I’ve always been a big fan of StumbleUpon.
It’s easy to use. I have loads of friends and I like sharing lots of different sites.
And the knock on effect is that it brings traffic to my site.
A few months ago StumbleUpon suddenly banned my site, this site. Friends were telling me they could no longer ‘thumb up’ blog posts on WeBuildYourBlog.com.
I was gob smacked!
I contacted them and asked why.
They said, “I’ve been spamming and someone complained”.
I thought, “I don’t spam, I’ve never spammed.”
Let me tell you a story….
A few months ago, a professional writer friend and I started another blog, www.TheDigitalArchives.com (an article writing service).
My partner is the writer and I’m the technical one.
We launched the site and I shared it with my stumble friends saying, “What do you think?” or words similar to that.
From one Stumble ‘friend’ I received a lot of abuse.
“Why didn’t I start a business with him?”
“He could write for me”
I’ve omitted the abusive swear words.
I ‘un-friended him’. He was no longer a StumbleUpon friend and I moved on.
Two days later my site is banned.
I have no proof he complained. I have no proof my site is banned by StumbleUpon as a direct result but it’s a pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?
This week, a few months later. I thought I’d ask StumbleUpon to see if they would lift my ban and asked again why my site was banned in the first place.
This is what I asked:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
My site, https://www.webuildyourblog.com has been ‘banned’ by StumbleUpon for several months now and I still don’t understand why.
Could someone please explain and take my site off the ‘banned’ list?
Thanks.
Andrew
_____________________________________________________________________________________
This is what they said in reply:
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Hello Andrew,
Thank you for contacting us.
When a site is excluded from our service, it will be for either technical reasons, or because of a breach of our Terms of Service. We reserve the right to do this, and any such exclusion is permanent.
Having reviewing your account history, Andrew, it appears that you’ve repeatedly submitted content from one or more sites in particular, which is technically a breach of our Terms, and I would ask you to ensure that you have read these: http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms/
If you’re interested in using StumbleUpon to advertise a Web site, please look into our Advertising program:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads
I hope that this is helpful to you.
Regards,
_____________________________________________________________________________________
It wasn’t helpful at all.
”It appears that you’ve repeatedly submitted content from one or more sites in particular”
Since joining StumbleUpon, I’ve ‘thumbed up’ 9,184 different blog posts.
I have 169 blog posts on this site and I would estimate that I have stumbled approx 10 before getting banned. So if 10 out of 9,184 is “repeatedly submitting content”, then all users of StumbleUpon better watch out.
What about those ‘friends’ that send me 3, 4, 5 or 6 blog posts from the same site begging me to ‘thumb up’, Digg, tweet and Reddit?
Are they being monitored and banned?
I doubt it!
I did write back but I am still awating a response.
I feel I am being fobbed off by StumbleUpon and think I will just have to accept that my site is banned for ever.
Ho hum!
What’s your view of StumbleUpon? Share your experiences in the comments below.
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Well, they do say that the ban is permanent… but that sucks!!
Does that mean you’re not allowed to post your own blog posts on StumbleUpon?
You can post your own but make sure you thumb up plenty of others as well!
Andrew
What would happen if yo would pay for one of the StumbleUpon Advertising schemes? If you paid for one set they might reconsider and unblock your site.
Side note: as you know, I’ve had the same issue with the same guy. I submitted a site for a friend and she refused to stumble the submissions of the guy in question. In fact she refused to be a SU ‘friend’ of his, so he could not get her the way he got you.
His account got banned by SU, so he made another. That account got banned, so he created another. Unfortunately he still is being abusive with other people.
Crazy people are out there.
Richard,
I did try and buy one of their Advertising schemes but it said I couldn’t because my site is banned!
I’ve taken that up with them and am awaiting a reply.
The guy is an idiot but I have no proof it was because of him.
Andrew
Andrew,
You could file suit against SU and demand disclosure of the reason(s) your site was banned. The settlement demand could just be all the information they’ve collected on you including specifically why they banned you and who made the decision based on exactly which term of service. Have them pay the court costs and lawyer’s fees, of course. If you sued, I bet they would tell you what you want to know. It wouldn’t cost much if you did it in small claims court.
They may have terms of service and all that, but they are not exempt from U.S. Fed. Trade Commission laws or your right to a day in court.
It depends on what it’s worth to you.
Sherri
.-= Sherri–Being the Change I Wish to See´s last blog ..Ugandan kill-the-gays bill part 13: Now it’s the imprison-the-gays-for-life bill =-.
You know, Sherri, I don’t know if I can be bothered!
They said ‘no’ again today re: un-banning my site.
I still Stumble other people’s sites, though!
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Is Mastering Public Speaking Good for Bloggers? =-.
I noticed this yesterday actually as I went to thumb up a post but thought it was a SU toolbar error (I’ve had various problems with it in Firefox), as it just says it can’t be submitted. Crazy and very disappointing response by them.
I know, while is is against their T&C’s, you can submit your own posts to SU as it will block you after 3 in a row and tell you to go and stumble lots of others before trying again – at least it used to, this was a while ago for a friend’s site. Perhaps they’ve become more strict.
Hi Andrew it also happen to me. SU also banned me. Actually that time I did not know much about SU, after that I made one new id there and now its working good. Well now I learn how to handle SU and also getting some traffic from there.
The problem I have, is that SU haven’t banned me, they have banned my site so I can’t just create a new ID.
Andrew
I see, that is one big problem, well you may pay attention on digg, reddit, twitter etc.
is this a permanent ban
I think so!
I am trying to get ‘un-banned’ but no luck so far.
Andrew
SU algorithm is really very stadnard. They can catch easily spammer.
