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Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: August 1, 2008
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Site Meter causing Internet Explorer failure


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Traffic measuring tool Sitemeter is blocking users of Internet Explorer from accessing sites using the service.

According to a tip to The Inquisitr, the problem happens when anybody using Internet Explorer tries to open any sites with the Site Meter code present, and thousands of websites/blogs have been shut off from IE users, including PerezHilton.com and blogs in the Gawker Media stable.

Users of Internet Explorer receive the following message when visiting any site with Site Meter installed:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.nameofsite.com
Operation aborted

A search using Google Blog Search found that the issue is widespread, and the only known solution at this time being to remove the SiteMeter embed code from the website or blog. Notably users of Firefox, Safari and other browsers are not affected by the issue.

So far, Sitemeter has made no official statement. More if we get it.

Update: thx to Steve Hodson of WinExtra, a pic of the issue in the wild:



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  • Sue Charles
    Thank you for posting this -- I thought I was the only one, that something was wrong with my computer.

    However, my browser is ATT Yahoo and I'm unable to open any Site Meter sites as of a few hours ago. I read a notice from SM a few days ago saying they were in the process of updating the service and that the SM logo on some sites would appear off and on, but not to be concerned.

    Looks like someone screwed up.
  • Sue Charles
    Oops, I just checked and my ATT Yahoo has IE 7.0. But still, I'm not gonna change my browser -- I'm used to it and this is the first time I've had an issue. You all blame IE and god knows it's not perfect but this is Site Meter's problem!
  • IE isn't "not perfect", it's a piece of crap. Just about every user of a different browser will tell you the same. Join the good side, join the productive side, join the Mozilla or Opera side!

    This is a clear Site Meter problem, though. But nobody's blaming IE.
  • I have a similar issue with the latest Google Maps API code, which is online for about two weeks now. It broke access to each site that loaded the JavaScript-file, without any interference from my code. (I deactivated all JavaScript completely and just had Google Maps API activated.)

    After I switched back to the stable version of the API (I used the "normal" versions, not the "sneak peak" versions), everything worked again.
  • This is common issue with Internet Explorer and JavaScript. It happens if you try and manipulate the DOM before the element has been fully parsed. E.g. if a SCRIPT tag is within a DIV and the JavaScript tries to manipulate the said DIV.

    It doesn't effect other browsers because Internet Explorer's rendering engine is much more "strict" in the way that it handles DOM manipulation.

    This really isn't Internet Explorers' fault because this is a well known DOM issue in Internet Explorer and any decent JavaScript developer should know about it.

    Bad show chaps.
  • Thomas
    The ultimate fix, sitemeter.com is the problem. If you go into your internet explorer security settings and add the following to restricted sites then the page loads.
    http://*.sitemeter.com
  • Sue Charles
    Thomas -- THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

    Just out of curiosity, does this also mean that Site Meter cannot "read" my data? If so, that's not such a bad thing.
  • Krieg
    Thanka a million!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • this wouldn't happen if people would just simply use Firefox.
  • LizN
    Actually, this problem started happening for me using FF and when I tried on IE and found I still couldn't access the site, I decided to look into it further.
  • This is only a problem with the sitemeter JAVASCRIPT code. Using the HTML only code seems to be a decent workaround.
  • Seems to me like this is just another excuse to encourage the masses to come over to FF3!
  • I noticed the same problem - I thought it was Gizmodo that had code issues! These people should test their code on the worlds most popular browser - IE~
  • John Doe
    It happens because the people at SiteMeter are modifying the DOM in their javascript code before the DOM is ready. They can't do that, its against browser standards. It's not an IE problem -- Firefox just ignores the issue and moves on and doesn't present it to the user.

    Site owners can fix this by just moving the JS code to the bottom of their page, underneath the </body> tag, at least until SiteMeter people fix their code
  • Keith J. Farmer
    so all those firef*x users.. are running a buggy browser!

    No surprise, really.
  • 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...
  • As a 3rd party analytics provider, we feel SiteMeter's pain... blackouts/blockages like this are no fun for anyone.

    Like SiteMeter, ClustrMaps provides a 'plain vanilla' option - pure HTML, simple JPG only, no javascript, no cookies, nothing fancy. Unlike SiteMeter's detailed stats, ClustrMaps is complementary in that it provides a 'gestalt map' showing at a glance all visitor locations... many user's have both ClustrMaps and Sitemeter for this reason... anyway, here's wishing everyone a speedy recovery from this blip... outages/blockages like this are bad for all of us in the analytics/geolocation business, so it's good for everyone to get this resolved soon, to restore user confidence!

    -The ClustrMaps Team
  • Janet Doe
    Well, I am an IE 7 user (not by my choice) and I am unhappy because its SLOW! Mozilla foxfire is faster but interferes with my other programs. I downloaded IE 8 and its not any faster. this sucks! I wish ATT will go back to the way things used to be. that way, i can select my own browser and still access the net if I choose not to.
  • Firefox certainly doesn't interfere with any other programs. On the other hand updating IE can mess your OS up and you might need a system restore.
  • if people would use a modern browser such as Firefox or Opera such a thing wouldn't happen. You can bypass this kind of problem by adding sitemeter to the restricted sites from internet explorer.
  • I totally agree with dating girl, just switch to firefox :)
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