how to analyze and make web research from exciting software sites

Hello
i will try to explain the topic more clearly , is it possible to determine what users likes in terms of statistics
just from collecting data from software download sites like sf.net (open source ) or download.com (shareware)
in simple words .. is it possible to make statistics on users from free resources on the net ?

see this - http://www.quantcast.com/ Update :

Also see http://www.spyfu.com and http://www.compete.com (paid versions are really nice).

For web stats:

http://compete.com http://www.quantcast.com/ http://www.alexa.com For top software downloads, you may want to look at download.com & sourceforge and such and see what downloads the most.

Sourceforge top downloads:

http://sourceforge.net/top/toplist.php?type=downloads_week http://download.cnet.com/windows/most-popular/3101-20_4-0.html

The other biggie is Alexa: www.alexa.com

Be wary of all of these "analysis" sites.

I've found massive (as in, orders of magnitude) discrepancies between these sites measuring a single site, and between my own numbers for my sites and what these say.

Furthermore I've asked other people about it -- both experts and Twitter queries -- and many people agree with this.

Use these sites as a very general guide but don't go crazy about it.