What a link is worthBacklink value and traffic report for games.usatoday.com
In short: A new followed link from games.usatoday.com is worth about $692 to rankings by BV 2.9 (level A, Site Strength 75 of 100). It gets about 1.6M visits a month, 36% from organic search, down 18% since Aug 2026. No link placed on it has been audited.
The badge shows what a link from games.usatoday.com is worth, as this report does, and updates by itself. It links to this report.
Backlink value · what one new followed link from games.usatoday.com is worth to rankings
BV$692per link · level A · strength 75reading confidenceFair, 67 out of 100
Reading confidence 67 / 100
10 of 10 pages read had text · 44 links to other sites seen · posts from Nov 2026
How much of games.usatoday.com we read, and how sure our model was about the kind of link it gives. Never higher than what we read. The full reading
Priced from our reading of the site. No reliable sample of checked links yet: its link type comes from the articles mxverify read on the site.
$346 unrelated ×0.5$865 same topic ×1.25
How it compares · among 127 gaming sites on mxverify
- More monthly visits than 66% of the 127 gaming sites on mxverify.
- 36% of its visits come from organic search; the median gaming site gets 42%.
- AI assistants send 0.1% of its visits, about 70% of the 0.2% the median gaming site gets.
- A new followed link from it is worth more than a link from 99% of gaming sites.
- Priced at level A, the highest, like 3% of gaming sites.
- Direct51%
- Organic search36%
- Referrals11%
- Email1.1%
- Social0.6%
Where it ranks on Google
On the first page 4 keywords
Cited in AI Overview 4 keywords
Links to this site
Links other sites have made to games.usatoday.com, from outside link indexes: not the links placed on it that bklink audits.
Where the links sit: 44% in the article or main content of the linking page, 9.2% in its header, menu, sidebar or footer
Links placed here
No link placed on games.usatoday.com has been audited yet. An audit on bklink.uk checks each one — still there, followed or not, where it sits — and marks this report audited.
How it links out
Followed 100%
Domain and hosting
- Domain registered
- 29 April 1994
- Registration expires
- 30 April 2027
- Record last changed
- 31 March 2026
- Content category
- gaming
- Server address
- 151.101.2.62
- Hosting network
- Fastly (CDN)
Tech stack
Publisher signals
- Author bylines: none marked up on the homepage
- About page: not linked from the homepage
- Editorial policy: not linked from the homepage
- Contact page: linked from the homepage
- Named editorial staff: no editorial staff named on its own pages
Page speed
Chrome users, 28 days to 8 Nov 2026: LCP 1.4 s · INP 179 ms · CLS 0.12 — does not pass Core Web Vitals.
Devices: 30% phone · 65% desktop · 5% tablet — share of Chrome page loads, same 28 days.
Similar sites
How to use this report
- Price check. BV puts one new followed link from games.usatoday.com at $692 (level A), priced on a blend of link types (A 85% · B 6% · C 8% · D 1%): $346 to an unrelated site (×0.5), $865 to a same-topic site (×1.25). A followed editorial link (level A) would be worth up to $778 before relevance. A quote far above $973 for a level A link pays for what BV does not measure.
- Qualification and risk. Its Site Strength is 75 / 100; the link it usually gives is mostly level A — counted (an editorial citation). In the 10 articles we read, 0% of the links to other sites are nofollow, sponsored or ugc. The spam score of its links is 47 (0–100, the linking pages' average), not games.usatoday.com's own.
- Traffic reality check. Set any traffic claim beside the Oct 2026 estimate: 1.6M monthly visits, 36% from organic search (599.4K). Visits fell 18% from Aug 2026 to Oct 2026. Its top keyword by Visits (est.) is “mahjong”, about 60K a month; the ad value beside it is the whole market's.
Quick answers about games.usatoday.com
What is a link from games.usatoday.com worth?
BV, mxverify's backlink value, is an estimate of what one new followed link from a site is worth to rankings: by BV 2.9, a new followed link from games.usatoday.com is worth about $692 (level A). Relevance moves it: $346 to an unrelated site, $865 to a same-topic site.
In short: a link from games.usatoday.com is worth about $692 to rankings, up to $865 on the same topic.
Source: mxverify BV 2.9 methodology
Is a link from games.usatoday.com worth placing?
That depends on the kind of link: by BV 2.9, a link from games.usatoday.com is worth $778 as an editorial citation (level A), $389 as a guest, sponsored or listed link (level B), $78 as a press-release, syndicated, profile or forum link (level C), $39 as a network link (level D), before relevance. A price far above $973 for a level A link pays for something BV does not measure, such as the site's own readers.
