Sitemeter bug takes down thousands of web sites (for Internet Explorer users)

by Brad Linder Aug 2nd 2008

Thousands of web sites are currently inaccessible to Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, and 7 users thanks to a new Sitemeter bug. Sitemeter is a free web analytics service used by many popular blogs and web sites including Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and Consumerist. They all appear to be affected as of this morning. It's worth noting that the bug only affects Internet Explorer users. The web sites load just fine in Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

It's likely that the bug is due to tracking code changes Sitemeter has been rolling out. Visitors to web sites using the code who are using IE will see the page start to load, and then get an error message. When you click OK to make the error message go away, the entire site goes with it. Nice.

If your site has been affected it looks like you have two options. You can either remove the code altogether until Sitemeter gets its act together, or you can try modifying your code by using the plain HTML version instead of the Javascript version. If you take the latter route, your counter won't show up thanks to another bug, but at least it will continue tracking visits to your site.

Thanks Darren Paul!

Update: It looks like the bug has been fixed.

Tags: bug, crash, outage, sitemeter, web-analytics

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Will said 9:57AM on 8-02-2008

Thank you for posting this. Several sites in the DLS family are exhibiting this problem (Engadet and xbox360fanboy). It was driving me crazy.

Will said 11:17AM on 8-02-2008

Oh, for surfers, just add *.sitemeter.com to the restricted sites zone and problem solved!

Matias Korhonen said 11:17AM on 8-02-2008

Another reason why not to use IE... Even if this one wasn't caused by MS ignoring web standards.

Fyrewerx said 11:18AM on 8-02-2008

Yep, it was affecting my I.E. while trying to get to Autoblog and Lifehacker. I tried blocking sitemeter with my router settings, but that didn't work. So, I switched to ubuntu and Firefox. No problems.

Thanks for the tip on using I.E.'s restricted sites zone -- I can fix the other PCs in the house now.

FiveAcres said 11:18AM on 8-02-2008

Can we infer from this that the sitemeter coders use Firefox?

Steve G said 2:32PM on 8-02-2008

Fine if they do, but not testing it on IE is remarkably stupid.
Whatever ones views on IE, around 80% of the world use it so no professional designer would let a site out that failed on it!

Felipe said 2:40PM on 8-02-2008

Ouch! That's why I developed my own web analyitcs app: http://www.i-stats.com and Google Analytics is NOT real-time (I have no idea how they can get away with that), so if you use Google Analytics and your site is mentioned on a high traffic blog, you won't know until a day or so later...

Quikboy said 4:23PM on 8-02-2008

I had that problem visiting Gizmodo yesterday when I was using IE. I wonder if IE8 was affected.

The site works fine now.

DeadPlasmaCell said 5:24PM on 8-02-2008

Good to know. Still not switching to FF or anything else. Tried it before, wasn't impressed.

Dave said 12:10AM on 8-03-2008

Good luck with your sitemeter. I've tried using them, even their paid accounts, for years. They were down way too much for me. Finally pulled the code out of everything lsat night.

LJKelley said 7:35PM on 8-03-2008

No worries for me... My router automatically blacks sitemeter.com and redirects all traffic (using hijacked DNS) to a bogus self hosted site that just says 'Blocked'. I can still use IE... yay!! I block over 10000 sites that deal in invading my privacy or send unwanted adverts my way.

But honestly, you would think they would test with IE, it is still the #1 used browser out there having 60-80% of the market.

Nate said 7:35PM on 8-03-2008

Only because it comes with Windows and no one really knows about FF. I am sure if they did, they would make the switch.

moby said 9:45PM on 8-04-2008

I was tinkering w/my blog template and thought I had indavertently snipped off some code somewhere. I used FF exclusively but keep IE just to make sure my pages render correctly. After about 2 hours, I discovered it wasn't me at all. Very frustrating.

I have nixed sitemeter and won't be going back.

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