Stumbleupon traffic (with tos agreement) ????

[delsia]

As i now start to think that Stumble upon is being consider "auto surf Traffic" by Google.
As i received a boost of traffic from stumble upon in the past few days ( that made me happy) i received an email from Google stating this:

Hello Delsia *Last name*,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have
been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of
third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit
your site. Such programs include, but are not limited to auto-surf,
pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites. Please bear in mind that if we continue to detect invalid clicks or
impressions from these services on your ads, we may disable your
account to protect our advertisers etc.....


So i looked at all the stat for every one of my website and like all of them get around 2-3 uniques each day except for this one : smazs.com
And i never gotten no notice from Google about invalid clicks until i got this boast of traffic, I'm not sure if this email is related to the traffic I'm getting but check out my stats: http://www.smazs.com/goog.gif
So as you can see 74 of my traffic came from Stumble upon...

Has any one gotten Emails from Google about Similar cases and can relate to Stumble upon.

Also Last question:
is stumble upon traffic considerer Auto Surf traffic ? because if it is i need a way to top receiving traffic from stumble upon so i can save my account.

thanks in advance.
~delsia

[rustybrick]

Can you email them back asking about Stumble Upon?

[casperl]

Yes, please try to email them and ask for stumbleupon. I would like to hear more about this too.

[FIVE539]

hmmm sounds interesting

[Red_Virus]

yes you should email them back, explaining them abt the origination of traffic

[kh7]

Well, if they just look at the traffic pattern (as they are likely to do), stumbleupon would look like 'autosurf' type traffic - especially if it is a main source of traffic for your site. I do think mailing them and explaining the situation should help. After all - it is human traffic, and it is also in a sense targeted traffic.
The only other option you really have is to delete the adsense code from pages that get stumbled, until your site starts getting significant traffic from other sources as well - that is.

[john_nyc]

i inquired about stumble and rcvd this response


Thanks for your email. It is our policy not to endorse or support any
specific product at this time. We're therefore not able to comment
specifically on the program you've noted.

However, we recommend that you read through the AdSense Terms and
Conditions (https://www.google.com/adsense/terms ) to ensure that your
software it is not violation of any of our policies.

Thanks for your cooperation and understanding.


Sincerely,

[mharad]

I've had some StumbleUpon surges and didn't hear a word for Google. Is it possible that your site is present on an autosurf program somewhere else?

[Ganceann]

My take on the subject is the following:

Stumbleupon (and all other social networking sites) that are used to generate traffic (MySpace Bulletins, Digg traffic etc), have 2 methods of traffic generation.

First method is self generated and hyped that leads to a surge in traffic... this would be against google TOS as it would be deemed unnatural.

Second method is organic... that complies to google TOS as it is other people who are generating the traffic to the site.

The problem lies where google determine if it is natural or unnatural and how they determine it etc... could be due to trust score (so new sites more likely to be tagged as unnatural traffic etc).

[bhopkins]

This is really interesting. I've gotten a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon and never recieved such a notice. Of course most of the time the traffic I get from here does not convert so that may be the difference.

[kh7]

Stumbleupon traffic does not usually convert anyhow. But a publisher that gets payed per impression would get payed for stumbleupon traffic - and that might make google frown. Also - stumbleupon creates lower CTR-rates, and that in itself might make google frown.

It isn't an option to stop people stumbling a site - I mean it is free traffic! So I hope google will just understand and leave this publisher be.

[qwestcommunications]

Originally Posted by Ganceann

My take on the subject is the following:

Stumbleupon (and all other social networking sites) that are used to generate traffic (MySpace Bulletins, Digg traffic etc), have 2 methods of traffic generation.

First method is self generated and hyped that leads to a surge in traffic... this would be against google TOS as it would be deemed unnatural.

Second method is organic... that complies to google TOS as it is other people who are generating the traffic to the site.

The problem lies where google determine if it is natural or unnatural and how they determine it etc... could be due to trust score (so new sites more likely to be tagged as unnatural traffic etc).

I quite agree. But how would google discriminate between self generated traffic and traffic that is genuine?

[Rub3X]

I've gotten over a hundred thousand uniques from stumble upon, and it's never been an issue

[Tearabite]

i have gotten (and continue to get) traffic from Stumbleupon, and IMHO i cannot phathom how G would consider this a violation of their TOS. It is not "autosurf" anymore that Digg or del.ico.us is - it is a social bookmarking/review site that presents your site to people with similar interests..

[delsia]

I'm trying to see if it relates to that, because i never got an notice about this until i started getting tons of traffic from stumble upon. And no none of my sites are under an auto surf network.