massive traffic burst from stumbleupon?

is this possible? equal to a slashdotting

[amznVibe]

One of my sites (an authority for a certain subject) just started getting massive traffic with only a stumbleupon refer as any kind of clue where it's coming from.

Unfortunately it cannot be traced back farther than the stumbleupon refer because of the way they work so I have no idea why this is happening. But they are unique IPs from around the world.

I barely know anything about stumbleupon, is this possible? What does it mean? How can I find out more about why it happened and the real cause?

[rrussell]

Look up your url on stumbleupon -- see who discovered it and how many other people have stumbled it.

From my experience, stumble will usually send you traffic for a week to a month from a burst of 'stumbles'(as opposed to something like digg where you get about 20k over 2-3 days).

The traffic doesn't convert nearly as well as organic/ppc trafic, so don't expect it to. Still, it is better than no traffic.

[Rosalind]

The cause is simply that your page has become popular on Stumbleupon. This usually means that people like it, so congrats. Basically the more toolbar users who visit your site and give it the thumbs up, the more traffic you will get.

I've found myself getting more and more SU traffic, and I believe this is because SU itself is growing in popularity. The traffic bursts you get from it tend to be more sustained than getting Dugg or Slashdotted, and they may even take weeks or months to tail off, depending on your content.