Are you banned by StumbleUpOn? What is the consequence?
AdSense, Google, StumbleUpOn July 19th, 2007Do you stumble your own pages? I admit that I did few times when I signed up with StumbleUpOn. After reading their terms, I realized that is not a good idea. I have not stumbled on my own page since. What I also realized is that your StumbleUpOn account may be banned by stumble the pages under the same domains too many times. You heard it right. You are so kind to your friend. So you decide to do your friend a favor and stumble (the first one to discover) all your friend’s pages under the same domain. The domain may be banned by StumbleUpOn eventually. In other words, no one can ever discover the page on the domain again. Your account may also be banned shortly. So how do you become a good stumbler without hurting your own effort and your friends site?
So what is the consequence?
Let’s say that you are a great stumbler and you have pretty good score. So you discover a new page. You thumb up and write a decent review about the page. Suddenly, you are bring in the attention to the pages. All your friends on StumbleUpOn start receiving the page when they stumbling. They like the page, so they thumbs up and write a review. So more and more stumblers gave the thumb up. Now. The page is getting tremendous traffic that it was not getting ever before.
You did the same thing to other pages under the same site. It consequently brings in more traffic in the very short time frame. You are happy and your friend are happy. So you two have a great night sleep.
Few days later, your friend receive a letter from Google AdSense team claiming that your friend’s site was creating click fraud. Boom! Your fiends AdSense account is banned. Your friend is trying to explain the situation to Google AdSense with no luck. No response. So your friends un-paid check is sitting in Google’s bank account.
What was happening? Your kindness is sending too much traffic to your friend’s site. The story here might be too scary, but it is pretty close to the reality.
Now few more days later, you tried to discover a new page of your friends. You can’t. The StumbleUpOn toolbar just open a new blank window that has one “Cancel Rating” button. You know you are no longer to discover the pages on that site. If you continue do the same thing over and over again, you will find your account banned some days.
I am not trying to scare you. It just doesn’t make sense to send huge traffic without knowing the consequence.
Extra reading about the consequence: Stumbleupon can get your AdSense Account Banned for Invalid Impressions Fraud
What is your thought? Do you discover a lot of pages on the same domain name, which is not even your domain?
Popularity: 22% [?]
Save To Del.icio.us | Digg This | Stumble It
72 Responses to “Are you banned by StumbleUpOn? What is the consequence?”
Leave a Comment
Comment PolicyA comment will be DELETED/MODIFIED if:
- Contains links to splogs or MFA (Made For Adsense) sites
- Contains links to a non-blog related sites
- Contains racists, drugs or illegal statements and stuff like that
- Adds no value to the discussion











July 20th, 2007 at 7:08 am
hmm, this is interesting. I couldn’t have imagined that thing at all! Anyway, this will certainly enlighten many stumblers.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:48 am
ReviewSaurus:
That was exactly what happened to my blog 4 years ago. I am no longer Google AdSense enabled.
I am starting over again and play safe this time. 
July 20th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Sounds pretty scary, most stumblers never realize that their domains could be banned as well. Thanks for the heads up.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Thilak:
I have not seen StumbleUpOn banned a domain, but I do see they banned a member on stumbling a page under that same domain. In other words, the member is no longer able to discover any page under that domain.
That’s one of the indication of “Self stumbling.” I guess.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:36 am
hmm…so may be stumbling our own pages will create problem. I’d stumbled my own pages in starting but then after reading the terms and condition…I stopped doing it.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Exactly … I did few at beginning. The terms also says that you can’t have multiple accounts from the same individual. I bet there are many out there have more than one account.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Thanx for the advise, really useful. Maybe i must delete some of my own site immediately in there hehe
I just got banned by Digg before, and hope no more banned from others
July 20th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
ForumeR:
You don’t have to delete. Just leave it alone. Wow…I have never a digg fan. You must felt awful.
July 20th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
useful information and advice terence! hadn’t looked at it like this before…
self-stumblers beware!
July 20th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
I have not involved with Stumble exchange for a while. Trying to slow down and build a good relationship with other stumblers.
July 20th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Wow, thanks for the heads up Terence. It’s interesting to know that SU and AdSense can be related.
July 20th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Aldian:
Yes. That is why I always insist to do stumble the right way. Be a good stumbler first. With good quality content, people will come!
July 20th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Hmm… I feel like I’m watching the 9 o’clock news about preventing identity theft. I stumble my own stuff all the time, along with tons of other pages and my account hasn’t been banned.
