This is a follow-up to a November post about some annoying pop-up ads on TIE that some people were seeing. We’re not running the ads and, for a while, nobody had a good theory where they were coming from. But, on a hunch from a reader comment on that post, I did a search and found this:
I’ve recently noticed video pop up advertisements on several websites I manage, and have tracked the source of the problem to the sitemeter.com visitor counter code installed on those sites. I can’t find any mention of this problem on the web (since the videos don’t always pop up many sitemeter users probably haven’t realized where the videos are coming from), so I wanted to put something online for others to find.
The post goes on to describe symptoms identical to what some readers have experienced at TIE. It also documents that the author had contacted sitemeter and not gotten a response. I just did as well, but I’m not expecting a reply. Based on past experience, it seems like nobody there cares to engage with clients. It’s too bad, because the service (apart from these popups) is very good. For real time traffic tracking, there is nothing like it out there. Even Google Analytics doesn’t do as good a job. StatCounter doesn’t either.
I don’t know if we’ll yank sitemeter or see if paying for a premium account helps (it’s really too expensive, in my view). If you use sitemeter, particularly a premium account, I’d love to know if your readers are seeing popups.
UPDATE: I’ve turned sitemeter off. If you still see a pop-up ad, let me know.
UPDATE 2: Paid sitemeter customers are not immune to this problem. See also this. Sitemeter is behaving badly.
by Patrick Appel on December 5th, 2013 at 16:58
We had the same problem at the Dish and we had a premium account. We ended up having to remove Sitemeter from our site.
by alh on December 5th, 2013 at 18:34
Others are having similar issues.
http://www.shakesville.com/2013/11/ads-update_15.html
by Ian on December 7th, 2013 at 22:13
I’m having the same issue with SiteMeter, and my account is a premium (paid) account. Up until this began happening (in November 2013), I’ve been mostly happy with SiteMeter, but that is rapidly changing. They have not responded to my inquiry. I’m trying to find other options so I can ditch SiteMeter.
by Austin Frakt on December 8th, 2013 at 08:04
StatCounter is not bad. We’re using it now. Still, Sitemeter was better and served us well for years. What a shame.