Stumble Upon Problem

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rj
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Stumble Upon Problem

Post by rj »

When using Stumble upon on various blogs the input screen to submit places the article title. When using Stumble upon for a serendipity article the input screen places the blog name (from the meta) as the article title. This makes Stumble deny submission because its a repeat title. Tough the URL is correct.
This happens from the stumble button below the article and when presenting the article alone in the DB window. I tested it on many other blogs and it always places teh article title not the meta blog title.
And Stumble doesnt reply to questions! :)

RJ
chickens
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Post by chickens »

I've been using stumbleupon quite a bit the last week or two; from my experience it grabs the <title> of the page. I dont use the meta tag for title on my site, but I've noticed it grabbing the page title on most other sites as well. If you dont have your site setup to have a unique <title> on each page you are missing a huge SEO thing. I dont know much about SEO, but that is something that I've found to be quite important.

I've already got 4000 hits from stumbleupon this month with a total of 2600 unique visitors; all of last month I only got 3200 uniques. :shock:

Add me as a friend if you'd like http://zonalnet.stumbleupon.com/
rj
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Post by rj »

Hey, cool... I was looking for someone like you!
I had a big stumble right after I began the blog in May.
From 500 a day to 13,000 a day and it kept going at about 4000 a day for almost two months. Got spoiled! Now I cant stumble my own blog, or can any friends. As I said I think it has something to do with Stumble defaulting the TITLE to the blog mega title rather than to the article, though it does give the correct URL to the article.

What do you mean when you say
If you dont have your site setup to have a unique <title> on each page you are missing a huge SEO thing.
I need that better explained. I though each article was a page in itself?
And when you say your removed the title meta, when everyhing I read in SEO says thats the single most important thing on a page, I wonder. :)

Need some help with this if you would...
Thanx for the friend thing I will mail you from stumble and beg your help!

In my SEO travels of late I am hearing that SU average abaout 20% of site traffic for those who use it, more than all the rest of the diggers put togother. I sure noticed its LASTING POWER. wow! A DIGG lasts a day, a STUMBLE lasts over a month.

Thanx again.

RJ

If anyone else has anything to add regarding this I sure would appreciate it.
chickens
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Post by chickens »

What I am talking about is the title section of the html

Code: Select all

<html>
<head>
<title>[b]This part[/b]</title>
<meta blah blah />
</head>
<body>
body text
</body>
</html>
When I stumble a page I get whatever is between the title section of the HTML. It is the same thing that displays in the titlebar of the browser.

In your template you should use something like this

Code: Select all

<title>{$head_title|@default:$blogTitle}{if $head_subtitle} - Zac Garrett :: Technology Geek{/if}</title>
I know the code is not 100% correct, but it does the trick for me.

If you then look at the pages on my site it will display the title of the article for each page. You will be unable to stumble your index page more than once, but you can stumble each of the other pages on your site.

With stumble upon you want to build up friends as these people will see what you've stumbled and will stumble it as well.

You also want to make sure to put in the correct category and keywords. This will help people find your site in stumble upon. I've found that a site within the wrong category will get delisted rather quickly.

You might want to check out the digital point forums. There are a TON of SEO people who hang out there. In the freebie section of the site people offer free stumbles, I've had some good luck with this. Just watch out, some of the SEO people scare me.

Thesite is having some database issues the last few days though.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

One last thing; digg is a server killer and stumble upon is a traffic generating site. The one will send a ton of traffic for an hour and kill your server while the other will spread the same number of visitors or more over a longer period of time.
rj
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Post by rj »

I think I understand most of that. :)

If my blog's HEAD <title> is "Kick! Making Politics Fun" then the code I put in the HEAD of the index.tpl file would be...

<title>{$head_title|@default:$blogTitle}{if $head_subtitle} Kick! Making Politics Fun {/if}</title>

Is that right?
Google and other bots will then still see the meta title as "Kick Making Politics fun" but when I have the article alone in the database and do a thumbs up, or stumble from a button below the article, it will write the URL and THE ARTICLE title into Stumble rather than the blog?

I really appreciate the help in this matter!

Thanx

Rj
chickens
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Post by chickens »

I believe all you need to do is

Code: Select all

<title>{$head_title}{if $head_subtitle} - {/if}Kick! Making Politics Fun</title> 

This will Print out: Article Title - Kick! Making Politics Fun
If you are on the index page (without an article): Kick! making Politics Fun

I tested this on my local machine and it worked just fine. If someone else knows a better solution or anything please post.
rj
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Post by rj »

I tried that and stumbled a new article a dozen different ways from Sunday and I just do not get a success screen. This happens about 90% of the time. It is like it may work once a week or so. It seems it may be time related, only allows me to stumble THIS ONE PLACE once a week or something. Thats what it feels like.

And because it doesnt SUCCEED I cannot tell you if the Title problem is fixed. :)

It seems I may be missing some basic thing in this?
Let me see if can stumble a static html sub page...
No!
I think this means it has something to do with who I am TO Stumble.
I think. :)

Big favor! Here are two links, one to a static webpage and one to an article on Serendipity. Neither have been stumbled. If you can stumble them with a success screen then its not about outside code, but something inside stumble. Like its stopping me because I have done that place too many times before or something else I do not understand.

So if you would please, try stumbling these two, static and blog
http://rackjite.com/web/clone_cloning.htm
http://rackjite.com/archives/726-Drinki ... holes.html

Thanx

RJ

Sorry to bother ya, but boy, I been messing with this problem for 4 months and through 4 accounts...
chickens
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Post by chickens »

The title problem has been fixed. If you look at the title bar of the browser that is what stumbleupon looks at.

