The Most Useful StumbleUpon Feature You May Not Have Known
February 19, 2008Hidden in the obscure StumbleUpon toolbar settings is a feature that’ll change the way you stumble!
The way Stumbleupon works is quite different from any other social media site. Normally, every time you click the Stumble! button, you are presented with a web page on one of the topics you specified earlier. However, sometimes this is not enough. Sometimes you want more control over what kind of pages you’d like to browse through for a particular session.
And this is where the search feature of StumbleUpon toolbar comes in. SumbleUpon search feature allows you to surf through web pages on a single topic of your liking for as long as you want.
To enable the search feature, go to Tools > Toolbar Options > Configuration and check the “Show search/tag box” under the options group “Other“.
When you click OK, you’ll have a nice search box sitting just beside the reviews balloon on the toolbar.
To test if it works, enter a keyword such as “movies” or “marketing” and hit enter. Now every time you click on the Stumble button, you’ll jump to a page about movies or marketing (depending on which keyword you entered).
To return to the normal way of stumbling, click on “All” button on the toolbar.
Smart, right?
Bonus tip: You can also tag web pages using the search/tag box. If you are on a web page about WordPress, enter “WordPress” in the box and hit Shift+Enter on the keyboard. Later, you can find the pages you tagged by clicking on the “Find pages you liked” link on your StumbleUpon profile page.
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Oh, this is wonderful!! Thank you so much for blogging about this. I use the search box so often on the StumbleUpon website to do research…. but it would be awesome to have the search box on the Toolbar itself.
Yes, it’s amazing! It gives you complete control over what you want to stumble right NOW.
I think SU should keep the search bar on by default so more people can benefit from it.
Great advice. Thank you so much!
This doesn’t appear as an option in the IE version of the toolbar. You can get to the search bar, but you have to click a menu and then a button to get it. There is no ‘display search’ option.
Great advice. BTW, you may find it in Add ons, if you don’t see Toolbar options.
Tejvan
Thanks!
When I first installed the toolbar, I got so excited with it and the traffic that it is sending me. As a result, I don’t even know that there is a control panel for the toolbar.
I’ve got toolbar customized to minimize browser chrome but you can add the stumbleupon search to your FF search box
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html?name=stumbleupon
This is a wonderful help to me. I have three blogs on different topics, so this is going to make my stumbling a lot easier. Thanks so much.
@ graywolf, the search/tag box is quite different from SU search. It basically lets you stumble by category. For example if you enter SEO in the search box, you’ll be served an SEO related page every time you click the stumble button, and so on.
It’s funny that I never realized this… apparently my partner and my employees all had, but I hadn’t! Thanks for pointing this out, this is a GREAT feature! I can’t believe I haven’t been using this.
Great “heads up” post.
Thanks,
B
I did not know this one..^^..thanks a bunch for sharing..it will help a lot..^^
Thanks. I never really liked StumbleUpon as the stumbles were just too random for me. Now this means that I can stumble on my desired topic. Yay!
great tips on stumble upon thanks for sharing
for me i got great traffic frpm stumble upon to my blog
http://smalbusinessidea.com/blog
You know… you can just click the “all” button and select which term you want to stumble.
Very cool Mohsin. You should consider submitting this tip to the SU portion of the Social Media Mega Project.
First stumbleupon changed my internet habits, and now you changed my stumbleupon habits with this great advice. Thank you so much!
Thanks Aaron. I’ll submit it to the project you mentioned if I don’t get too lazy. :p
Very cool. I am sure there are a ton of other features most of us haven’t discovered yet.
Added to TopStumbles: http://www.topstumbles.com/cool/the-most-useful-stumbleupon-feature-you-may-not-have-known/
You can do the same choosing the option “Search” in the Channel menu
i remember the toolbar having this search box on early versions and I got hooked. When the newer versions started to cycle through and didn’t have it as default i just searched for how i could get it again. It is one of my favorite features but then again i keep exploring to see all the cool choices i have and so i found it right away. Do you know what is in your toolbar? or what can be?
Earlier versions of the toolbar showed this option by default. Still, it’s a very handy bit to have displayed and in use!
