The Alexa Myth

No this is not a Greek legend full of women with wings dive-bombing heroes in small boats or blokes waking up one day to discover they’ve married their mother by accident, this is about a website that measures traffic volumes to other websites. The myth part is the same though.    

While Greek Myths are stories handed down over generations and then written down by some enterprising chap to make some cash, the Alexa Myth is a story handed down since 1996 and written down by some enterprising etc etc etc….

Much the same as the Greek Myth, the Alexa Myth did not set out to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes – no one really believes that a bloke made a pair of wings in his garden shed, strapped them on, flew up two million feet and discovered a design fault, do they? Hence, no one really believes that your Alexa ranking, calculated by counting the sites visited only by those people who have an Alexa Tool Bar (a wot?!), is a sound way to evaluate how your website is performing, do they?

The trouble is that yes, they do believe it. It’s like believing that there really is a woman with snakes for hair, a three headed dog or a man with a trident who lives at the bottom of the sea. It’s not likely is it? Not something you’d put a bet on. But myths are powerful things when perpetrated by people who should know better. So, our advice is if an ‘expert’ tells you you’re ace because you’ve got a great Alexa ranking just tell them you know your Greek Myths and Alexa is one of them!