Source: mxverify BV 2.9 methodology
How does games.usatoday.com's BV compare with other sites?
At about $692 a link, games.usatoday.com is in the “$500 or more” value band, with 55 of the 4,532 sites valued on mxverify. No site is in a higher band.
In short: games.usatoday.com is in the highest value band of the 4,532 sites valued on mxverify.
Source: mxverify's own directory, counted at the last daily update
How much traffic does games.usatoday.com get?
games.usatoday.com gets about 1.6M visits a month (Oct 2026), by a modelled estimate of all its visitors, not analytics measured on the site. 36% of them (599.4K) come from organic search. Visits fell 18% from Aug 2026 to Oct 2026.
In short: games.usatoday.com draws about 1.6M visits a month, down 18% since Aug 2026.
Does games.usatoday.com pass Core Web Vitals?
No: real Chrome users see games.usatoday.com's largest content load in 1.4 s (LCP), and at least one vital reported for it is not at Google's good level. The figures are from the Chrome UX Report (CC BY 4.0), the 75th percentile of real visits. Core Web Vitals describe how a page feels to its visitors; BV does not use them.
In short: games.usatoday.com does not pass Core Web Vitals on real-user data.
Source: Chrome UX Report, 28 days to 8 Nov 2026; web.dev: Web Vitals
Does games.usatoday.com link out with nofollow?
In the 10 articles we read, games.usatoday.com made 44 links to other sites, and 0% of them were nofollow, sponsored or ugc; the other 100% were followed.
Source: mxverify's reading of 10 articles, 11 Nov 2026; Google Search Central: qualify your outbound links
How old is games.usatoday.com?
The registered domain usatoday.com was registered in 1994, 32 years ago. games.usatoday.com is a subdomain, so it carries its registered domain's registration date.
Source: the public registration record; RFC 9083: RDAP JSON responses
How many sites link to games.usatoday.com?
1,670 websites link to games.usatoday.com, each counted once. 991 of them (59%) link with nofollow.
Has games.usatoday.com been audited?
No link placed on games.usatoday.com has been audited yet, so this report shows no rates for how its links behave. Its backlink value comes from site-level figures (its authority rating, traffic and our reading of its articles), not from audited placements.
In short: games.usatoday.com's report is valued, not audited.
How BV is worked out
A followed editorial link from games.usatoday.com would be worth up to $778 under BV 2.9, before relevance: its Site Strength is 75 out of 100. The link it usually gives is level A, worth about $692 — and relevance to the site it points to moves that between $346 and $865.
- Site Strength
- 75
- Worth up to
- $778
- Usual link type
- Mostly level A — counted · A 85%, B 6%, C 8%, D 1% → ×0.89
- Relevance to your site
- ×1
- BV score
- $692 per link
- Domain registered
- 29 April 1994
A link from games.usatoday.com, by link type
A link from games.usatoday.com at each level. What each level means.
| Level | Factor | Value |
|---|---|---|
| A — Counted | ×1 | $778 |
| B — May be discounted | ×0.5 | $389 |
| C — Usually neutralised | ×0.1 | $78 |
| D — Network | ×0.05 | $39 |
How games.usatoday.com links out: the full reading
Read by mxverify on 11 November 2026: the homepage and 10 articles (10 linked from its homepage).
Fair sample
Articles read
| Article | Published | Words | Links out | Followed | Says |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pete Hegseth avoids impeachment vote with GOP support | Nov 2026 | 931 | 2 | 2 | — |
| Iranian death threats prompt Trump official's move to military base | Nov 2026 | 523 | 6 | 6 | — |
| CFP rankings live updates, Playoff bracket 2026 analysis, reaction | Nov 2026 | 1,026 | 0 | 0 | — |
| North Hollywood crash: Car strikes pedestrians, killing at least 3 | Nov 2026 | 532 | 5 | 5 | — |
| 'Valor' over 'vanity': JFK heirs sue Trump over plans to build arch | Nov 2026 | 724 | 3 | 3 | — |
| 'Drinking from a fire hose': Freshmen lawmakers descend on Washington | Nov 2026 | 944 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Central Park rape suspect arrested at Burger King in Miami Beach | Nov 2026 | 766 | 13 | 13 | — |
| Winter weather forecast calls for cold, frost and snow | Nov 2026 | 948 | 12 | 12 | — |
| Megyn Kelly accuses judge of bias for Russell Brand’s prison sentence | Nov 2026 | 489 | 3 | 3 | — |
| Why Americans who never needed help are suddenly turning to food banks | Nov 2026 | 1,781 | 0 | 0 | — |
Jev, the model that judges every link in a bklink audit, reads these pages as a site whose links are mostly level A — A 99%, B 0%, C 1.0%, D 0%. Put together with what kind of site it is, how established it is, whether it sells placements and how it links out, a new link here is priced as A 85%, B 6.3%, C 7.8%, D 1.0%.
