What A Blog's Readers Should Know

I think this qualifies. But before jumping the gun, I have a few things to say. Charles weighs in here and has dropped Sitemeter. I'm not pleased having to find this out via email from a reader, so I'm doing what Sitemeter hasn't done, so far as I know - be open. I don't have the capabilities or issues Charles cites. Sitemeter has been providing me a free but valuable service for some time. I rely on my browser and virus protection to police my web surfing, not any particular site. For now, I'm not dropping Sitemeter. As I look into this, I may, I may not. This may also have major ramifications for TTLB's ecosystem and their traffic tracking. Unless something has changed, I believe it uses Sitemeter as a pass through for traffic stats.

1) There are often connectivity issues with Sitemeter’s servers, that affect LGF’s page loading speed. We have enough connectivity issues of our own, and don’t need any more, thank you.

2) I now have statistics gathering methods in place at LGF that surpass the features afforded by Sitemeter.

3) I’m willing to forgive a lot of connectivity issues, but I draw the line at spyware: Things you should know before using Sitemeter.

Comments

[Observer]

You can verify from my email address that I am the one who mailed you.

My interest is in getting the bloggers that use site meter to go to the site meter blog or email them and protest this change in policy.

If the blow back is strong enough this can be handled.

I only question, what were they thinking?

I like site meter, don't get me wrong here.

I have used it in some settings to rat out sock puppets on some blogs and other similar uses.

There are many tools on the web available for site ratings to be reliably ranked. In fact they give even more data than site meter does.

I recently saw and example of Alexa being used to document the impact of online Jihad sites with high quality data.

If site meter was going to make such a change in the usage of their software, they should have advised all blogs in a transparent manner prior to the change.

It is my belief that if they had, the feedback could have made them know that this would create a firestorm of backlash.

That is my point.

[Observer]

I followed the actions advised in the countermeasures to the site meter issue and found 7 cookies I had to remove and block in the future.

I hope site meter reverses their policy.

Most casual users think site meter is only a visit counter they don't have a clue as to what a end user commenter can use from the data site meter presents.

In fact most don't even know how to access that data.

[Observer]

Not this site but another picked at random

VISITS

Total 5,878,686
Average Per Day 3,856
Average Visit Length 2:09
Last Hour 38
Today 216
This Week 26,994

PAGE VIEWS

Total 9,270,480
Average Per Day 6,029
Average Per Visit 1.6
Last Hour 76
Today 388
This Week 42,203
This is something it presents as blog traffic data

Now lets pick a random user and see what it can reveal

Domain Name optonline.net ? (Network)
IP Address 69.125.36.# (Optimum Online (Cablevision Systems))
ISP Optimum Online (Cablevision Systems)
Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : New Jersey
City : Elizabeth
Lat/Long : 40.6636, -74.1991 (Map)
Language English (United States)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Firefox 2.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0 VRE Toolbar 1.4
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor
Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit May 13 2007 3:36:26 am
Last Page View May 13 2007 3:36:26 am
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL
Visit Entry Page deleted by me
Visit Exit Page deleted by me
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time May 13 2007 3:36:26 am
Visit Number 5,882,181