Do you consider StumbleUpon to be an important source of traffic? Let us know in the comments.

This feature also happens to be, in my opinion, the best part of the new StumbleUpon in terms of user experience. It’s called “Slide”. StumbleUpon’s description of the feature is as follows: “An innovative new feature that adds another dimension to the Stumbling experience. Every time you Stumble, you’ll see a small preview ‘slide’ of the full Stumble that loads in the background. You can decide to immerse yourself in a Stumble longer or swipe through multiple Slides to quickly browse content recommended for you.”

It really does make using StumbleUpon more enjoyable. It speeds up the whole experience, as you don’t have to wait for a page to load before determining whether or not you want to read it or look at it longer. At the same time, that’s where things might get a little trickier for content providers hoping to get some traffic from StumbleUpon.

It’s possible that this feature could decrease StumbleUpon referrals for publishers, as Stumble-happy users quickly browse through previews, sidestepping the actual pages.

“The page needs to fully load for it to count as a page view (and the page starts to load the instant the Slide appears),” StumbleUpon’s new VP, Product, Cody Simms, tells WebProNews.

The page does start to load with the preview, but it’s quite easy to “slide” away from a page well before it’s fully loaded. To me, this means publishers hoping to maintain or acquire traffic from StumbleUpon will need to pay more attention to their titles and imagery than ever before.

That’s exactly what the preview consists of – an image and a title (and the category to which the page has been submitted). Titles and images have always been key factors in StumbleUpon success. Not the only key factors, and not necessarily factors in all cases, but let’s put it this way: having a really catchy title and a really visual page is usually not something that has hurt content on StumbleUpon in the past. It’s just that now, these elements are pretty much the only way to grab the user’s attention from the preview slide.

Still, the title’s the only part you’ll really have full control over, when it comes to the preview (unless you submit the article to StumbleUpon yourself – then I suppose you have control over the category as well). As for the image, Simms tells us, “We use an algorithm to determine the best image/thumbnail to display. If there isn’t a quality image we generate a screenshot of the page. Content providers have no control of this.”

It’s hard to say how StumbleUpon’s algorithm determines which picture is the best, but some guesses would be actual image quality, relevance to the title, and perhaps alt/title text. Again, these are just guesses, as they are obvious elements that can be applied to images. In general, it’s good to implement these elements into your content anyway. Still, if your content has multiple pictures, it’s anybody’s guess which StumbleUpon might choose to display.

So that leaves the title. Having a compelling title has always been important in grabbing users’ attention regardless of the channel from which the audience is consuming the content. It just happens to be more important to the StumbleUpon channel now. In the past, you could actually get a way without having an obvious title on your page, as long as the page was interesting enough to catch the user’s eye. Now, it’s one of the only things you have to catch the user’s eye before they swipe on to something else.

Now, if all of that sounds like StumbleUpon is going to become less useful to publishers as a traffic generator, I’m not going to go that far. There’s still plenty of traffic-driving potential here.

On our previous article on the new StumbleUpon, a reader commented, “Stumbleupon used to be a big traffic driver that has become less relevant over time. This new page preview feature will make them even less relevant to online publishers. I think stumbleupon is forgetting that publishers are one of their core constituencies as well. They can help promote StumbleUpon. Do I want StumbleUpon buttons on my web pages? Not sure if I do anymore.”

My response to that was that I disagree that StumbleUpon is less relevant, as plenty of sites are still getting a great deal of traffic from it. While I do wonder what impact the preview feature will have, I don’t think it will render StumbleUpon irrelevant. As long as StumbleUpon can keep users around, sites generating good content will benefit, and StumbleUpon has actually improved the user experience in this case (granted, there are other elements missing from the new app, such as the Explore Box, but the company assures us that it will be back in a future update).

Simms makes a great point about StumbleUpon referrals as related to the new preview feature.

“We believe that Slide helps ensure users have intent to view the page they clicked on and could potentially result in higher engagement,” he says.

