Alexa Rank almost never squares with amount of traffic people claim

[HomerJ]

Since I have started developing sites and tracking traffic and website rankings, I often notice that so many people claim their website is getting a certain amount of traffic per day or per month but it doesnt seem to square with their website rank. sometimes they claim to be getting an inordinate amount of more traffic than one of my sites yet their Alexa rank is well below mine! anyone have a better explanation?

[amplify]

Don't rely on Alexa alone to suggest traffic rankings. Not many people now days use the Alexa toolbar anyway...

[exxe]

anyone have a better explanation?

Most probably they lie.

[KING dot NET]

Try compete.com that provides archived of traffic.

[wussadotcom]

Alexa is not accurate.
You'll probably see a webmaster site with 5K UV per month at Alexa rank of 100K-200K while normal sites with 50K UV in the range of 300K-500K.

[loredan]

Alexa is just a bad joke. In order to track the traffic a visitor needs to have installed Alexa toolbar. It might work better in webmaster related niches where sites are visited by people who whave the toolbar installed (ie. other webmasters) but it's completely irrelevant in all the other niches.

[chimeara27]

I don't rely too much on Alexa sometimes my own blog doesn't get the accurate rankings of traffics from alexa.

[kspd]

Alexa should never be used in making any sort of important decision. Only as a very very very very rough estimate.
If a site is serious about being sold or just selling ads, they should either become fully quantified with quantcast, or use google analytics and add you so you can view reports.

[HomerJ]

yea, i have a better understanding now. still, now i have used alexa, compete, quantcast, my own webhost stats, and they pretty much all vary from one another.