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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Why Is Sitemeter Down?

[UPDATE June 30, 2015:  Sitemeter is now out of control.  First it gave totally crazy numbers - counting individual hits 30 or 40 times - and for the last four or five days it gives you the "Try again in a few minutes message."  Either it's now dead - and surely a lot of users are going to abandon Sitemeter for other statcounters -  or  their tech people are scrambling hard to do repair work.]


[UPDATE Aug 31, 2014:  Grrrr!  It's not completely down today.  If I check the last seven days displays I can get numbers.  But everything else is unavailable.  I haven't updated here for a year it seems, but I have complained in other posts, like My Love/Hate Relationship with Sitemeter.  And Google Stats says I have three or four times as many hits per day as Sitementer.]


[UPDATE Aug. 5, 2013:  It's been down since yesterday.  Screenshot from Is It Down Right Now:


 A comment said that Sitemeter is owned by MySpace.  If the original creator of Sitemeter sold it to MySpace, that would explain the incredible difference in response when I first got Sitemeter and now.  Then, the creator very quickly made personal responses to my questions.  Now, there's no response at all, except, sometimes, a robotic one that says nothing.]


[UPDATE May 1, 2013:  From Down for Everyone or Just Me?
It's not just you! http://sitemeter.com looks down from here.
Check another site?]
But Is It Down Right Now?  says 
Sitemeter.com is UP and reachable.
 The website is probably down just for you...
Given the number of people who get to this post on a regular basis, Sitemeter is down regularly, but for different people.  I thought maybe I was getting better service because I'm paying.  But now, who knows?]

[UPDATE April 19, 2013:  It's been down again all day for me.  This happened several weeks or a month ago, but I didn't post here.  My guess is that it's gotten bigger than the original group can handle.  When I first started using Sitemeter, the guy who set it up answered my emails personally and quickly.  Now I don't get any answer.]


[UPDATE Nov. 4:  Down again since last night.  Most troubling is the lack of communication about it with users.  Perhaps not enough users are paying and they can't afford enough staff to maintain things.  But not communicating with us means we start speculating, and as the comments on this post show, people are looking for alternative counters.]


What's happening at Sitemeter?

It was down last night when I tried, but then it came back on for a while including this morning.  But it's down again.

I did check to see it wasn't just me.  Is It Down Right Now? says it's down.


Is It Down? also says:

"We have tried pinging Site Meter website using our server and the website returned the above results. If sitemeter.com is down for us too there is nothing you can do except waiting. Probably the server is overloaded, down or unreachable because of a network problem, outage or a website maintenance is in progress..."

The few times a year that Sitemeter goes down like this only serve to remind me how much I depend on them to give me detailed information on who is visiting my blog and what they are looking at.  I even decided at some point I should contribute to them for the service they provide and the additional information they offer paying users is worth it to me.

But it would be nice if Sitemeter maintained an email list of all their users on a separate server - particularly those of us who pay them - and would email us to let us know there are problems.

UPDATE Tuesday Oct. 30:  Mine came back Monday, Oct. 29 and is working fine.

UPDATE:  Friday Nov. 9:  Down again.  My my main problem is that I can find nothing from Sitemeter to a) apologize and b) explain.  Like some of the commenters, I'm looking for alternatives.  I don't really want to learn a new system, and my annual payment to Sitemeter still has some time to go, but I'm starting to think I have no choice if I want to keep track of visitors.

LATER Friday, Nov. 9, 11pm:  They're back up. But for how long?

UPDATE Saturday, Nov 10, 5pm:  They were up most of today, but I can't get them again this afternoon.  I did send in a request for an explanation while they were up, but I'm guessing they aren't reading their email.  They have a drop down window for you to put the level of urgency of your message, but there's only one option:  normal.

SUNDAY Morning Nov. 11. 11am.  Up again.  Starting to feel like a roller coaster.

MONDAY Evening Nov. 12:  Sitemeter was down this morning when I checked and again about 5pm, but is up now (11pm).  

24 comments:

  1. Same here, I also pay for the service on my website and on that of several clients and today need information. I do hope this is just a glitch!

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  2. My meters haven't worked for a month. Their website is down since yesterday.

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  3. I hope everyone's sitemeter is now working ok, mine is.

    Marnie, if yours is still not working, go to their support page and let them know if it is still out.

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  4. Since last 10 days Sitemeter was down several times...

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  5. It's down AGAIN. I've had it. :-( I switched to StatCounter last week, which seems more accurate and much more informative, not to mention far more reliable than SiteMeter has been lately!

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  6. I've had a PAID account with SM for 9 years. That's over as of now. I'm thoroughly fed up with the outages, the missed visits [that my paid StatCounter account reflects, but SM doesn't], and the TOTAL lack of communication.

    I e-mailed SM several days ago with very specific info on some missed visits, giving them the IP addresses and visit times as reported by StatCounter. I also expressed my unhappiness with the constant outages. No reply, other than the initial automated response acknowledging receipt of my support request. I e-mailed two days later saying "it's been two days and I haven't heard anything." No response.

    Now the site has been completely inaccessible to me for at least 24 hours.

    And I'm PAYING for this?! Not any more. I've had it.

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  7. My sitemeter hasn't been working for over a MONTH!!! I upgraded and after two weeks started getting status emails, but showing ZERO visits.