StumbleUpon referrals have faced criticism in the past regarding the quality of the page views, due to the semi-randomness of StumbleUpon. For example, if you’re serving ads or selling something, how many of these random viewers are actually going to convert?

This was already debatable. I say “semi-randomness” because content is targeted based on users’ interests, sometimes more specifically than others, depending on what exactly the user is stumbling through). We had a discussion about the quality of StumbleUpon traffic with social media consultant Brent Csutoras from Kairay Media a few weeks ago. Here’s an excerpt from what he had to say:

“You have to remember that the way StumbleUpon’s system works, when your content gets traction, it will get waves of traffic for years to come,” says Csutoras. “For instance, if one of your articles gets a 15,000 visitor spike, you will see that the trail off on that traffic never really goes away. This is because as your content gets popular in StumbleUpon, it queues up for the people who have subscribed to the category applied to your content. Users are only shown the content one time each, but some users may not be that active or their queue is really full.”

“Fast forward a few months when there might be another 10,000 people who have signed up for that category,” he adds. “As those inactive users log in over time and vote up your content, it will again start to gain traction again and potentially go popular showing to all those active members who have signed up since the last time it was popular. So you might see another 7,000 visitor spike months later.”

“This cycle has the potential to repeat for all your content forever,” Csutoras says. “In addition, if enough people tag the content with another category, it can cross over and become visible to a whole different segment of people. This is the beauty of StumbleUpon and why people who have been using it regularly love it.”

“Lastly, StumbleUpon has done a great job over the last year in defining associated categories, allowing more people who might likely appreciate your content see it, even if they are not subscribed to the exact match category.”

As far as the Slide feature goes, you can still thumb up/down content based on the preview, without having to wait for the actual page to load. So, even if you don’t get a page view out of it, its still possible that the user can give it a thumbs up (presumably based on your title/imagery), and give it a chance to be shown to more users, which could actually lead to more page views.

By the way, while the new StumbleUpon is only on iOS so far, consider that Apple just broke its own record for iPhone pre-orders.

Do you think the Slide feature will have a negative or positive effect on your StumbleUpon traffic? Share your thoughts here.

But not all social media sites are created equal when it comes to driving retail traffic. That’s the message coming out of a a new study from RichRelevance. The ecommerce personalization company looked at over 700 million “shopping sessions” and found that Facebook is still the king, but Pinterest has one notable plus.

According to the study, Facebook drives the most traffic to retail sites – plain and simple. Facebook was found to drive 85.8% of online shopping sessions, followed by Pinterest at 11.3% and Twitter at 2.9%.

And shoppers that comes from Facebook stay on the site longer and come back more often. Facebook referrals stay for an average of 7 pages per session, compared to 4 with Pinterest and 3 with Twitter. Facebook-referred customers had a conversion rate of 2.63%, much more that shoppers who came via Pinterest and Twitter (.93% and 1.09%, respectively).

What Pinterest is really good at, they say, is sending big spenders to retail sites. The average order for a buyer referred via Pinterest was $168.83, compared to $94.70 (Facebook) and $70.84 (Twitter).

“Every social network promises a new way of connecting consumers with retailers and brands,” said Diane Kegley, CMO of RichRelevance. “However, the big take-away from our research is that not all channels in the social space are created equal.”

Check out their infographic on the study below:

[via AllFacebook]

Shareaholic aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers to compile the report.

There are a couple of points of interest to these numbers. First of all, Twitter has more than 100 million active registered users. Pinterest has only 11.7 million. And, it is worth noting that Pinterest is still invite-only and that their mobile app still stinks (and yes, I have deleted it and reinstalled; yes, I do have the latest iOS).

So, in all the guessing about why Pinterest is doing so well, let’s toss out a couple of theories.

1) It’s the design concept.

That certainly seems to be what some people are thinking. The “masonry” layout has been picked up by several other sites, all pining their hopes on catching the Pinterest wave.

