"We want to provide the best, most engaging discovery experience possible -- whether through the power of our simple "Stumble" button or by enabling discovery across the Web, with the search engines our users are already familiar with," said Michael Buhr, general manager of StumbleUpon, as he today released SearchReviews, to enhance the way Internet users discover interesting content. eBay Inc. acquired StumbleUpon in May 2007.

StumbleUpon has a very simple but powerful user experience for discovery. With a simple press of the "Stumble" button in the browser, registered users are able to quickly and easily discover sites that are relevant to their personal interests. When stumbling, users only see Web sites and videos that come recommended from the growing StumbleUpon community. StumbleUpon uses user-initiated thumbs-up and thumbs-down ratings to form collaborative opinions on Web content quality. This helps users to discover great content not easily found using a search engine. The free StumbleUpon toolbar is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

With this new service, StumbleUpon continues to pioneer the field of Internet discovery, said Buhr, "making the Internet more useful and entertaining, while bringing users a more personal experience across the Web."

By layering peer-endorsement, site ratings, and reviews next to search results, StumbleUpon users can enhance and personalize their search experience to see which search results their friends recommend. Users will see star ratings next to sites, along with icons indicating which of their friends have given the sites a "thumbs up" rating. This layer of information personalizes the search results without making a user change their searching behavior.

SearchReviews will be available to StumbleUpon users as they use different properties across the Internet including Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask. In addition, StumbleUpon users can find SearchReviews on GoogleNews, Yahoo! News, Flickr, Wikipedia and YouTube.

"StumbleUpon, with its powerful technology and extensive user base, is uniquely qualified to provide this service," said Carla Thompson, product and technology analyst at The Guidewire Group. "The resulting combination of algorithm-driven search and people-driven recommendations gives users a radically new way to discover relevant content on the Web."}