When the largest provider of website analysis goes down what can you do? Many commercial providers will be shouting: “That’s what you get for using a free service!” but all services go wrong, paid for or otherwise and I know who I would rather have fixing the problem.

It does raise an issue that many, including myself, toil with. I consider myself  “Old School” when it comes to the Internet and many of the services on it. As a proponent of Google products, YouTube, WordPress, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook I some times find it hard to justify spend on alternates to services provided by these suppliers. Unless of course they have something of commercial value the others don’t but in day to day business this is rare.

This does leave a support and reliability issue though. Much support is offered by the “fan base” these services build, from people like myself and there are others that provide paid support for these, otherwise free, services. At the end of the day though when the core component goes down there is no SLA (service level agreement) or other contract to rely on for recompense. Maybe that is the true cost of choosing to use these services?

Either way my view is still that these providers offer massive benefits to small and medium businesses that would otherwise not be trading or marketing online. And I know in my heart of hearts that Google will be doing their utmost to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of all.  If a component is that critical, as responsible business people we should all have a plan B anyway!