What a link is worthBacklink value and traffic report for sports-reference.com
In short: A new followed link from sports-reference.com is worth about $588 to rankings by BV 2.9 (level A, Site Strength 75 of 100); BV is an estimate, not a price anyone charges. It gets about 7.9M visits a month, 46% from organic search, up 34% since Jul 2026. No link placed on it has been audited.
The badge shows what a link from sports-reference.com is worth, as this report does, and updates by itself. It links to this report.
Backlink value · what one new followed link from sports-reference.com is worth to rankings
BV$588per link · level A · strength 75reading confidenceFair, 55 out of 100
Reading confidence 55 / 100
5 of 5 pages read had text · 223 links to other sites seen
How much of sports-reference.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.
$294 unrelated ×0.5$735 same topic ×1.25
- Organic search46%
- Direct39%
- Referrals11%
- Social2.7%
- Paid1.3%
- Other channels0.9%
Where it ranks on Google
On the first page 1 keyword
Links to this site
Links other sites have made to sports-reference.com, from outside link indexes: not the links placed on it that bklink audits.
Pages in Google: about 1,990,000
What Google shows for site:sports-reference.com — the first 10 pages
- Sports Reference Hub | Your Favorite Sports and Teams in ...
- Immaculate Grid Powered by Sports Reference
- vs. : Head-to-Head Stats Comparison | Stathead
- Pro Football - Player Season & Career Stats Finder
- Boston Celtics vs. New York Knicks
- Justin Verlander (2022-2022) vs. Dylan Cease ...
- Pro Football - Player Season & Career Stats Finder
- Kris Bryant (2017-2017) vs. Trea Turner (2018-2018)
- Player Span Stats Finder - Hockey | Stathead
- Bill Russell (1958-1958) vs. Dolph Schayes (1958-1958)
Links placed here
No link placed on sports-reference.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 99%ugc 1%
Domain and hosting
- Domain registered
- 03 December 2000
- Content category
- sports
- Server address
- 104.18.18.43
- Hosting network
- Cloudflare (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: not linked from the homepage
Page speed
Chrome users, 28 days to 4 Nov 2026: LCP 1.7 s · INP 162 ms · CLS 0.02 — passes Core Web Vitals.
Devices: 50% phone · 48% desktop · 1% 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 sports-reference.com at $588 (level A), priced on a blend of link types (A 55% · B 41% · C 4%): $294 to an unrelated site (×0.5), $735 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 5 articles we read, 1% of the links to other sites are nofollow, sponsored or ugc. The spam score of its links is 1 (0–100, the linking pages' average), not sports-reference.com's own.
- Traffic reality check. Set any traffic claim beside the Sept 2026 estimate: 7.9M monthly visits, 46% from organic search (3.6M). Visits rose 34% from Jul 2026 to Sept 2026. Its top keyword by Visits (est.) is “lane kiffin”, about 40.2K a month; the ad value beside it is the whole market's.
Quick answers about sports-reference.com
What is a link from sports-reference.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 sports-reference.com is worth about $588 (level A). Relevance moves it: $294 to an unrelated site, $735 to a same-topic site.
In short: a link from sports-reference.com is worth about $588 to rankings, up to $735 on the same topic.
Source: mxverify BV 2.9 methodology
Is a link from sports-reference.com worth placing?
That depends on the kind of link: by BV 2.9, a link from sports-reference.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 sports-reference.com's BV compare with other sites?
At about $588 a link, sports-reference.com is in the “$500 or more” value band, with 52 of the 4,471 sites valued on mxverify. No site is in a higher band.
In short: sports-reference.com is in the highest value band of the 4,471 sites valued on mxverify.
Source: mxverify's own directory, counted at the last daily update
How much traffic does sports-reference.com get?
sports-reference.com gets about 7.9M visits a month (Sept 2026), by a modelled estimate of all its visitors, not analytics measured on the site. 46% of them (3.6M) come from organic search. Visits rose 34% from Jul 2026 to Sept 2026.
In short: sports-reference.com draws about 7.9M visits a month, up 34% since Jul 2026.
Does sports-reference.com pass Core Web Vitals?
Yes: real Chrome users see sports-reference.com's largest content load in 1.7 s (LCP), and every vital reported for it is 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: sports-reference.com passes Core Web Vitals on real-user data.