I might just have to stop though, because I’ve been banned by a couple social bookmarking sites in the past. StumbleUpon is too valuable for any of my sites to be banned from. It wouldn’t be devastating, but it would surely suck.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
[…] by Google Adsense and get banned by StumbleUpOn as well ? You need to know how to do it right!read more | digg story .adHeadline {font: bold 10pt Arial; text-decoration: underline; color: […]
July 20th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Thanks for the Tips…even i stumble my own!!! will stop them!
July 20th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Yeah.. Now we all know what not to do.
Thank you for stopping by.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Hi Jason:
Thank you for stopping by. StumbleUpOn is the blogger’s best friend. I have not been banned by any social network, so I want to make sure I will never get banned.
Good luck on your stumbling.
July 21st, 2007 at 2:05 am
Thanks for sharing your views Terence. I never thought people would manipulate StumbleUpon that way. Good thing u raised up the point abt stumbling friend’s blogs - instead of trying to send them some traffic, one might create trouble. Now I know.
July 21st, 2007 at 8:25 am
Mommibee:
I think most of the blog will be fine. Google have a special ways to identify where you traffic come from. So the bottom line is don’t try to cheat.
July 21st, 2007 at 8:48 am
ahh i had no clue about that!! i knew u cant stumble ur own things!! but i didnt know u would get banned for stumbling a friend regularly!! wow!! im gonna be much more careful with it! thanks for the info!
July 21st, 2007 at 9:03 am
@confessing7girl:
I have no clue until few days a go. I have been getting good traffic in the past month. I don’t worry too much, since I have slow down on stumbling. I don’t want my friend get banned.
July 21st, 2007 at 9:11 am
yeahh im gonna be much more careful… i hv no problem about friends getting banned but yea i dont wanna get banned!! hehe
and ill be much more careful in the SU project!!
i kid!! i kid!!
July 21st, 2007 at 9:17 am
@confessing7girl:
Is that your confession?
Don’t worry. I won’t get your site banned.
July 21st, 2007 at 9:25 am
hehe
ahh we could hv a discussion here about google and bans … im even afraid to even think about my blog cause i might get banned from google!!
i can be generating too many telepathic page impressions!!
July 21st, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Another great post by the one and only Terence Chang!
I got the new ad banner up today Terence, and a friend did a redesign of my header… What do you think? I value your opinion!
July 21st, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Bryan:
Thanks! Will check out your page now.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:11 am
Yeah Terence, content is king
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:37 am
Terence Chang: In the first paragraph of your post, you’ve mentioned that the domain could eventually be banned.
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Thilak:
I have made the changes to the sentence. The domain will be banned by StumbleUpOn. So no one will be able to discover any page on that domain. Your domain is still valid to the public.
I hope this explain better. Sorry for any misconception.
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Hey thanks for this information. I didn’t realize you couldn’t stumble your own pages. I don’t like doing it anyway because then I get a whole lot of visits which distort my stats.
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Jenny:
Yeah. I did that when I first signup StumbleUpOn. The more I use, the more I like. However, I am using it wisely. I don’t mind to create traffic to other sites, but I also don’t want to hurt their site too.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:12 am
Thats useful information mate. My Adsense account was disabled few months back and trust me for no fault of mine, it was clearly a case of sabotage, appealed twice but of no avail. I think that was unfair on part of google, anyway all I can say now is google suxx. I stumbled my own posts a few times, coz I thought it was ok, not gonna do it again. Good post mate.
Take care and cheers.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
Stumbleupon is a great source for traffic, but one thing I’ve noticed is the traffic is not of any quality.
What I mean is, the visitors do not stay for more than 5 secs :(. They only might, if you have something very interesting.
~Gautam
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:59 am
@Robin:
My AdSense has long gone few years ago. I was getting too much traffic and too many clicks from the same people, who want me to be rich. I did not ask for it, but I could not approve that to Google. Sometimes, your friend can kill your dream to be rich.
@Wishlost:
You have made a really good point. Some of my visitor won’t stay more than 10 seconds. I realized that some of them just trying to increase their thumb up or just not interested in my content. Putting your page in the correct category is important. We can’t really expect your viewer to categorize your page to the correct category. I had one Alexa related post, which was under the “Transportation” category. I have only got few visitors on that page. It just sucks!
Thank you both for stopping by!
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:26 am
Thanks Terence, Do you want to be rich? I don’t wanna be rich, I don’t see my life any better if I had 2 million dollars today. I used to pray for those 2 million, later gave up thinking maybe GOD didn’t have that cash. Be happy with what you have mate. I am grateful for what I have. Look around and you will see so many less fortunate.
Take care and GOD bless.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
Robin: Thank you for reminding me. I used to think the same way as you did. I pray and pray and it never came. So now I act and act. I don’t believe I will much happier with much more money, but I will definitely happier to help others with money power.
I have read many success story about true rich people. They all gives. What interested me is this.