Image

If you do not have at least 1000 stumbles under your account it will not do much for you. Also, if you've only stumbled one site it will likely not allow you to stumble anything else on that site. I believe the limit is five links on a single site before it cuts you off. Go stumble some other stuff and then come back.

I was able to stumble both of your links just fine. It will bring in a few people, but to get any decent traffic you will need at least one other person with a few hundred stumbles.

Stumbleupon, much like digg, does not mean much if you are the only person who stumbles/diggs it. You have to build up a reputation and be trustworthy to the community. If you post items to the wrong category or label them incorrectly the system will dock you for it. If something has a few curse words in it, mark it as adult.

The service is fickle and you need to figure out how it works prior to posting all of your articles. At max I would post two links per site per day. I am unsure if this means anything, but that is the number I've had the best luck with. Any more than that and the system seems to think of it as spam.
rj
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Post by rj »

Thanx a lot!!!!!!!!
If you do not have at least 1000 stumbles under your account it will not do much for you. Also, if you've only stumbled one site it will likely not allow you to stumble anything else on that site. I believe the limit is five links on a single site before it cuts you off. Go stumble some other stuff and then come back.
This is it! Okay, let me make sure I understand. The three reasons I DISCOVER my own blog, is because:
1) I can't find anything else that hasnt already been stumbled!
2) I want to do some seeding.
3) No one else will!

Heres the big question. :)

When you say "stumble other stuff" do you mean just start stumbling and do thumbs up? Or do you mean it has to be a DISCOVERY rather than a FAVORITE?

I like stumbling! Not a problem doing it, but if I understand you right (let me just pick a random number to see your response) for every 100 thumbs up I do I get to DISCOVER an article on a blog that I have already stumbled articles on before? Right? :)

I think my problem has been that I ran into this and then began new accounts to compensate, and now I'm stumbling from 3 accounts and they don't build up as much if I spent the time stumbling one account.

Thanx very much for all your time....

RJ
chickens
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Post by chickens »

First comment: only use one account. There is no reason to use multiple accounts; they will know and take some sort of action. It is very easy to detect that kind of activity.

You do not need to find new items, just hit the stumble button in the browser toolbar and find new items; thats the entire reason the site exists. You will find quite interesting items. If you find something you enjoy hit the thumbs up. My personal choice is to only thumbs down an item that is really bad. If the target audiance just was not me then I will usually just move on to the next site.

For my personal site I only stumble items as I post them and I post about once a day. I tried to stumble all of the items in my backlog and did not get any results. I now stumble the items I post for that day. There are some articles (as I call them) that get picked up and spread quite rapidly. While others only get a few dozen views.

I will also stumble random items I find around the net. If I've been looking for an answer for a long time it is worth stumbling.
rj
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Post by rj »

Cool info! Kinda like Google PR, no one can know how it works for sure, but one learns from experience.

I found the secret way to delete accounts. So would it be better to delete them all and begin again? Start out with a fast build up of stumbling and thumbing up...

I am still confused on what a FAVORITE and a DISCOVERY are. I thought everything that comes up while you are stumbling has been stumbled already, thats why it come up.:)

You say you stumble one of your articles each day. I assume you do it from a stumble button at the bottom of your articles? Does the same thing happen if you click the title, make it the only thing in the DB window and thumbs up?

As you stumble your own blog once a day, how do you get past the same problem I have, where it refuses a SUCCESS because you keep stumbling it! :) Do you consciously go do a certain number of stumble thumbs up every day to compensate? How many do you think it takes? :)

Again, thanx for discussing this with me, I have learned more about Stumble in the last 2 days than the last 5 months. :)

RJ
chickens
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Post by chickens »

rj wrote:Cool info! Kinda like Google PR, no one can know how it works for sure, but one learns from experience.

Exactly. The thing about all of these services is their algorithm always changes. As you people start to learn more about the system to game it they change it.
rj wrote:I am still confused on what a FAVORITE and a DISCOVERY are. I thought everything that comes up while you are stumbling has been stumbled already, thats why it come up.:)

I've never used these terms for stumble upon before. How I describe is is to ever say you like it or not by using the toolbar. If you like it and its something you want to share with others then you give it a thumbs up. The more people who do this the wider of an audience the site will be shown to.
rj wrote:You say you stumble one of your articles each day. I assume you do it from a stumble button at the bottom of your articles?
I dont have the buttons at the bottom of my articles, I feel they make the site look tacky. I just hit the thumbs up for an article on my site; this brings up a popup page to fill out about the link. After you fill it out the site will be used in stumble upon for other people.
rj wrote:As you stumble your own blog once a day, how do you get past the same problem I have, where it refuses a SUCCESS because you keep stumbling it! :) Do you consciously go do a certain number of stumble thumbs up every day to compensate? How many do you think it takes? :)
I enjoy the sites I find in stumble upon. I actually use it the way it is meant to be used; finding neat and unique things. I no longer go to digg or slashdot when looking for something to read. I go to stumble upon and I often will find odd and unique items that are quite fun.
rj wrote:Again, thanx for discussing this with me, I have learned more about Stumble in the last 2 days than the last 5 months. :)

RJ
Yeah, when I get interested in things I tend to look to see exactly how they work. Thats actually one of the reasons I started hating wordpress, I went too deep. s9y was friendly towards me just looking to see how it worked. I love all of open source, but there are just some projects that make things easier to learn than others.
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