SiteMeter is one of the most popular stat. tracking tools for bloggers, newspapers, and other website owners interested in knowing how many people visit their site everyday. Additionally, the sitemeter icon on websites is often used by potential advertisers to find out whether it will worthwhile for them to advertise on specific websites.

In short, it’s more than a tool; millions of people depend on it.

This makes it extra important for SiteMeter to function well. When SiteMeter is down, tens of thousands of people worry. If it’s down for a longer period, millions panic.

SiteMeter, seemingly unaware of its own significance, announced it would move recently. Without any one’s input, SiteMeter had decided it had to ‘improve’ itself. This meant they would go to a different server and, it was announced, the new tracking tools would be better! and more accurate! not to mention cool!

So this weekend was the big day. SiteMeter moved. The result: anger.

The new SiteMeter was only up and running for a couple of minutes when this particular website owner came to the conclusion that the new SiteMeter was frustratingly slow and impracticle. Additionally, it seemed, one had to give a special code to reactivate one’s account. If one did not have this code, one could retrieve by giving the e-mail address one used for the sign-up and then to go through the entire procedure necessary.

Sadly, I did not have that information and could, as a result, not reactive the SiteMeter account at PoliGazette. Angrily I sent an e-mail to the people at SiteMeter asking whether they had completely lost their mind. The service was ok, SiteMeter did what it had to do; tell people how many visitors a website had on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. It also told those interested where the visitors came from, how they got to the website, how many minutes they spent on it, what pages they visited (what articles) and more. In short; all relevent information was provided. Not anymore.

SiteMeter’s adventure had made it impossible for me, and I thought many others, impossible to keep track of to keep track of my own site’s statistics. Additionally, and this is equally important, the new SiteMeter was excessively slow.

So I signed up for a new account, since we desperately need the information. I signed up and, after 20 minutes of shouting at the computer, I finally had the code for a new icon. It was put on the site, and we could start tracking.

Or so I thought.

I clicked on the icon and got an error; the website did not exist, was moved, or something else. ‘What?’, I thought, ‘what’s happening here?’ I immediately went to SiteMeter’s blog and read the following:

We have received and heard your feedback concerning the latest changes to the website. We will implementing a rollback to the website immediately. We will also be responding to each of your support requests as soon as possible. If you have any questions please let us know.

Message to SiteMeter’s owners; never change a winning team.

UPDATE

Don’t just take my word for it, here are others:

Robert S. McCain:

Never before in the course of human history has something so obviously sucked. It’s worse than disco.

VodkaPundit:

The thing is so loaded with useless-ass Web 2.0 crap that it’s… useless. What was once great now sucks. Thanks, Sitemeter guys!

Ann Althouse:

This is the worst non-improvement of a website I’ve ever seen. . . . What is the point of SiteMeter now?

Neptunus Lex:

Pretty much the worst thing that’s been done to an established brand since the “New Coke” fiasco.

Coalition of the Swilling:

Sucks so bad it blows.

 Ed Morrissey:

 How could they misunderstand their market so badly?  Internet customers want open stats, both for themselves and their visitors.  Instead, they locked up the information, and what’s worse, their Windows widget didn’t work.

 Tom Maguire:

What a clown show.

Vox Popoli:

 Speaking as a professional game and software designer, all I can say is that the new Sitemeter sucks more badly than nearly any software “improvement” I have ever seen. You actually get less functionality and less information from the initial page than you got before. It’s so utterly horrible; I can’t even imagine bothering to check on my statistics there.

Murdoc:

The new SiteMeter sucks. Really really sucks.

The Coalition of the Swilling:

Sucks so bad it blows.

Tigerhawk:

SiteMeter has ruined its product.

Instapundit:

OH NO. They’ve ruined SiteMeter.

UPDATE

From the SiteMeter blog:

Dear Valued SiteMeter Customers,

As you’re no doubt aware by now, we’ve chosen to roll back our website to the previous “classic” version.

Based on some performance issues we were experiencing along with feedback from the community it appears we have pushed our new site live prematurely.

Our intention is and has always been to offer you, our customer’s better tools and more accurate data. Obviously we fell short of this. The first thing we need to do, moving forward, is to roll out new product releases in parallel to our current platform. This will give everyone a chance to try out, evaluate, and comment on our new concepts.

We would also like to take this opportunity to ask those of you who had issues or concerns with the new site to participate in future beta testing. We had originally asked for Beta Tester in two of our newsletters sent earlier this year so we’re eager to build our beta group even larger. If you’re interested in participating please send us an email using our support ticketing system with BETA TESTER in the subject line of your email.

In the near term we’ll be evaluating the performance issues and feedback from our community. If you have additional input that would help us build you a better product we’d like to hear from you.

We apologize for the botched rollout and will do our best to make sure the next time we do this it has your full support and blessing.

Sincerely,

The SiteMeter Team

If we are so important how about this; stop ‘improving’ the product. The ‘classic’ design is good. It is wonderful. It is a blessing. Every time I click on the little icon leading to SiteMeter ‘classic’ I am filled with tremendous joy and expectations (probably mainly due to the fact that our readership is growing rapidly but that as an aside).

Stop ‘improving’ it. It’s good.

Let me put it slightly differently: if you guys try to ‘improve’ it again, I’ll personally come down there and beat the… out of you.