2) It’s caught a strong, heretofore-underserved niche in the women’s market.

It certainly is true that Pinterest gets a huge chunk of its business from women. And, the powers-that-be at Pinterest aren’t doing a thing to dissuade that notion. Why would they?

3) It’s rolling like a snowball because people like me keep pushing it.

It is the media darling, that’s for sure. By all rights, an invite-only, badly-apped, female-centric site would not normally do as well as this is.

Maybe it’s all of the above. If Pinterest survives the copyright controversy blowback they are getting, they could make some serious money. How they would do that is till anybody’s guess. Apparently, including theirs.

It turns out, in the month of January, Pinterest referral traffic was greater than referral traffic from YouTube. And from Reddit. And from Google Plus. All combined.

Witness.

More on Pinterest:

Video: How To Use Pinterest (Tutorial)

Pinterest 101: How Can Geeks Use It?

Pinterest Invasion by Men Continues Unabated

Pinterest Top Five Most Repinned Items

Pinterest Traffic Spikes

Dear Pinterest: Can We Talk?

"It’s only been two and a half weeks since f8 and in that time more than 100,000 sites have tapped into the social graph by implementing Facebook’s social plugins," a representative for Facebook tells WebProNews.

"From news and publishing, to entertainment and sports, a wide range of industries and verticals have integrated with Facebook’s tools to boost engagement and give people a more personalized experience online," she adds.

She also shared some interesting stats from some noteworthy sites who have implemented the plug-ins and/or Facebook log-ins:

- Globe and Mail – 80% increase of Facebook referral traffic

-  The Washington Post – Facebook referral traffic has increased by 290%

- IMDb.com – Daily referral traffic from Facebook has doubled; users have generated more than 350,000 likes

- NHL.com – Seeing an 80% increase in referral traffic from Facebook

- Scribd – Referral traffic from Facebook has doubled as authors gain followers among groups of Facebook friends

- Personera – Facebook users generate 50% more pageviews, spend 25% more time on site, and have a 20% lower bounce rate

- Simply Hired – Users who log in with Facebook are twice as engaged as non-Facebook users

"We think the story behind these stats is more important than the stats themselves," says Facebook’s Justin Osofsky. "As we’ve found on Facebook, people share, read, and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends and people they know and trust."

Facebook’s integration with Yelp drew a bit of bad press, as it exposed a security flaw, but that was quickly patched. Still, some are wondering if we will see these types of things start happening more often as more sites implement Facebook functionality.

We’ve written about Facebook’s announcements and these plugins numerous times, but while we’ve been mostly talking about their implications and what they could mean for your business, some sites are already seeing a great deal of value right of the bat.

Have you seen an increase in traffic from Facebook since adding its new plugins? Comment here.

Mallary Jean Tenore at Poynter.org spoke with Jonathan Dube, vice president in charge of ABCNews.com about the implementation of the plugins, and he said, "We’ve seen an over 250 percent increase in referrals from Facebook to ABC News since the launch of the Social toolkit on ABCNews.com."

"We’ve opted to place the Facebook recommendations higher than the most popular recommendations, and the reason we’ve done so is because we believe that recommendations from people who are friends of yours are probably more likely to be stories that you’re interested in than a general ‘Most Popular’ list," said Dube. (HT: lostremote)

Sidenote: Of course there are plenty of ways to use Facebook that existed before the company’s recent announcements. WebProNews discussed some of these with Greg Finn of 10e20 at SMX West a while back:

More WebProNews Videos

While publishers are ecstatic about the opportunities they are getting from Facebook’s new plugins and Open Graph initiative, not all of Facebook’s users are so upbeat. Privacy concerns have of course been in the headlines a lot since F8, and they have even led to Facebook losing some of its users.

Border Stylo’s Dan Yoder has an interesting top ten list of reasons to delete your Facebook account, and some of Google’s team have publicly opted to deactivate their Facebook accounts, but whether this is due to actual concerns or to personal protest to a growing competitor is hard to determine.

