your stats perhaps they log where the traffic is coming from and factor in that stumbleupon users have notoriously short attention spans? Google is run by people who use the internet and are probably aware of how stumbleupon is used.

It's not worth stumbling your own blogs but it's not worht worrying about either.

[Web Design]

That is a really interesting thought - one that should be considered, not sure that its avoidable. Perhaps bounce rate will balance out with a higher number of bookmarks in the eyes of search engines.

[JeremyMorgan]

I'm not saying I know anything for certain, or that I think people should stop submitting to Stumbleupon, but I think it's a factor.

There is a possibility google factors it in to their strategy, but I wouldn't count on it. I will still use SU to promote, but I wouldn't have that be my only means of promotion.

[Indyan]

I really doubt it would affect seo. If that was the case then all top tier blogs which receive a lot of hits from digg, reddit and su would end up getting penalised by google.

If google does factor in bounce rate (which i dont think it does), I am sure it will also consider where the website gets majority of hits from. But in order to judge bounce rate google would have to rely on analytics data. And is google even allowed to make use of your analytics data? I don't think so.

[JeremyMorgan]

Originally Posted by Indyan

I really doubt it would affect seo. If that was the case then all top tier blogs which receive a lot of hits from digg, reddit and su would end up getting penalised by google.

If google does factor in bounce rate (which i dont think it does), I am sure it will also consider where the website gets majority of hits from. But in order to judge bounce rate google would have to rely on analytics data. And is google even allowed to make use of your analytics data? I don't think so.

Actually, it's a pretty popular opinion that google does use this data (link to article from SEOmoz) and I'm sure if you look through the fine print, you'll see that it's 100% legal as well.

Larger blogs don't have to worry about it. Stumbleopon sending a few hundred hits a day to a page that gets 50,000 is not going to have any effect at all. I'm talking about smaller traffic sites that rely heavily on SU traffic. If your blog gets 10 hits a day on it's own, but gets 300 from stumbleupon, that will affect your overall bounce rate. I think it's something to think about for smaller sites.

[Indyan]

Thanks for bringing this up. I had no clue about this. This is a bit disturbing.
I have a high bounce rate. So I am concerned.

[demonpaintball]

Hi there,

Your post is very insteresting, thanks

[JeremyMorgan]

Originally Posted by Indyan

Thanks for bringing this up. I had no clue about this. This is a bit disturbing.
I have a high bounce rate. So I am concerned.

I don't think you should be that concerned about it, I just think it's something to consider. It's not going to make or break your site by any means. Just mix it up, make sure you have other traffic coming in besides SU and it should be fine.

[Indyan]

My primary source of traffic is google. SU accounts for less than 10%. In spite of that I do have a high bounce rate.
I have seen others use target="_blank" to decrease bounce rates. But I haven't yet implemented it as I dislike links that automatically open new tabs and break the flow.