Also remember Alexa only aggregates their stats based on users who visit a site who have the Alexa Toolbar installed. Do you have the Alexa toolbar installed? I know I don’t nor do any of the people I know/interact with…
The only accurate way to get stats is to ask the ‘company’ you are interested in using. Every website that offers the service should be able to provide you with information regarding their stats.
Third parties like this are often not showing a clear picture of the actual information based on hitlogs etc – they are ‘estimating’.
Just throwing that out there – because there are also services like the one listed above that offer rank for a fee (which translates into ‘make my site look bigger/heavier/more traveled than it really is, to attract more people).
There is nothing wrong with research – just make sure you do a lot of it
