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).