It’s hard to say if Facebook will lose enough users to amount to any significant number, but my guess is that it won’t – at least not anytime soon. I’d be surprised if they are not gaining more users than they’re losing. As Facebook takes over more and more sites, non-Facebook users are more likely to get sucked in.

Out of Facebook’s 400 million+ users, I’m guessing a substantial amount of them like the social network too much to give it up, and aren’t really concerned about sites having access to information like what bands and movies they like. Many are way too invested in Farmville to stop now.

Have you considered shutting down your Facebook account? Let us know.

Original article: Google is changing referral URLs on results pages. What up until now has looked something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

will now look more like this:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

Google says that if you don’t analyze your own traffic logs, use Urchin web analytics software, or develop web analytics software, this information probably won’t affect you. Google Analytics is not affected.

"The key difference between these two urls is that instead of "/search?" the URL contains a ‘/url?’," says Brett Crosby of the Google Analytics Team.  "If you run your own analyses, be sure that you do not depend on the ‘/search?’ portion of the URL to determine if a visit started with an organic search click. Google Analytics does not depend on the ‘/search?’ string in the referrer, so users of Google Analytics will not notice a difference in their reports, but other analytics packages may need to adapt to this change in our referrer string to maintain accurate reports."

Web Technologist Niall Kennedy does a good job of simplifying the situation. "The way your website interprets traffic from one of its top providers will change later this week," he says. "You will need to adjust scripts and check for updates to analytics software where appropriate. If you notice a huge drop in measured search referrals from Google don’t panic. Just make sure you are measuring the correct actions."

He also suggests that Google is probably making this change to better track search actions and shield URL parameters from sites downstream.

Google says the new URLs will initially only occur in a small percentage of searches. You can expect to see both versions while the changes roll out. Google will be offering a software update for Urchin soon for those using UTM-based tracking. More details here.

The arrival of the Google Affiliate Network, aka a rebranded Performics product, represents the search advertising company’s newest area of focus. Such a shift apparently means moving resources from elsewhere, with the AdSense Referral program a casualty.

Google announced the retirement of AdSense Referrals on the Inside AdSense blog, pegging an end date for the last week of August. They are promoting the Affiliate Network as a replacement, or AdSense itself if a site has less than three AdSense units on a page.

Site publishers will want to make sure they have all of their referral reports stored away safely, and that referral code gets removed before the end of the program.

Google also disclosed the end of the Pay Per Action beta, again with the Affiliate Network suggested as a replacement product for advertisers. They also recommended their Conversion Optimizer as a way to manage those cost per acquisition ads placed on Google’s networks.

Lets take a little look at why they might have done this.

Google Is A Business

It is actually quite a large business, and each division within a division is probably accountable for their own earnings. The Adsense referral program for new business is probably individually accountable.

Current (Old) System Earnings

Based upon quarterly and yearly reports, Google on average pay publishers only 29% of advertising revenue. Larger publishers probably get a larger piece of the action, so it is quite possible a new publisher only receives 25%

For every dollar earned, Google receive $4

Referrals Changes the Math

For the first $5 of earnings in 6 months, they pay a referral fee of $5, thus Google only make 50%

If a publisher earns $100 in 6 months, Google pay a referral fee of $250, thus of the $400 they receive in advertising revenues, they pay out $350… plus there is a bonus

For 25 people who make $100 within a 180 day period you get a bonus payment of $2000, that is $80 per person

In theory, Google could pay out $430 for every $400 received

This is potentially a loss leader…

In practice only a small number of people make it even to $5, and even less to $100 within 180 days. Darren mentioned in his article that he has never achieved the bonus, though if he comes close, those $250 fees for the ones that do make $100 must be reasonably lucrative.

The New System

The Adsense Team are reverting back to $100 for $100 earned in 180 days with no bonuses.

Also the countries are now restricted to North America, Latin America, or Japan – for the referrer.

