I've always been an advocate of redundancy, with essential components and features.
One essential feature of a website is the ability to remain aware of where your readers come from, and what they are reading, on your blog. Besides Blogger Stats, I've advocated both SiteMeter and StatCounter, in a complementary role to each other.
A while ago, SiteMeter decided to add video advertisements to their blog / website agent, that tracks the clicks.
Spending a few moments Googling the issue, I learned
- Many people have complained, to SiteMeter Support.
- The complaints are being ignored.
I took the only responsible action, and removed the SiteMeter agent from my blog.
You may wish to do the same, on your blog or website, if your readers do not have ultra fast computers and fat Internet connections. I guess the old saying
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch
has now, once again, been proven true.
Unwanted videos (invisible, in many cases) are even worse than unwanted music. Both produce noise, when you expect it least - and videos inhale bandwidth.
And recently, SiteMeter has been implicated in other, even more annoying oddities.
My apologies to those of you who have tried to read this blog, and found themselves with bandwidth and memory resource issues.
Occasionally, we see a report in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, that reflects on the reader audience - not necessarily only the blog content.Why is my blog behind a Content Warning?Some readers of this blog have contacted Google because they believe this blog's content is objectionable.
Occasionally, a quick eyeballing of the blog in question may turn up some dodgy content, which may be suggested, in the forum, as problematic.
This story may not end immediately.But, I've had that picture gallery, for years! Why did I just get the Content Warning?
Here, the blog owner is not considering changing standards - or the possibility that the blog, becoming more popular, may be adding readers who don't appreciate a photo gallery started years ago.
As your blog matures - and when you are successful at encouraging reader and search engine reputation - your reader audience should be increasing.
If your reader population expands, some readers may be less tolerant.
If you are now advertising your blog to a more selective audience, some folks in that audience may object to some blog content, enjoyed or ignored by your earlier audience.
If you spend time perusing your visitor logs - and if you have a more robust visitor log than Stats, you may find some interesting clues. StatCounter (not SiteMeter) shows, among other details, the "Exit Click" for each visitor. If you see any one post abnormally represented, among the "Exit Click" inventory, you may be looking at content that's possibly not appreciated by some portion of the reader community.
Here, I'll note that you won't necessarily see any statistics for a post that is posted entirely on the main page. If your main page is a significant portion of the blog, you may wish to add Jump Break to your posts, to encourage your readers to click to the individual post pages, and read each individual post.
Be aware of your reader population - and consider their needs.
Whatever your strategy for advertising your blog, be aware of changing visitor interest. Don't "spice up" your blog with "eye candy", and expect to remain free of a Content Warning, forever.
Encourage your readers, with informative, interesting, and unique content. Don't abuse them with eye candy, then demand removal of the Content Warning, without compromise.
Yesterday, as Blogger started to deal with the massive false positive spam blog problem and the forums started to calm down, another problem became visible. Dozens of bloggers reported an inability of their blogs to load, under Internet Explorer. Several of my blogs, including this one, were apparently affected.As the blog loaded, and toward the end, I would get a loud popup errorInternet Explorer cannot display the web page. Operation aborted.
and frequently the well known full page displayThe page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.
The common factor in the problem reported involved the presence of SiteMeter code, on the blogs reported. All of my blogs, listed above, have that code too.
Given the choice of having a blog accessible only under Firefox (and trackable), or having a blog accessible under both Firefox and Internet Explorer (and not trackable), I chose the latter and removed my SiteMeter code. This was not a difficult task, I just cut the code from the widgets in the footer of each blog. And I saved the removed code, which was a good thing.
I simply edited the page element in the footer, at the bottom of the blog. Wherever your SiteMeter widget is, if you put the code into a page element, you can do the same.
<!-- Site Meter --> <script src="http://s17.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=s17nitecruzr" type="text/javascript"></script>
<noscript><a href="http://s17.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s17nitecruzr" target="_top">
<img border="0" alt="Site Meter" src="http://s17.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=s17nitecruzr"/></a></noscript><!-- Copyright (c)2006 Site Meter -->
and changed that to
<!-- Site Meter --> <!-- Copyright (c)2006 Site Meter -->
In the process of writing a problem report to SiteMeter, I needed an exact copy of the content of the popup error. Attempting to reproduce the error, I went back to my home blog (which I care about least, of the 3 above), and added the code back. Having reloaded the code, I reloaded the blog under Internet Explorer, and noted an oddity - no error popup.
I returned to my SiteMeter Statistics list, and observed that my visit was now visible in the visitor log. An hour later, I am now refreshing the "Who's On Your Site" display, and I see all 3 blogs represented again. Some entries include Internet Explorer, and multiple pages viewed, indicating successful loading of the blog.
> > (Update 8/2 13:00): SiteMeter states that they have resolved the problem.
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