    I have already posted THREE support tickets and haven't heard back from them. ZERO customer support.

    Adios Sitemeter

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  8. Well, it's down...AGAIN.

    My last two support e-mails were completely ignored, other than the auto-replies acknowledging their receipt. One of the e-mails told them to cancel my PAID account. Since I've had no reply, I'm going to contact Bank of America and tell them not to honor further charges from SiteMeter on my Visa card. I don't know what else to do.

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  9. I was on sitemeter's sm1 server and it stopped counting my stats so long ago (a couple months?) that I signed up again and was put on thier s52 server. sitemeter.com com has been unreachable (down) still too much and I'm just about totally fed up. I'm slowly switching over to getclicky.com, which, so far, I'm totally pleased about. Especially their heatmaps feature.

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  10. I was going to ask for recommendations for other stat counters, but I just read @Steve's comment and am going to check out getclicky.com. As I've mentioned, in addition to SiteMeter I also have StatCounter, but since I'm dropping SM I want something to replace it. Over the years I've noticed enough discrepancies between SM and SC that having *both* has been useful. If anyone else has other suggestions, please post them! I have Google Analytics, too, but prefer SM and SC.

    FWIW, I've been on SiteMeter's sm3 server since 2003 or 2004.

    I have no idea what's happened, but over the last few months SM has been down for me on average of two days per week--and is down again now, after briefly coming back up earlier today and being out all day yesterday.

    I've still gotten no replies at all to 'support' messages I've sent SM, other than the auto-replies.

    Oh! Another thing: Before contacting BofA regarding stopping SM's charges, I looked at the billing info [at BofA] from previous billing cycles. To my astonishment I found that SM has *NOT* billed me since August! That roughly correlates with when I started experiencing outages. Hmmmm...

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  11. The site has been up and down intermittently over the last few days and is again unavailable. In addition there is a random redirect to something called juicyru.com which offers a "you have been specially selected" type wheeze. This comes up when you try to access the stats aspect of sitemeter as a user. There seem to be several redirects in succession. This only happens with sitemeter before anyone thinks I have a virus and the AV runs clean otherwise. This was reported 2 days ago but so far, consistent with others' experience, no reply, just the auto-ack.

    In developing a new site I tried statcounter.com which seems a great deal more stable and does not seem to be afflicted with malware so that gets my vote and is what I'm converting all my own and customer sites to. This is a shame because sitemeter when it's been working properly minus the extras has been good and I'm sorry to go but this level of service is downright (potentially) dangerous given the malware aspect.

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  12. I signed up for a SiteMeter account for my blog yesterday and never received the email with my password. And I have checked both my regular inbox and my spam folder - it just never arrived. I cannot log into the system to view stats. I emailed support last night and haven't heard anything. This morning I woke up to a daily report from Sitemeter. When I click to unsubscribe the page won't load.

    So - figuring that perhaps I made a spelling error with my email address I signed up for a new account. Still haven't received the email with my password. I'm still logged in to this new account but cannot access the statistics page - it just redirects me back to the homepage.

    Very frustrating! Sure, I can remove the code from my blog but now I will be stuck with (2) different daily reports that I cannot unsubscribe from.

    Any thoughts?

    Also - I have used StatCounter in previous years when blogging but found that this go around they aren't registering ANY hits - even though my Blogger Stats are showing numerous hits. Does anyone know of a 'good and accurate' site counter website?

    Thanks :)

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  13. Kristy Rae, that sounds very frustrating. I'm assuming that Sitemeter grew faster than they could handle. They were out back when I first wrote this. I've been able to get stats now, though there are frequent long delays, which I'm assuming means their server is having trouble handling the traffic. (But of course it could be something else.)

    When I wrote this post I sent several email queries in and none were ever answered.

    But I do like the kind of reports they have available and I do pay for the enhanced service.

    I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm guessing the staff is way overloaded, so if you send them a message, be nice to them. Give them a cyber chocolate chip cookie or something that will make them smile and like you. That will increase the likelihood they will respond.

    Good luck.

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  14. I'm in the same position about one account. I never got the email about my password and can't get into the account. When I do the action about recovering your password I get an error. I do know the account number (it's in my report) but like others, can't get into it and will get the report for ever even if I take it off. It's a shame, I've used them for years. Do you get replies when you pay for the service?
    Mary

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  15. Mary, When things were bad, when I wrote this post, I wasn't getting replies either. Haven't tried since. My sense is this got bigger than the person who started it could handle. I hope they figure it out.

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  16. Sitemeter is down again, since yesterday and is now showing a blank page like you see when a domain is parked. I checked domain records and it's not due for renewal till 4-3-14. I hope they get it fixed as I've checked and can't find another counter with the same features.

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  17. Sitemeter has been down more than up for the last week. I normally use IE9/32-bit, but accessed it with IE9/64-bit, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. Now I'm able to access with IE9/32-bit again. Is there something with the browser, or is it Sitemeter proper? What am I paying for? Looking at Statcounter which seems to be more reliable.
    Mike

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  18. Mike, It was down for me partly yesterday. I could get to the site, but got a message that things weren't available. However, the last few times that happened, including yesterday, I found that at least I could get daily totals in the Visits and Page Views - previous seven days. Have you tried that? BTW, the site was working fine this morning when I checked. Thanks for checking in.

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  19. Site Meter for me has been down since June 21 and the emails I sent them won't go through?

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