Stumble is not fair, I see some guys always submit their contents and spam the community but their sites are still OK. They write the rule, and we must follow 🙁
People there tell me that never thumb up my content, so I build a list of friends who are likely to help me discover my content. I also limit myself to share my stuff once a week and I usually hit the “Stumble” button 120+ times a day.
Phaoloo
I only shared once a week as well and not only my own blog posts, others as well!
Andrew
Man, that really sucks, I feel for you 🙁
I was going to suggest just creating a new account before I saw it was your site that was banned! Surely there’s some *slightly* blackhat way around it? 😉
Simon,
I’m not going to bother too much. I shall concentrate on Twitter.
Andrew
It feel awkward. Stumbleupon didnt put some good filtration over banning the sites and accounts. I have got my account banned just because of the reason that I had a shared IP for my net connection and over that IP someone else created an account and I got an email stating that my account has been suspended because of multiple account creation while I have nothing to do with that. A well established profile was lost!
– J.
That is a sad occurrence. I was wondering how you got banned from Stumbleupon. The thing about spam is that you are not supposed to submit a site more than once to stumble upon. Even if its a blog only one page can you submit yourself from your site, then only others can stumble you. It’s crazy, but if you don’t play by their rules, then they are on a ban frenzy and don’t seem to care about the end user much, because there are many end users. Sad state of affairs.
So sad for the guy that got you banned, because he is the one who is suffering most. You will be successful and moving on and he will be holding on to bad situations that happen to him.
.-= Gerlaine´s last blog ..Happiness Brings Money =-.
Well Andrew if all you say is true, and I don’t doubt it, then you are definitely being fobbed off by StumbleUpon. I have no idea what fobbed off means but love the sound of it. LOL
So I guess no one should ever stumble their own work. Now that is a shock. Who the hell ever reads any terms of service on social sites anyway? They are way too full of themselves if you ask me.
There are plenty of other fish in the sea of social media.
For what it is worth, I think you have great content and are a welcome addition to my web reading habits.
All the best, and the only British term that comes to mind is one that may former British WW2 war bride neighbor used to say when leaving a group of friends; “Keep your pecker up”!
Rich Hill
.-= Link Money´s last blog ..How to Search all Craigslist Cities at Once =-.
Thanks, Rich.
I do miss my site being able to be stumbled though – I did get a lot of traffic from there.
“Keep your pecker up” – mmmm – not really used by me. It’s a rather middle/upper class phrase.
Andrew
Wow, good to know this Andrew. I will beef up my own efforts to ensure I’m sharing other blog’s posts as much as my own. Sorry for your trouble.
.-= Keller Hawthorne´s last blog ..How Did Google’s April 2010 PageRank Update Affect You? =-.
Every now and then I ask to be included again but I always get a ‘no’!
Going to write again today!
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last blog ..Master This Technique and Get More Blog Readers =-.
What kind of reasoning does this sound like to you: “Let’s create a social media site specifically so people can share their favorite sites and then we can punish them for using it.” I had this argument with them and made the point that we all have favorite sites, naturally those are the ones we are going to share. Isn’t that what sharing is all about? Their policies don’t make any logical sense.
Jonathan
I know – weird, isn’t it?
It’s been a while since I wrote to them to try and get my site unbanned – I shall try again today!
Andrew
Mandie,
I don’t think I want to be associate with the ‘friend’. He was pretty nasty.
Andrew
Andrew,
That’s so bad… Two things about what happen to you. First, I don’t know why online marketers who do things the right way get penalized (I guess it has to do with what black haters do).
second, that is the problem that we marketers have when we use someone’s else properties. It remains me of Web 2.0 blogging sites and how they delete accounts just because they feel like it.
Tom
I know…crazy isn’t it?
I’ve tried many times now to get StumbleUpon to unban my site but they refuse.
Andrew
Its was sad to read about the issue with StumbleUpon. I’ve been reading your blog posts for quite sometime now and you are one of the best bloggers out there. Your blog posts are very informative which delivers high quality content. Hope you never experience such unpleasant situations again.
Thanks, Robert.
I have tried to get ‘unbanned’ but StumbleUpon won’t budge.
Perhaps I should get my visitors to all write to StumbleUpon complaining about my situation.
Andrew
Did you ever get unbanned? With all of the new iterations of their site, you would think they would allow people back in.
Tony,
I never did. I asked several times and they said once banned…always banned.
Andrew
Sorry to hear about the permanent ban. I let all of my facebook group members know of this as well. since many continue to submit their own content in a bad ratio.
I have a similar story, but my site was soft-banned, as told by the Paid StumbleUpon staff. So I can still buy paid stumbles but no unpaid Stumbles are allowed, so what is the point? I’m checking in again this week (5/22/13) to see if anything has changed in a year and a half. I was receiving 7,000 stumbles a day, so it was a very big loss. My softban was due to having an ad at the top, so they said, and traffic exchanges.
Good luck, Shell. That’s a lot of trafic lost – I hope all goes well for you.
Andrew
It happened to my Stumbleupon account as well. 🙁
It was the largest traffic source for my website, but now contribute nothing to my traffic.
And now I’m still figuring out whether I can unbanned the account and gain some traffics back from Stumbleupon.
JJ,
I gave up asking Stmbleupon to unban me. I’ve moved on.
Andrew
I am still using stumbleupon and posting each and every day till they stop me from posting more. I think they will also ban me soon.
Yeah, I was receiving about 2-3k views from my site daily. Recently saw my traffic drop and noticed Stumble stopped driving traffic to my site. They are straight assholes when talking about the whole ‘spam’ situation. How is it that they ban my website saying it’s spam. What if it was another user just posting my site on SU over and over? That is out of my control. I posted on GetSatisfaction and they gave me a straight answer that I was spamming, more finds then likes, and when I went to reply it said my GetSatisfaction account was locked.
If anybody finds a way around this, please post here!