To end a trademark infringement case brought on by Amazon’s Alexa, best known by marketers as a web traffic rankings site, Alexaholic has changed it’s name to Statsaholic, but continues to provide a direct interface onto Alexa data.

Alexa has long provided one of the most popular traffic ranking databases, aggregating behavioral data from millions of users who have downloaded its browser toolbar. Alexa serves up statistics on site traffic, Internet reach, and visitor demographics, ranking the top 100,000 sites on the Web. Other Web site traffic ranking sites include Quantcast and Compete.com, while Technorati provides traffic stats and rankings for blogs.

Statsaholic offers a simplified Ajax interface on Alexa data, offering comparative graphing for up to 5 domains, with slick controls for shaping the data to compare site reach, rank and page views according to an array of date ranges. It’s a useful tool for marketers who want to measure traffic statistics, alone and against competitors. Statsaholic founder Ron Hornbaker, commenting on TechCrunch about the name change, mentioned that additional sources of data, such as Compete.com, are the focus of future improvements to the service.

Meanwhile, many experts in the traffic and search space continue to debate the accuracy and reliability of traffic ranking services, and the methods in which the data is gathered. So don’t spout your Alexa numbers in mixed company. Andrew Goodman from Traffick.com has a good roundup on the issue, and SEOmoz has an exhaustive, if narrowly focused, study and analysis of Website Analytics vs. Competitive Intelligence Metrics in measuring visitor traffic.