What Darren and Shoemoney didn’t pick up on is that is existing referrals don’t qualify by the time this is introduced, it seems like you will only receive compensation based upon the new structure, not the old. That is significant if you were in some way paying for advertising based on anticipated earnings over 6 months based upon prior statistics.

Gaming Adsense With Referral Hydras

For me the obvious reason why they would restrict this to only partners in certain counties is fraud, or gaming the system. Google is made up of regional offices, so it would be hard to separate Eastern Europe from the rest of Europe, or Australia from others in the Pacific region.

If you look at this from the point of view of a person in a low income country, there is a potential $430 that could be earned instead of $100 for the clicks you might receive on a website you own that has reasonable traffic, all you need is new Adsense accounts.

Here is how such a system could work

1. Find 25 people who would be interested in earning $100 from Google just for providing their personal details

I can’t honestly imagine this wouldn’t be hard in many developing countries

2. Place the advertising units from those referrals on your own websites such that they will earn $100 within a month
3. The person referred gets $100 in Adsense earnings
4. You get to cash $330 instead of $100

Rinse and repeat

If you don’t want to give $100 away, you could always set up shell companies., but I don’t think it is really worth the effort, it would be easy to find people willing to earn $100 for doing nothing.

If you are just doing blackhat stuff this provides an unlimited supply of fresh Adsense accounts, and you earn everything 100% "legitimately" as just the referrer.

Can It Really Be That Many People Doing This?

If you were a slightly shady blackhat, wouldn’t you like to keep your Adsense earnings 100% clean, and earn 3x as much?

Especially if you were living in a slightly poorer country, or had contacts in one… China, Russia..

Would This Hurt Google Financially

Certainly if it got out of hand. Most of these referrals would earn their $100 and then drop off the face of the earth after they cached their checks.

Could It Be Another Reason?

I am sure growth rates outside 1st World countries are fast enough without the financial incentive for referrals, and there is always a question of scaling up support costs, and the lack of competitive advertising.
With low paying clicks outside the English speaking world, those that are active Adsense publishers are often more inclined to experiment with more grey or blackhat methods, because they don’t necessarily have to create their own content to make money.

Too Good To Be True

I always looked on the referral program to be full of holes

• You don’t know who you referred so you can’t help them, unless it is by arrangement
• You can’t honestly declare you make money by referring people, it is against the referral program terms, though they encourage word of mouth marketing.
• The reporting was always a little on the basic side
• The time period for qualification was far too long and it seems that has come back to bite people

For a negative change such as this, you would expect a full 6 months notice, or for referrals who qualify within 6 months to be paid at the old rate.
For referring publishers outside North & South America, and Japan, they are effectively being told that all those referrals they have made that haven’t quite earned $100 by the end of January will not be paid.

I am glad I haven’t promoted Google Adsense for 2 years.

Comments

*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

Google AdSense Referrals Hiding From Publishers

The referrals product made available by Google offers webmasters another revenue stream beyond the conventional ad placements. Referrals to AdWords, Checkout, or other specific Google (or non-Google) products pay the publisher for referring a converting visitor.

Since the rewards for referrals can be generous, the referral code has been in demand. However, a few webmasters have encountered issues with deploying the latest version on their sites.

Google’s Rajiv Sud posted some reasons on the AdSense blog why this may be happening. As with some other things in life, size matters:

(M)ost horizontal referral ad units smaller than 180×60, square referral ad units smaller than 125×125, and text links are only available at this time for Google products such as AdSense or AdWords. This means that if you generate code for referral ads in an unsupported size, you won’t see any referrals shown on your webpages.

A number of other reasons could affect the placement of referrals on one’s AdSense units. Google only permits three referral units per page, for example. Exceeding that number would keep those lucrative referrals from appearing.

Sites that display content Google deems mature or sensitive won’t spur the generation of a referral ad. Such sites would have to stick with conventional AdSense units.