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Update: Sitemeter listened and re-implimented the original. Congrats to the company for saving their company. A huge lesson learned.

Here is a great lesson of how website owners and companies can avoid a complete meltdown.

Sitemeter was one of the best statistic companies and has been the de facto standard for bloggers keeping track of visitors. I admit that I am like most bloggers and check my stats regularly.

They are:

• Pure ego, I love to see that people are coming to read what I have written, and
• Making sure everything is running correctly. If the stats are bad something could be wrong  on the site that I would need to address. Once we had a widget that was not loading the page for people using internet explorer. I never would have known as I use Firefox but the stats being down clued me in.

But today Sitemeter has rolled out an update that is essentially useless. I knew exactly how to find the stats I needed quickly with the old version, now the availability of information has been severely restricted and the layout is miserable.

I am sure that they did not test this with bloggers because they would have caught most of the errors. Instead they have pissed off their biggest fans and people are looking to change. Check out the reaction on Google Blog Search.

Now as it relates to your site, before you make a big change, run it by as many people that you know. Because if you mess up you run the chance of ruining it for the future.

My bet is that Sitemeter has learned the lesson, albeit the hard way…

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