I’ve been using SiteMeter since the earliest days* of OTB, going back to February 4, 2003. There have been some glitches from time to time over the years but, for the most part, it’s done a good job of tracking visits in real time. It’s been down for three days now and, given that their website hasn’t been updated in years—they’re still “sponsored” by the old Truth Laid Bear site, which hasn’t been in operation in forever—I’m wondering if there’s anyone there doing maintenance anymore.
Google Analytics and others do a better job of tracking visitors. But SiteMeter has always had three advantages that kept it on my site. First, because I’ve used it since the beginning, it give me a steady state measure. Second, because it was so ubiquitous in those early days, it gives me a means of comparing performance to other blogs. Third, it lets me know who’s on my site and sending people to my site in real time. Google Analytics, by contrast, tells me who was on the site yesterday.
UPDATE: Well, the stats are back. Either this weekend had the worst traffic in recent OTB history or it’s missing some of the data from the down period. That’s annoying but it’s happened before.
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*I started the site on January 31, a Friday, and installed it the following Tuesday, having taken the weekend off.
