Did SiteMeter Commit Suicide?
UPDATE: It’s Working Again, But Unfortunately, My Traffic Sucks

Posted on Comments

As of right now, it’s dead. Donald Douglas at American Power and Doug Ross at Director Blue both report that the best, easiest-to-use traffic analytics site failed to renew its domain registration, an error that would require a special kind of stupidity.

Let’s all say a prayer that they can get it fixed, because without SiteMeter, I feel like I’m blogging blind.

People talk about other analytic software as being technologically superior, but here’s the thing: SiteMeter allowed sites to make their traffic data public in real-time. This permitted apples-to-apples comparisons between sites, which was especially helpful information for entry-level bloggers trying to figure out how to grow their traffic.

You could not only know what your own site traffic was at any time, but you could also see who had more or less traffic, and whose links were driving traffic to other sites. Some bloggers (foolishly, IMO) set their SiteMeters to private, as if they were embarrassed to reveal their traffic data, or as if they failed to understand the value of transparency. “No shame in my game” has always been my attitude, and I simply can’t understand why anyone would attempt to conceal their traffic data as if it were a proprietary trade secret.

Constantly checking SiteMeter is a deeply ingrained habit for many of us, an addiction classified as a symptom of Blogger Mood Disorder by Professor William Jacobson,  (See also “Site Meter Envy” and “Sitemeterenfreude.”)

There was a time when Technorati was also useful as an analytic tool for bloggers, but they “improved” it until they ruined it,  and if SiteMeter has now managed to commit online seppuku, this would represent a real loss to the blogging community.

UPDATE: Linked by Ed Driscoll and Charles G. Hill and now — without explanation — SiteMeter is working again, which is depressing, because my traffic sucks so far today.

Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes . . .

 

26 comments

  1. Wow, thanks for publishing this. I had a domain that expired a week ago and forgot all about it. Just called Network Solutions and fixed that.

  3. I am a huge fan of site meter (still get weekly reports 11 months after cashing in my chips as a blogger) and a bigger fan of people who made their site meter stats public. Like Mister McCain (and Smitty too)

  10. I stopped obsessively checking mine when I got too sick to blog much, but I just checked and mine is working so I guess they fixed it. The #s are a little different and the stats tell you more about where your traffic is coming from than the stuff in the wordpress dashboard.

  17. Thank you. I thought I was going nuts earlier this afternoon, particularly with the strange SiteMeter.com page that was coming up.

  18. Mr. Gores’ invention is getting old, it’s the first case of obvious internet dementia. Everyone, check your zipper before going out.

  22. “Constantly checking SiteMeter is a deeply ingrained habit for many of us, an addiction”

    yeah, been that some thought these last two days.

    High! my name is Goodstuff and I am a blogging addict

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