Troubleshooting Tips | My Sitemeter fails

Early this morning as I opened my sitemeter, I was shocked because it has recorded only 5 visits since 12 midnight. I thought, googel penalized me once more. But as I looked at the serps, my blog was still in good positions for certain keywords. In addition to that, my google adsense and other programs showed pretty normal stats (impressions) so I realized that my analytic tool must be malfunctioning.

Side notes: Maybe you are wandering if I have other site analytics; Yes I have google analytics but it is usually 1-2 days delayed.

What went wrong?
An unexpected event like this really happens. Sometimes, we even defend ourselves by saying “No, I didn’t do anything; I made no changes; something must be weird”. Perhaps, you’re smiling while reading these phrases because you are guilty beyond reasonable doubt, hehe.

Anyway, going back to my issue, since I have a strong feeling that my sitemeter is not working properly, I investigated my other sites. Fortunately, they display the usual numbers so my problem was isolated.

From there, I tried to recall what I did yesterday. Consequently, I remembered that around 7pm, I was surprised why my last hour unique visits suddenly dropped to only 20 while the last three hours listed approximately 100 by average. Not only that, my total visit yesterday became stagnant form 7pm -11:59PM. Having this in mind, I recalled that around 6pm I placed an experimental php code on my ads. Luckily, when I removed that code, the sitemeter has worked properly. Sigh, I had a sense of relief.

Conclusions
If you encounter a problem or an issue, whether its blog related or not, try to do the following:
1) Don’t panic too much.
2) Identify the main issue.
3) Gather related data.
4) Investigate gathered data.
5) Isolate the issue.
6) Resolve the issue.
7) Test, fix and retest.
Document your resolution (in text file or blog post or whatsoever for future reference).

Remember, in every negosyo (business), whether online or offline, you would certainly face some inevitable troubles. Just be patient and solution oriented.

That’s all.

yours,
Joliber