accurate traffic check for a site that's not mine?

[helloworld]

greetings forum,
how would I go about checking the traffic of, say, a competitors website accurately?

I'm actually curious to see how much visibility my co.'s tag at the bottom might get if I were to donate a site to a nonprofit.. is that horrible?

i've seen a few pay-for services.. and alexa already.
hey internet, what else you got?

 

[chrishirst]

You can't.

 

[leroy30]

Why not ask them.

 

[ian]

I use one of the following, I never use alexa these days
http://www.quantcast.com/ (only works properly if the site actually signs up with quantcast)
http://www.compete.com/us/ you now have to sign up to view their stats.
neither site will give accurate stats but they will give you a general idea and I think they are better than alexa which is biased and from what I have seen, too easy for people to game.

 

[chrishirst]

I use one of the following, I never use alexa these days
http://www.quantcast.com/ (only works properly if the site actually signs up with quantcast)
http://www.compete.com/us/ you now have to sign up to view their stats.
neither site will give accurate stats but they will give you a general idea and I think they are better than alexa which is biased and from what I have seen, too easy for people to game.

Compete, Quantcast and Alexa data sets are ALL based on statistically insignificant percentages of Internet users and traffic, which are then extrapolated and then disguised as being "useful", they all have a error margin of greater than NINETY PERCENT, the average long range weather forecast has more chance of being correct than any of those are.