Sunday, September 14, 2008

Anybody Else Have A Sitemeter?

In January, not long after starting this here blog, I added the basic (read free) SiteMeter. I've always liked how the reports were set up. Easy to access, easy to scan fairly quickly to get some basic info if you wanted to.

Over the weekend, they revamped the site and "migrated" all of their accounts to a new site with a new setup. The new site was up and running this morning.

First off, it may be a little wonky because they're still getting things up and running, so I'll forgive the fact that for the moment, it tries to load my page and then defaults to their home page. The only way for me to get my stats right now is to hit the STOP LOADING button before it redirects. Like I said, probably a temporary issue.

And there's one really good thing about the new SiteMeter. I've whined before that I couldn't get Unique Visits as a stat and now I can. Having said that, the unique visits feature may be the only thing I like better.

This is what I used to see first when I clicked on the site. Pretty clear and easy to absorb.

If I wanted, I could get the details of a particular visit. (This one chops off the part with the visitor's IP and location and such, but it would have showed just as clearly as the part you're seeing.)



This is what I get now for an overview of visitors. Click on it to see its real size (which is pretty damned close to what you're looking at). I don't know about you but I can't read it. And if you do the old apple+ + to magnify, it magnifies the page, but not this part.

If you click on a particular strip to get a detailed look at one visit, you get this. Once again, not real readable.

This is what I get as an entry page. Again with the hard to make any sense of it (other than the bar graph, which is ok).

I was actually thinking about switching to the paid version of SiteMeter, but if this is what I'd be getting...plus some other stats I couldn't read, I'll be rethinking that whole concept.

Anybody else have this? Any reason to tell me I'm wrong in my opinion of it?

Update 8:56pm: It's back to the good old site. Hah!

8 comments:

vince said...

I don't track statistics on my blog, but I know Shawn does and he also uses Sitemeter and is very unhappy with the changes.

Shawn Powers said...

Yeah, I blogged about it this morning too. SUCKS. I have a bunch of people that have linked my my post too (of course, I can't tell based on sitemeter feedback, ugh, good old Google Alerts informs me of such) We're far from alone.

I have no idea what to switch to. I tried TONS of others before settling on sitemeter. Both the kind you install and the kind that links to another server. Sitemeter was the best. Now? GRRRRR.

Janette said...

I've been blogging for a long time (4 years is an eternity in the blogosphere) and I've used just about every free counter out there and a few of the paid ones. Sitemeter can be wonky and at times really screw up load times. I ditched them some time back after a previous screwy upgrade.

I currently use Statcounter and I'm satisfied with their performance though you may require something more robust as you get more traffic.

You can run both on Blogger at the same time with no problems and they're both free so why not install Statcounter give them a side by side test drive?

Janiece said...

Nathan, I don't care much for it, either, but I'm willing to let it go for a while to see if my antipathy is to the change in general, or just to their crappy new view.

Janiece said...

From the support site of SiteMeter:



Good Afternoon,

We have received and heard your feedback concerning the latest changes to the website. We will implementing a rollback to the website immediately. We will also be responding to each of your support requests as soon as possible. If you have any questions please let us know.

Sincerely,

SiteMeter Support Team

Nathan said...

I just don't get how they thought it was better. It's clearly unreadable (if that isn't an oxymoron).

Anonymous said...

I've never used anything but plain old Google Analytics... I've never done a comparison with Sitemeter, although it looks like their graphing tools are prettier.

Jim Wright said...

I use the paid version of Stat Counter and I like that better than anything else I've used.

Short of writing my own counter (yeah, like I've got time for that bullshit), Statcounter works for me at the moment. And they don't seem to change much.