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Alexa bases its rankings on a little known plug-in built into Internet Explorer, or through the use of their toolbar. Yes, that's right, spyware. All Alexa's rankings are showing is how many users, who use products with their spyware built in, have visited that site. I'm sure they use other factors as well, but Alexa is not the most accurate tool for comparing site traffic stats.
Here's an experiment for you. If you're an Internet Explorer user, download
Ad-Aware, update the reference file, and run the program. I guarantee that, if you are running a recent version of IE, you will find a "data miner" called Alexa.
You also have to take into consideration that not everyone uses products with Alexa's data miner built in. For instance, I use Firefox, which does not report your browsing habbits.
The only way to be for sure on any site's traffic stats is to view the raw server logs, which most large sites have protected.
Oh, BTW.. visit
http://pages.alexa.com/company/index.html for more info on Alexa. Again, their not as accurate as they may seem.