Source: Chrome UX Report, 28 days to 4 Nov 2026; web.dev: Web Vitals
Does sports-reference.com link out with nofollow?
In the 5 articles we read, sports-reference.com made 223 links to other sites, and 1% of them were nofollow, sponsored or ugc; the other 99% were followed. BV prices a nofollow link at level C (×0.1), whatever the site is otherwise worth.
Source: mxverify's reading of 5 articles, 7 Nov 2026; Google Search Central: qualify your outbound links
How old is sports-reference.com?
The domain sports-reference.com was registered in 2000, 25 years ago.
Source: the public registration record; RFC 9083: RDAP JSON responses
How many sites link to sports-reference.com?
13,538 websites link to sports-reference.com, each counted once. 3,866 of them (29%) link with nofollow.
Has sports-reference.com been audited?
No link placed on sports-reference.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: sports-reference.com's report is valued, not audited.
How BV is worked out
A followed editorial link from sports-reference.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 $588 — and relevance to the site it points to moves that between $294 and $735.
- Site Strength
- 75
- Worth up to
- $778
- Usual link type
- Mostly level A — counted · A 55%, B 41%, C 4% → ×0.76
- Relevance to your site
- ×1
- BV score
- $588 per link
- Domain registered
- 3 December 2000
A link from sports-reference.com, by link type
A link from sports-reference.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 sports-reference.com links out: the full reading
Read by mxverify on 7 November 2026: the homepage and 5 articles (10 from across its sitemap). This is our own reading of the site, not a vendor's figure, and it is what places a new link on the A–D scale until links placed here are audited.
Fair sample
- Advertising
Articles read
Jev, the model that judges every link in a bklink audit, reads these pages as a site whose links are mostly level A — A 97%, B 1.0%, C 2.0%, 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 55%, B 41%, C 4.3%, D 0%.
Traffic in detail
Modelled estimates for Sept 2026, as of 7 November 2026: site-wide, all visitors, not analytics measured on the site itself.
| Keyword | Searches / mo | CPC | Ad value / mo | Visits (est.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| immaculate grid | 823K | $11.11 | $9.1M | 648.3K |
| lane kiffin | 1.5M | $3.00 | $4.5M | 40.2K |
| college football reference | 19.4K† | — | — | 38.6K |
| cfb scores | 1.2M | $8.90 | $10.9M | 36.2K |
| arch manning | 1.8M | $0.07 | $128.1K | 30.5K |
AI assistants
AI assistants sent about 7,947 visits in Sept 2026 — 0.1% of all visits. Each assistant's share of those visits, by month:
sports-reference.com's robots.txt asks 1 of the 10 AI crawlers below not to read the site, all of them ones that collect training data.
| 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 | Disallowed |
 Anthropic ClaudeBot | Allowed |
 Google Google-Extended | Allowed |
 Apple Applebot-Extended | Allowed |
 Meta Meta-ExternalAgent | Allowed |
 ByteDance Bytespider | Allowed |
 Common Crawl CCBot | Allowed |
Server and network
Its domain was registered in 2000.
mxverify looked up sports-reference.com's address: it is served through Cloudflare (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.
Cloudflare (CDN) fronts millions of unrelated sites, so sharing it says nothing about who runs a site. The count is shown; the sites are not listed.
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 | 223 links to other sites in 5 articles; read 7 Nov 2026 Fair sample |
| Traffic | Third-party estimates | Modelled estimates for Sept 2026, site-wide and for all visitors, as of 7 Nov 2026 |
| Links to this site | Third-party backlink index | 13,538 linking sites, read 7 Nov 2026; one reading a month |
| Authority | Ahrefs Domain Rating | Half of Site Strength, shown in steps of 5, as of 7 Nov 2026; the rating itself is not shown |
| Server and network | mxverify's DNS and ASN lookup | 104.18.18.43 · Cloudflare (CDN) · a CDN edge, shared by unrelated sites |
| Domain age | Domain registry (RDAP) | Registered 3 Dec 2000 |
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.
- sports-reference.com gives more than one kind of link (A 55% · B 41% · C 4%), so BV prices a blend of them: an editorial link there would be worth $778 and a guest or sponsored one $389, before relevance.