Traffic in detail
Modelled estimates for Oct 2026, as of 11 November 2026: site-wide, all visitors, not analytics measured on the site itself.
| Keyword | Searches / mo | CPC | Ad value / mo | Visits (est.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mahjong | 5M | $0.83 | $4.2M | 60K |
| games | 37.2M | $0.41 | $15.3M | 17K |
| word wipe | 165K | $0.06 | $9,900 | 13K |
| mahjong online | 550K | $0.59 | $324.5K | 8,040 |
| unolingo | 18.1K | $0.96 | $17.4K | 7,700 |
AI assistants
AI assistants sent about 1,979 visits in Oct 2026 — 0.1% of all visits. No assistant breakdown reported.
games.usatoday.com's robots.txt lets every AI crawler below read the site.
| Crawler | robots.txt |
|---|---|
| AI searchCrawls when an assistant searches the web for an answer | |
 ChatGPT OAI-SearchBot | Allowed |
 Claude Claude-SearchBot | Allowed |
 Perplexity PerplexityBot | Allowed |
| AI trainingCollects text to train AI models | |
 OpenAI GPTBot | Allowed |
 Anthropic ClaudeBot | Allowed |
 Google Google-Extended | Allowed |
 Apple Applebot-Extended | Allowed |
 Meta Meta-ExternalAgent | Allowed |
 ByteDance Bytespider | Allowed |
 Common Crawl CCBot | Allowed |
Potential display-ad revenue
$6,600–$26,000a month, estimated
- 6.8M pageviews a month: 1.6M visits × 4.1 pages per visit (Oct 2026)
- Niche: Gaming, from its content category · entertainment and news page RPM $1–$4 per 1,000 pageviews
- 98% of visits from the US, the UK, Canada and Australia; other countries counted at 20% of the rate
Server and network
Its domain was registered in 1994.
mxverify looked up games.usatoday.com's address: it is served through Fastly (CDN), a content delivery network. Its address is shared edge infrastructure used by unrelated sites, so it cannot show who else runs on the same server, and sharing the network is no sign of a connection.
Fastly (CDN) fronts millions of unrelated sites, so sharing it says nothing about who runs a site.
Where each figure comes from
| Figure | Source | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Backlink value | BV 2.9 | Site Strength × link type; link type from our reading of the site |
| Links placed here | bklink audits | None audited yet |
| How it links out | Read by mxverify | 44 links to other sites in 10 articles, published Nov 2026; read 11 Nov 2026 Fair sample |
| Traffic | Third-party estimates | Modelled estimates for Oct 2026, site-wide and for all visitors, as of 11 Nov 2026 |
| Links to this site | Third-party backlink index | 1,670 linking sites, read 12 Nov 2026; one reading a month |
| Authority | Ahrefs Domain Rating | Half of Site Strength, shown in steps of 5, as of 13 Nov 2026; the rating itself is not shown |
| Server and network | mxverify's DNS and ASN lookup | 151.101.2.62 · Fastly (CDN) · a CDN edge, shared by unrelated sites |
| Domain age | Domain registry (RDAP) | Registered 29 Apr 1994 |
| Potential display-ad revenue | mxverify estimate | Traffic estimate's pageviews for Oct 2026 × the entertainment and news page RPM benchmark × country factor, worked out Nov 2026; not the site's earnings |
Limitations: what this report does not show
- No link on this publication has been audited yet, so nothing here describes how its links behave.
- A CDN address is shared by unrelated sites, so it says nothing about ownership; no neighbours are listed for it.
- games.usatoday.com gives more than one kind of link (A 85% · B 6% · C 8% · D 1%), so BV prices a blend of them: an editorial link there would be worth $778 and a guest or sponsored one $389, before relevance.
- games.usatoday.com's visits fell 18% from Aug 2026 to Oct 2026. Half of Site Strength is organic search traffic, so a fall that lasts lowers BV when the figure is next read.