“When you are little rich, your money belongs to your families, relatives. When you are richer, your money belongs to your employees, coworker and friends. When you are very very rich, your money belongs to the world”
It’s all about appreciation. I believe that I can be rich only if I enrich my mind first. Without the faith, nothing will happen.
I am grateful what I have as you do. I will be even grateful if I can give out.
August 8th, 2007 at 5:23 am
I’ve noticed that I’ve had 126 hits this month from “http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php” but don’t fully understand what this means. Is this traffic or what?
August 8th, 2007 at 5:25 am
Oh, I’ve also added you to my friends on stumbleupon and digg.
August 12th, 2007 at 10:25 am
[…] is from a REGULAR WEB USER perspective, rather than a blogger or webmaster perspective, which there are lots of. And oh, you can buy traffic from StumbleUpon […]
September 4th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Terence, I’ve read a couple of your Stumble Upon posts now and I can see that I’ll have to get into it soon. Your take on stumbling your own content is interesting - I’ve seen lots of sites talk about Stumble Upon, but not have mentioned that it might be against the Terms and Conditions. Good to see the other side of this mentioned.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:16 am
@Stephen:
It will take time to become a good stumbler and get good traffic from StumbleUpOn. I have spent a lot of time in the past to get traffic from StumbleUpOn and boost my Alexa traffic. Many sites want you to sign up and join traffic exchange. At the end, many will get your site banned. So you don’t get much traffic at all.
Use wisely is the key. Content is the king.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I have heard of domains being permanently banned by Digg but not by Stumbleupon. I think being banned by Stumble is probably worse than being banned by Digg. Digg sends bad traffic and is heavily biased in favor of tech and tabloid related articles
October 11th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
@Raymond:
It’s not common to be banned by StumbleUpOn unless you are obviously doing something wrong. I have never gotten huge traffic from digg. Both Digg and stumbleUpOn give your temporary traffic. A good quality traffic came from your content. That is what I am always working hard on.
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:07 pm
I was trying to find the widget to show who stumbles you but found this post instead.
I made the same mistake of having 2 SU thinking it was logical to have a separate account for each blog. When I discovered it was against the terms and conditions of SU, I wrote to them. They didn’t respond to me. But I wrote again to say that I would like to terminate one account. I learned to delete that account and have a peace of mind.
I never knew that stumbling someone regularly is not a good idea. I’m glad I found this post.
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 pm
@Jesie:
Thank you for visiting. I am glad that you found my post useful. StumbleUpOn can really bring some temporary traffic. Good luck to your stumbleUpOn adventure.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
[…] Are you banned by StumbleUpon? What is the consequence?Stumbling your own websites too often can result in your domain name being banned from StumbleUpon. This site covers some of the big no-nos of StumbleUpon. […]
November 21st, 2007 at 9:05 am
Hey Terence
These big corporate giants like Google and a few others never want an even playing field for the little guy. Once you start making waves with out paying they find ways to punish you.
Something similar happened on Diggs the Diggs moderators were burying stories til the Diggs community took action.
November 21st, 2007 at 10:03 am
@Glen:
I have never like Dig. Google is now getting a little annoying even I am using some of their wonderful services. I believe Google is sensing some pressure by other new comers in the search engine and advertisement business. So they try to dominate the market.
December 12th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
well, i am not getting a lot of traffic from stumbleupon anyway and i still have very few friends.
December 13th, 2007 at 2:33 am
@acnecaregal:
Well. It takes time and effort to build up your social network power. Using stumbleUpOn is like investing on stock. It requires your attention and hard works.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:05 am
I have been using SU for quite some time and have no ban yet.
For new sites, I try to build up some traffic naturally before stumbling, as I don’t want a load of stumbles right off the bat.
January 26th, 2008 at 6:30 am
@Chris M:
If you don’t abuse stubmleUpOn, you will not be banned. StumbleUpOn only give you short term traffic. No one will not discover your page unless you provide some useful information. Thank you for stopping by.
February 16th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
They limit the amount of submissions from one user for a certain domain, but you may go back and delete those submissions and add more after a short waiting period. worked for me anyways.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
@SEO Strategies:
Thank you for stopping by. I don’t know if StumbleUpOn will limited the number of pages you can stumble on one domain. It makes no sense to limited that. However, I do believe that the staffs over StumbleUpOn are closely watching who stumble the page. If you discover new pages too frequently on the same domain (regardless yours or others), your account and domain may be locked.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
They do limit it and then encourage you to buy ads to promote your site as an alternative.
any hand editing would have to make up a small part of this type of regulation, i would imagine it is automated for the most part.
February 16th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
@SEO Strategies:
It still not maks too much sense to me. If your page were discovered by hundred members, it means your web site is popular and already got decent traffic. Why would you buy Ads? I think it only happens when are trying to stumble your own low traffic page too often.
