Site Meter - Privacy Level

I like Site Meter, it is a quick and free way to get stats about your website or blog that update in real time (or pretty close). The free version of Site Meter requires you to place a little button on your website that links back to Site Meter. That is one of the ways they can offer a free service. People often don’t know that there is a choice of where people go when the click on the Site Meter button. The default is to go to that websites stats summary page. That is fine, but remember you are now making the statistics for your website available to the world.

There is a part of me that finds it very enjoyable to click through to peoples Site Meter statistics. You can find out a lot about who links to them, where their traffic comes from, how much traffic they actually have etc. For example I recently was reading a blog about how they got a certain level of traffic to their blog in a very short period of time. I won’t name the blog, but I saw the Site Meter button on the side bar and clicked through and immediately got a good laugh. The traffic to that blog was 1/4 of what they were claiming on the site itself. There is no truth in advertising. All of the information that is available from Site Meter can be very helpful if you are promoting a website that is similar to theirs, all the more reason to set your privacy level.

If you are like me, and don’t really want the whole word to see your website statistics, you can set the privacy level for your free Site Meter account so only you can view it. Log into your Site Meter account, and go to the manager. One of the sub menus is called “Privacy Level”. On the privacy level page you can choose normal, medium or high. To stop the world from seeing your website statistics choose the medium or high settings and click save. This will stop visitors from seeing your website statistics and possibly using them against you.