StumbleUpon Series Part 8 - The Importance Of Understanding Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification in a hierarchical system. StumbleUpon contains a taxonomy, which is classified to 15 interests, of which contain a total of 501 subcategories. These categories are also known as TAGS.

When you submit an article to the database, you are actually classifying the article for StumbleUpon. This is important to understand because it plays a crucial role in the amount of exposure an article can get. Since we now understand that articles are circulated by the taxonomy they are given when they are submitted, stumblers interest and positioning within the 1^st page of stumblers favorite tag, we can take this into consideration when attempting to draw a higher volume of traffic.

StumbleUpon has simplified the mass interest of stumblers within the following cloud.
You can find this cloud by clicking on the websites tab on the StumbleUpon website

tagcloud

This cloud represents the mass interests of StumbleUpon. As you can see of the 501 subcategories, only 29 of them are extremely used.

This is important because

Pro - Submitting an article to one of these categories will allow for a chance of more circulation, since the majority of stumblers have these interests selected in their preferences. As we know from my previous article How The Stumble Button Results Are Returned, when you push the stumble button it picks a random interest you have selected in your preferences, then a random authority stumbler for that interest, and then a random liked, “thumbed”, article within the first page of that stumblers favorites tag.

Con – When submitting an article to a popular category, your article has a small window of time to receive a massive amount of traffic. Since stumblers often submit to, and thumb, within the 29 most popular categories, your article will be pushed off the first page of many stumblers favorites tag quickly. This, in effect, will only allow you a small window of time to get on as many 1^st page of stumblers favorites tag. Usually about 24 – 48 hours, depending on how active the ”thumbers” of that article are.

CASE STUDY:

Article 1 - This Is What Real Spam On StumbleUpon Looks Like – This article was submitted to the database, under the tag “cyberculture”. I then notified all my friends to thumb ASAP. It has received well over 50 thumbs up, however true count is unknown. My friends thumbs consist of about 10 – 15 thumbs total. All others are from those who found it from the stumble button.

Article 2 - How The Stumble Button Results Are Returned – This article was submitted to the database, under the tag “Internet”. I then notified the same people to all thumb again ASAP. It has also received over 50 thumbs up, and current true count is now unknown. My friends thumbs consist of about 10 – 15 thumbs total. All others are from those who found it from the stumble button.

RESULTS:

Article 1 – This article was create on Jan 27^th and has received a total of 1,522 unique hits, directly from the stumble button, at the time of this posting.

Article 2 – This article was created on Jan 29^th and has received a total of 2,802 unique hits, directly from the stumble button, at the time of this posting

Conclusion:

Article 1 was kick started by the same stumblers and had extra time for exposure on the stumbleupon system yet it still was not able to drive as much traffic as article 2. Article 2 was created about 24 hours ago and has almost received twice the amount of traffic as article one. Article 1 was submitted to the cyberculture tag and article 2 was submitted to the Internet tag. This example shows how important it is to submit an article to a top level interest.

However, some of you may be saying, “I have submitted lots of articles to the top 29 interests”. The failure for traffic is due to, not getting the article onto as many stumblers 1st page favorites tag as possible. The more stumblers who have the article on the 1^st page of their tag cloud, the higher changes the article will rotate in the stumble button.

So who will be the first to stumble this article? And what category will they assign to it? I hope it’s a good one =)

The Rest Of the StumbleUpon Series

StumbleUpon Series Part 1 - A Commitment To Mastering StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon Series Part 2 - My True Intentions Are Not To Spam Or Game The System

StumbleUpon Series Part 3 - Where Does All That Traffic Come From?

StumbleUpon Series Part 4 - A Different Perspective On Your Friends And Fans

StumbleUpon Series Part 5 - Making The Right Friends In The Right Places

StumbleUpon Series Part 6 - Fans, Fans And More Fans

StumbleUpon Series Part 7 - Be An Active Member Of The Community