My personal experience with stumbleUpOn is the traffic is only short term. You will build your readership only if your content is good enough. Most of my traffic are from search engine. Most of the StumbleUpOn traffic won’t stay on a page for more than 10 seconds. So if you are rely on StubmleUpOn to increase your sales on your web site, you will be disappointed.
I think StumbleUpOn is watching what people are doing. I can tell that by dig into my web log.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:09 am
The limit is in place for obvious reasons and it does in fact exist. I hit the limit with my own domain, with somewhere around 10 submissions. There are exceptions in place for certain high traffic domains. The reason for the limit is to prevent spammers from submitting 100s of pages from the same domain to the StumbleUpon system. Why? If it was full of spam pages no one would use it. That is why the limit exists.
So you have a new site, you’ve submitted your pages to stumbleupon but it’s not generating the amount of traffic you desire…an option is to purchase a certain number of stumbles to your site. Not all the pages you hit are submitted by users…some are paid placement.
As for them watching, again, I am quite certain it is mostly automated. Manpower is expensive and I doubt they are monitoring submissions manually, except in certain circumstances beyond the capabilities of the monitoring application. An example would be a network of people working together on separate accounts to manipulate certain pages to show up more…that might be the type of things the people at stumbleupon spend their time monitoring. Of course this last paragraph is 100% conjecture…the rest I know to be true.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
@SEO Strategies:
I think the limitation has something to do with the thumb down. I am not the programmer at StumbleUpOn, so I can say it’s not limited. However, I do know that if there are too many pages from the same site submitted in a short time frame, it will raise the alert.
If the page has over certain amount (My guess is 5%) thumb down, it will stop sending the page to other to stumble prior a human to check. I just thought if you stumble the right way, you should not have any troubles to receive traffic from StumbleUpOn.
I am just hoping that the traffic will last longer. I am still getting some traffic to few of my very old post. That’s great!
February 18th, 2008 at 6:11 am
You may be right about the thumbs down.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
@SEO Strategies:
Yea. I do know some site with too many thumb down will be blocked.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I was wanting to kickstart my own blog using SU, but after eading all this I think better not do it. Thanks for the tips.
February 19th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
@Huge Mistakes:
If you Stumble the right way, it will be you huge traffic. Just be a good stumbler to get started. Thank you for visiting!
March 30th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Good to know, I guess it’s only fair to those that create quality content and don’t know all the ins and outs of social bookmarking, One should be able to kick back and let organic searches rule. Great post.
March 31st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
@Flash Blog:
Hope you enjoy the traffic from stumbleUpOn. Thank you for stopping by.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I was banned from Stumble Upon for stumbling my own blog posts. It is ok if you pay them for the premium stumbling that they offer for a fee but not with the free service. I got a lot of traffic from stumbles but it never amounted to much as far as conversion.
Oh well, that is what happens when they become to large.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
@Tom:
I am sorry that you was banned by StumbleUpOn. That’s a lessen to learn. StumbleUpOn has been a great traffic source for my blogs, but the conversion rate from the StumbleUpOn traffic is low in many cases. I will never buy the traffic for sites with PPC advertisement, it will actually lower your PPC rate. Most stumbler won’t even click on any of the links.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
[…] need to be taken care of. There is evidence of sites getting banned from SU who misuse it. If you stumble your own pages continuously , your blog or web site may be banned on SU. SU has the power to get your adsense account closed. […]
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
I just got banned from stumble upon, was looking for the reason and reached your post. I was also not getting any conversion from stumble upon traffic but the surge in traffic that one can get from stumble upon is a steep one and i feel like i have missed it from now on. Are there any nice and free alternatives?
I infact didn’t know that they had it in thier TOS.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:48 am
Thanks Terence. I have been looking for the reason why being banned by Stumble Upon. At first I thought unreasonably banned I was trying to look for the answer in Google. I found a lot of pages containing Problogger( ya we know him well ) but he was just talking about his site being banned bla bla bla..Anyway, wish you smooth sailing in your way to being a billionaire. Cheerz!
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 am
@1 Weddings Readings:
Thank you for the blessing. Problogger has more power to prove that his should not be banned. Not so much luck to other small web site owners. However, StumbleUpOn only provides a short boost of traffic and not a good quality traffic. You should pay more attention on search engine traffic. If you can make to the top of first page for your niche keywords, you don’t really need StumbleUpOn for traffic.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:35 am
[…] Are you banned by StumbleUpon? What is the consequence? […]
December 27th, 2008 at 1:29 am
I didnt knew this before. I used to write reviews for my own site. But, I am not able to do this now. It seems they have banned by site. Feeling very bad. I never expected this.