are statistics private?

[geordief]

A bit surprised to get a phone call from a software seller claiming he knew that a particular website was getting so much hits a month etc when it wasn't his.
Is that possible without access to the server?
As far as I know the only way to tell if someone else's site is doing well is through Alexa or Pagerank .Of course if you do a link:www.site.com search that would be informative.But how can anyone know how many hits a site had unless they have a public counter or maybe he has actually asked them directly?

[vincevincevince]

Many people's statistics aren't private at all. For example, do a search for 'usage_200706.html' and you'll see over 100k sites with public-facing statistics pages.

[Receptional]

There are also other services that aim to track third party sites. Alexa, sure, gives an estimate - but based on a methodology that is unsound in certain industry sectors. But many others are available.

Nielsen, Comscore, Hitwise, Compete are four.