Text Link Ads does indeed rely some how on alexa ranking, or rather TLA relays on almost all public metrics they can get hands into to give a value to a site and hence to the links from that site. The good thing about TLA is that you can always negotiate with them, ask them questions and there is always someone ready to answer and listen. But the fact is that when a site that is approved gets listed on their inventory the data that are shown are PageRank and Alexa Ranking so even if you get approved with a high alexa ranking and a low pagerank it would be hard to get someone purchase link, but once they do…from a site with 1500 visitors a day I doubt that they won’t renew the ad inventory.

For example http://www.themakemoneyonline.net has a higher Alexa ranking from 60-100 uniques a day than many of my more popular websites. I think it’s down to the type of visitors, it attracts webmasters and the sort of people who have the Alexa toolbar installed.

On the other hand a website like http://www.sea-anglers.com that gets over 1500 unique visitors a day is nowhere on Alexa.

I’m not sure whether to use TLA, if for no other reason than how much relevance they give Alexa.