Buckle your seatbelts, gents and ladies, David Futrelle is taking over the internet! After years scraping around at the bottom of the traffic barrel, Mantitz has suddenly gone viral. As you can see from the chart here, he went from an internet non-entity to what would appear to be serious competition for the likes of A Voice for Men and a host of other websites which have actually built a regular readership based on content that was not only provocative, but remarkable in enough circles to create backlinks across the interwebz.
The gynecomastia plagued mammoth hunter’s sudden, meteoric rise into alleged relevance can only be explained by one thing. There must have been a stratospherically viral article (usually meaning more than two paragraphs) penned by the Wizard of Wallow that must have been picked up by every major media outlet in the mainstream.
Trouble is, we could not find it. A complete search of his website for something that coincided with his liftoff into the upper echelons of Alexa rankings, only turned up more of his usual fare. Quote mining, distortions, lies, poorly written snark and hundreds of comments, most of which have nothing to do with the OP and everything to do with kittens.
Not to be cruel, but if your readers are more interested in kittens than in what you have to say, it makes becoming an internet juggernaut a little more challenging
So, that leaves us with only one other conclusion about David’s strut-worthy presence on Alexa. He paid for it. Yes, for those who cannot create real traffic, it can be purchased. Of course, purchasing a fake Alexa ranking is, well, fake. But what better tool for web presence could there ever be for a fake writer, with fake ideas waging a fake war against fake enemies for the approval of fake allies?
A fake Alexa ranking fits on David Futrelle like a day old bucket of fried chicken fits in his lap . And it will probably last about as long given it requires regular financial maintenance.
If you want to run on smoke and mirrors, though, you have to have plenty of both. And it appears that David has put both his boobs in one bucket (assuming the chicken is mostly gone at this point).
One far more reliable way to interpret a websites relevant importance on the internet is with Google PageRank. Don’t let the word “Page” fool you. It has nothing to do, per se, with your ranking on a page. It is simply the namesake of the man, Larry Page, who developed an algorithm to determine a web pages relative importance on the internet.
The scale goes in value from 0 to ten. I have opted use the interpretation of these meanings of each of these numbers from redfusionmedia.com. They are as follows:
0 – You are NOT listed on Google, or you have been kicked off. Not good.
1 – Very poor. The only good part about a one is you are listed.
2 – Poor. The good news, you can improve.
3 – Average. Most sites are about a 3.
4 – Above Average. You’re starting to get warm.
5 – Good. With a 5 you may land on the first page of some search terms, give yourself a hand.
6 – Great. You’ve done some good work. You’ll be able to contend for some top positions.
7 – You’re on fire! If you have a seven, you’re a top site. Most small and medium size companies should dream of sevens.
8 – You must be huge. Like ESPN.com
9 – Your bigger than ESPN, like CNN.com or Yahoo.com
10 – Reserved for the best, I’ve found 4 – Google.com (of course), Microsoft.com, Apple.com, and Adobe.com
Now, for the PageRank’s of sites you may be familiar with. You can verify here.
Wehuntedthemammoth.com – 0 (yes, Mantitz, with his sudden rise to fame, has a PageRank of not having a PageRank)
Goodmenproject.com – 2 (PageRank is POOR. One has to wonder where their newfound Alexa, which used to trail ours for quite some time, then surpassed us with Futrellian quickness, came from the same internet sweatshop employed by Mantitz)
Avoiceformen.com – 5 (Though we will wait to give ourselves a hand till we hit 7)
Jezebel.com – 7 (600 million in Gawker Media cash has its advantages)
With a glance at Futrelle’s Alexa, you will note that he seems to have a disproportionate audience in Brazil. I am not knocking that. We have Brazilian readers, too, but we have always attributed that to our Brazilian affiliate site, published in Brazil’s national language, Portuguese.
All I can say to David at this point is keep doing what you are doing. Perhaps you can also take a hint from the goodmenproject.com, who long made it a habit to auto refresh their site every 12 minutes in order to mislead advertisers with the number of page impressions they were actually getting for their money.
After all, you do have that in common with them, don’t you? Lies for cash.
