Sunday, September 14, 2008

New Sitemeter: Rinse and spit

Dentists across the country are praising the "new and improved" Sitemeter for its superior suction, while the American Optometrists Association is rubbing its hands with glee over an expected influx of patients needing bifocals and/or Seeing Eye dogs. Carpal tunnel surgeons also anticipate an uptick in business.

The old Sitemeter was fairly quick to load and required a minimum of clicks to navigate. You could resize the text as needed to see it clearly. The new Sitemeter takes five clicks just to get to a stats page, with long intervening periods as you wait for Flash to load. If you want to refresh your stats, you have to re-login and go through the whole click-process again. The stat details themselves are so tiny you will go blind in short order. Because they're in Flash, you cannot make them any bigger.

This really pisses me off. Yes, I can switch to another statcounter, but I will lose all of the historical data from the last two years. I contemplated doing this before, but I liked the simplicity of Sitemeter. No more.

(Edit: This just in!: "We are in the process of rolling back SiteMeter to the former system. SiteMeter should be back online soon. Please check back later. Sorry for inconvenience. Sincerely, SiteMeter Support Team."

If you blog-Google "new sitemeter" you'll see universal loathing of the so-called upgrade. Looks like the shitstorm of negative PR got through to them. )

8 comments:

  1. I just moved to statcounter. It's not as good as the old sitemeter but much better than the new sitemeter. So I'm using that stats package for now till a newer one is around.

    You can set your numbers in statcounter at the point you need to start counting.

    I bet these other stat sites are very happy that sitemeter singlehandedly gave them new business.

    Sometimes, you just need to have a competitor do a misstep to get new customers. ;)

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  2. I agree....plus I am a freebie user so I dont have anything really...are you a freebie or a premium?

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  3. I'm a basic Sitemeter user, at least for a while longer. I hate the new Sitemeter. It tells me nothing whatsoever. *digs out magnifying glass* Nope, not even when I can see it does it show me anything.

    Ish.

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  4. Enough people seem to hate the new Sitemeter that the website now (sunday afternoon) says they are reverting to the old one. I hope they haven't lost our stats in the process. http://culinary-colorado.blogspot.com was nearing 100,000 visitors -- and I'd hate to start over.

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  5. Yeah, I think I posted my update right before you made your comment, Claire. I will be very happy if they just leave the setup the way it was.

    Vivian, that's how I felt. Couldn't see it, couldn't interpret it.

    Doggy, I don't pay for it. But I'm complaining anyway. If I were paying, I would've been asking or my money back pronto.

    Digerati, I've been contemplating statcounter. I used them for a little while. Depending on how the Sitemeter rollback goes, I may be migrating anyway.

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  6. I've been thinking of using sitemeter for a while now, but after hearing about today's 'update', I'd figured 'oh, forget it'.
    I guess now I could change my mind. (must look into it.)

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  7. Euphreana, they did go back to the old version, which I do like. I've looked at other stat counters and they're all about "metrics" and "visitor loyalty" with graphs and charts and whatnot. Too complicated! I just like to see how many visits and from where (site referrals and physical location).

    If they continue to offer a version of just that, I'll be happy. They say they're going to use beta testers before attempting to upgrade again. I can't believe they didn't use any this time.

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