SiteMeter Sending Your Readers’ Data to Specific Media
Hopefully you’re using some kind of stat tracking software on your site so that you know what’s going. There are some really good free ones out there, and let me say right up front that I completely understand that they need to make money to stay in business.
StatCounter (a great, free stat tracker) announced last Sunday that:
We were shocked to discover just today that another well known stats provider is allowing up to 9 cookies to be installed in the browser of every visitor that hits one of their member websites. This means that the provider is making money by transmitting data on you and your visitors to a third party advertiser. Not only that, but to add insult to injury, the cookies are causing the member websites to load very slowly too.
In good taste they refused to name names, but it quickly came out that the “well known stats provider” was SiteMeter. Eric Odom expanded on the relationship the next day, and although there has been no acknowledgment of the deal from either Specific Media (the company inserting the tracking cookies) or SiteMeter themselves (who could have easily announced it on their blog), there have been numerous reports here lately of bloggers noticing SiteMeter really dragging down the load time of their sites.
I’m interested to see if SiteMeter ever comes out and acknowledges this deal or whether they just hope it all blows over. It’s got to be a pretty lucrative deal for them, but it could quickly backfire if a) the performance problems don’t improve and/or b) Specific Media starts to use its newfound ability to start popping pop-unders or other advertisements on SiteMeter-using sites.
GloriaHopkins
April 3, 2007 at
5:17 am
Many thanks for this post. For the past week I’ve had huge delays in sitemeter opening my stat pages. Someone pointed me to this post and I switched to StatCounter immediately. I confess I didn’t read all the fine print with SiteMeter but the thought of them putting multiple cookies on my visitors’ browsers made me cringe! No way.
I’m glad I switched too. StatCounter is SO much better and more sophisticated than SiteMeter. I appreciate the post.
Gloria
Ramblings from the Marginalized » Why I am dumping sitemeter (and you should too)
April 3, 2007 at
8:57 am
[...] I encountered some news about Sitemeter selling out to an advertising company that wants to place tracking cookies on all sitemeter member sites. At first I thought this was [...]
Shane
April 3, 2007 at
9:25 am
The problem with dropping SiteMeter for StatCounter is that StatCounter only gives you details on your last 100 visits — a major, major downside for me
I still use them extensively, though, and just use Google Analytics for sites that I need more stats on.
Matthew
April 3, 2007 at
10:13 am
Good point Shane about the 100 visits, you can indeed pay for some more log visits in addition to daily email reports of all your sites. I have been running this for about 6 months now and love it. It rocks
Cheers! Matthew
GloriaHopkins
April 3, 2007 at
10:31 am
I have google analytics, too
I’m double-covered! Seriously, it’s surprising what one will pick up and the other won’t. I’ve found that having two trackers has been very useful and helpful.
I wish I’d have known about StatCounter before SiteMeter tho - it’s so much better. Thanks again for the post!
Kim
April 6, 2007 at
5:48 am
I wondered about that slow loading I was noticing with Site Meter lately. And I just upgraded my account! : / Let me know if I should switch over and if you can start the Stat Counter at the number you left off of with Site Meter or if you have to restart at zero!
Jenni
April 7, 2007 at
5:58 am
Hi Kim,
You can set your StatCounter to start at any number you want so you don’t have to lose your old count of visitors.
We offer lifetime summary stats with all accounts and you can also download your logs at any time i.e. download details of all your visitors.
You can also choose between a visible or invisible counter.
Thanks!
Jenni
Sitemeter Team
April 10, 2007 at
6:34 pm
Dear Ask Shane,
We are taking some time today to reach out to a few blogs like yours and send a personal update. If you are interested Sitemeter posted a detailed update on our blog http://weblog.sitemeter.com/) a few days back which outlines some important new features and services we’ve been developing and testing. We’d be interested in knowing your opinion on the potential new data points and whether they would be of value to you and your business (see survey on http://www.sitemeter.com)
We also posted a lengthy response to some of the assumptions, rumors, and allegations circulating, on Eric Odems blog http://conservablogs.com/EricOdom/2007/04/09/sitemeter-spyware-saga-continues/). We want to assure you that Sitemeter has not “sold out”. Our sole objective is to create products and services that put us at the head of our class.
We do thank you for your past business, and should you ever want to return we’d be happy to accommodate you. If you are not interested in having access to the reports and data we can certainly move you to a dedicated server which does not offer this new information.
Sincerely,
The Sitemeter Team
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April 11, 2007 at
7:18 am
[...] SiteMeter Sending Your Readers’ Data to Specific Media [...]
Shane
April 11, 2007 at
10:00 am
I’m not seeing any sort of response on your blog to this issue, even when I do a search for “specific.” That’s a tragic mistake. With users bailing in droves, that’s the one place you should have addressed it and addressed it immediately. Instead, we have to go over to the comments on someone else’s blog to get the story? I’d post the same thing on your blog and soon in order to stop the bleeding. Otherwise, it’s just going to continue.
SiteMeter/Specific Media Update
April 12, 2007 at
1:08 pm
[...] the story and it began to spread across the web, SiteMeter has begun to respond to the issue both in the comments of my post and at much greater length in the comments on Eric [...]
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7:00 am
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May 29, 2008 at
10:25 am
[...] There are a lot of other free services out there that do a pretty good job, but I haven’t found one I like as much as Analytics. I do use StatCounter on all my sites, but that’s only because I want to be able to see real-time stats. If Analytics was real-time, I probably wouldn’t bother. I know a lot of people who use Site Meter, too, but I don’t like the fact that they spy on your users’ behavior. [...]