No more Motigo

November 21, 2011

Five years ago, at the start of this site, we installed a counter to keep track of statistics. We decided to use Nedstat, a free application which offered a surprising amount of interesting information which made sure that a lot of webmasters could adapt their websites in order to improve the browsing experience of their visitors.

Later, Nedstat was taken over by the German company ad pepper and the name of the counter was changed, first into Webstats4U, and later into Motigo. But the behavior of the counter changed as well. Suddenly many visitors were unpleasantly surprised with pop-ups and pop-unders with advertisements for various things. The browsing experience of visitors was suddenly much less pleasant.

In the terms and conditions, Motigo says that these advertisements will be seen only sporadically, and they promise that "that no-one gets bombarded with ads" (sic). Nothing further from the truth. Motigo has become an aggressive advertising product, and many visitors to this site have been complaining about it.

On several webblogs we could read fierce reactions. As many webmasters openly threatened to install other counters on their websites, it seemed like Motigo was willing to change its attitude. Because suddenly we found no pop-ups nor pop-unders anymore.

A while ago, however, we received again complaints from visitors of the site about unsolicited advertising. The remarkable thing was that we did not see it. This stemmed from a handy trick from Motigo: the computers of the webmasters had been registered with a coockie, and the webmasters themselves did no longer see the ads. While we were under the delusion that everything was all right, you remained buried under the unwanted pop-ups and pop-unders.

Obviously, by doing so, Motigo is no longer wanted on this site. Along with many other webmasters, we are now testing some other advertising-free webstats counters. For a short time they will be used in parallel to study all functionalities. And to check if they really are ad-free, of course. Once we have everything under control, and no later than December 31, 2011, Motigo will be kicked out forever.



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