Does Alexa give total traffic qty?

Unless something has changed very, very recently, the Alexa traffic stats are based on estimates. They collect stats from people who have the Alexa toolbar open and active, then using statistical techniques SWAG from there.

The only way I know to get a truly accurate picture of a site's total traffic is by analyzing its server logs.

Yes.

I think you're missing the fact that "Alexa rankings" can only ever tell you (if indeed they can even do this accurately) how many visitors a site has had who had the "Alexa toolbar" installed and running in their browsers at the time of their visit. They can't know about any other visitors.

Those people with the "Alexa toolbar" installed and running in their browsers are nearly all internet marketers of one kind or another. Nobody else uses it. So it tells you nothing about any other traffic. Nothing about potential customers. Nothing interesting or useful at all.

In other words, for most people's purposes, most of the time, it's more or less a waste of time. (For example, I myself have a very high traffic site which "Alexa" thinks has almost no traffic at all, and I have another site with very, very little traffic, which they apparently think has floods of traffic! And that's fairly typical. :rolleyes: )

It's not really worthy of further attention, but if you want more, these threads may help you ...

(newb) Is Alexa important?
How important is Alexa ranking?
Importance of Alexa.
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8235400

By having access to the site's server logs, I think ... I can't see another way?

Edited to add: oops, John beat me to it, I posted slowly, while I found those links, without first seeing his reply above.

Alexa usually gives me what I want, but not always.


LOL

I saw quantcast.com

And it gives what I'm looking for

Does this work or is also mumbo jumbo?

I would consider Quantcast more reliable than Alexa.

You cannot trust Alexa 100%, but it gives you an estimation.