I’ve seen the toolbar demos before, but have’nt try it yet. It’s handy for sure
Thank’s for sharing this article
Hmmm, I didn’t know about this. This will definitely help me to stumble better links that I want.
really interesting but useful
Thanks so much I can wait to start this. I thought I knew everything there was to know about stumbleupon. There I go thinking again!! Thanks can’t wait to test it and give you some results.
Megan
A bit late for this question, but, click on Tools where? There is a Tools menu in Firefox, but somehow, I think that isnt it.
Barbara, it’s the last option on StumbleUpon toolbar.
Good tip, I’d been using the tag feature after reading it in the Tools> Toolbar Options > Configuration tab.
Neat! Where’s the “All” button?
I like that this is off by default – it used to be on – the option has changed as well – you might as well just go to google or something if you’re going to do this.
I found this under the “search and tagging” tab, not “configuration”. Not sure if that’s because of a different SU version, or what…
That is extremely helpful. You’ve got a nice looking layout on this blog too.
I Love love love how easy you’ve made it to stumble tags! however I was wondering if their is a way to specify beyond thumbing things down things I dont like, for instance how how it says in http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/bizarre/ I notice even if i remove the topic I still seem to stumble it occasionaly even if i thumbs it down, is their a way of makeing it so that you can say “Never Stumble This Topic” instead of simply removeing it from from you SU Topics to stumble? other wize LOVE the new search feature you’ve added to SU! keep up the good work!
An excellent tip. Thanks so much. Too me a while to find the settings but I got there in the end. A Stumble for your efforts:)
Thanks for the tip. I wasn’t aware that these features existed.
That’s really cool. I’m sure this will be very useful for me.
I use Firefox and there is no çonfiguration’tab under toolbar options. Any suggestions?
To Alan, Chiron613 discovered what I learned with Firefox. Under Tools | Toolbar Options select Search&Tagging not Configuration.
Thanks Terri,
Unfortunately I do not see a “Search and Tagging” option under toolbar options.
I automatically download the latest versions of Firefox. Maybe the latest versions do not have the search option and I am just wasting my time.
for all those who doesn’t find the option, it could be because you are using the most recent version of the StumbleUpon toolbar.
what you need to do, is go to Tools in the toolbar, then “Toolbar Options”. In the dialog, under the Appearance tab, just look for the Channels list, and check “search”, click ok and thats it!!. this way, you will have a magnifier glass icon among the other channels icon, and when you click it, a little dialog will pop up, where you can enter the term for your search. Then, every stumble from there, will be related to your search. A visual hint is that next to the “Stumble!” button, you will see a magnifier glass icon, indicating that your stumbles are for a specific search term.
If you want to have a full textbox in the toolbar where you can enter your search term, you can also do it. This time, in the options dialog, go to the “search & tagging” tab, and check the “Show search /tag box…” option, it is near the bottom of the dialog window. and that’s it!!
happy stumbling.
If people were not afraid of “breaking something” they’d already found this option by now.. Always play with new toys to the fullest -else- you will NOT get the fullest out of them
This is just a waste of time. We are all using different versions of Firefox and acting as if we are on the same page, when in fact we are not even on the same planet.
hey thanks for that great tip…makes stumbleupon even better!
Fantastic. I had always hoped for a search feature. Little did I know…
Thanks for the information.
Hi – Many thanks – a great little feature for StumbleUpon that I didn’t know about. Just a note though – you actually find it now under Tools-Tool bar options – Searching and Tags
Regards – Jack
Thanks mate for sharing this information. I was not aware of that information.
This is a great tip. I haven’t used SU in a while so i’m just getting back into it and liking it.
Cheers,
Andy
Awesome very helpful.
I never knew that bonus tip… I always stumble the way you have told above… Thanks a lot…
What a great tool! This is going to change the way I do some of my research. Thanks!!
yes stumble is great but where can I find info on how to manage my favorites ?
Nice article buddy,
I really appreciate you i want to ask one thing can you let me know limits of sharing post to friend in a day and how i share t my friends on stumble.
Thanks & Regards
Candry johnson
OK I messed around and found out about managing the favs on my own , too bad we’re not able to stumble our own favorites .
sssmiply !!!!!!! marvelous
Thanks! I was not aware of that, good to know those features in StumbleUpon.
Right click -> StumbleUpon Toolbar -> Disable!
Nooooo!
Doesn’t seem to work on the Firefox/Mac Toolbar version