What a $150 USA TODAY Press Release Actually Buys

A “USA TODAY” press release costs about $150. You pay to post your own words there; no reporter writes it. We tested one: Perplexity cited the USA TODAY page by the next day, ChatGPT skipped it for a copy on another site, and older releases like it get almost no Google visits.

This is for business owners, agency owners and the young adults we train to run agencies. If someone is selling you “PR distribution,” an “As seen in USA TODAY” badge or “AI search visibility,” read this before you pay. It fits into how we build authority with the four-stage Content Factory: real proof, organized so Google and AI can find it.

Want every chart and table? Read the full teardown: Paid PR vs. Earned Media: What a USA TODAY Press Release Can and Can’t Do.

What you are actually buying

USA TODAY runs a section just for press releases. In June 2025 Gannett, which now calls itself USA TODAY Co., signed an exclusive deal with XPR Media to fill it. Per the announcement, releases sent through XPR can appear on USA TODAY and across its 200+ local network sites, in a dedicated section. (For the release we tracked, we found the USA TODAY copy but none on the three local Gannett papers we spot-checked.) Gannett announced the deal through its Senior Vice President of Content Monetization. The title tells you what the section is: space for sale.

You don’t buy from Gannett. You buy from a reseller, and many sell the same spot. On October 6, 2026 we found it listed at $125 (Reachwire), $149 (EIN Presswire, where USA TODAY is included “based on relevance only”), $159 (PressRelease.com), $175 (RedPress) and $250 (King Newswire, which says placement isn’t guaranteed). Reported prices for a national newswire release run $760 to $1,000 or more.

Two more facts from the paperwork. XPR’s own terms say it does not create, edit, fact-check or endorse what it distributes. And the content comes down from its network when the account ends. You are renting a page, not earning a story.

How to tell the difference in ten seconds:

How we tested it

On October 6, 2026 we looked at one fresh release in the section, published the day before our test, and at the section as a whole. We used three instruments: Ahrefs for traffic, links and AI citations; DataForSEO for live Google results and live answers from Perplexity and from OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 model with web search (through the API, not the ChatGPT app); and the release’s full text from the distributor’s preview page.

We did not scrape USA TODAY. Gannett blocks automated access, and we respected that. Every USA TODAY number below is a third-party estimate or a search result, and we say which.

Google: a normal release gets almost no visits

Ahrefs estimates the whole press-release section gets about 15,000 to 20,000 Google visits a month worldwide. That’s about a tenth of one percent of the roughly 13 million a month it estimates for USA TODAY overall. And it isn’t spread evenly: about half goes to seven supplement “reviews.” Those advertorials rank. Ordinary company news doesn’t.

By the next day, the fresh release ranked #2 for its own headline, behind a copy on a local TV site. It did not show up for the searches a buyer in that category would type. USA TODAY’s authority was earned by its newsroom. Ordinary releases borrow the logo, not the rankings.

AI answers: Perplexity cites it, ChatGPT doesn’t

The chart at the top tells the story. Ahrefs finds 368 Perplexity citations of USA TODAY press-release pages, and 134 to 185 in Google’s AI features. It finds zero in ChatGPT and zero in Gemini, even though ChatGPT cites other USA TODAY pages thousands of times.

Why the split? One likely reason: Gannett licenses its content to Perplexity, lets Google in, and says it blocks most other unlicensed AI bots. Its CEO, Mike Reed, said on the October 2025 earnings call:

“We are blocking over 99% of AI-verified bots other than Google that try to scrape our content without licensing agreements in place.”Mike Reed, Gannett, Q3 2025 earnings call, Oct 30, 2025

He added that about 70 million of the 75 million bots blocked that September came from OpenAI.

Our live test showed the same pattern. We asked ChatGPT and Perplexity three kinds of questions about the company behind the fresh release:

That matches the bigger picture. The May 2026 edition of Muck Rack’s “What Is AI Reading?” study covered more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Press releases were 1.1% of citations, and paid or advertorial content 0.3%. About 84% came from earned media. Muck Rack sells earned-media software, so read it as directional, and the share moves: its December 2025 edition put press releases near 6%. (The series started in 2025.)

The two ways this gets people in trouble

Links. Google’s spam policies list “links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites” as link spam, unless the links carry rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored”. Google’s John Mueller put it plainly in 2018: “we try to ignore links from things like press releases” (Search Engine Roundtable). If a seller promises “dofollow backlinks” from a press release, you are buying the exact thing the policy names. If strange links start pointing at your site, here’s how a backlink spam attack works.

Logos. The FTC says ads formatted to look like content are deceptive if they make people think they are “independent, impartial, or not from the sponsoring advertiser itself” (FTC, 2015). In 2011 the FTC went after fake news sites that used “the names and logos of major media outlets” including USA Today to sell acai pills (FTC). At least one reseller markets “As Seen On usage rights” with a placement. A badge like that tells visitors a newsroom chose you. It didn’t.

When $150 is worth it

We’re not saying never. A paid release earns its fee when all three of these are true:

1. You have real news. A launch, a study, a new location. Not a slogan.
2. You want those facts on a third-party page AI engines read, so Perplexity and Google’s AI can quote them when someone asks about that news.
3. You will measure it. Write down the questions, engines and answers before you buy, and check again a week later.

It is not worth $150 if you want rankings, backlinks, a badge for your homepage, or to show up when buyers compare options.

What we do instead

Our rule is simple: we don’t pay for links, and we don’t pay for PR. Not because paid placements are evil, but because they’re rented and they don’t make anyone trust you more. We build what we own: real proof, organized.

“Instead of PR, which is like trying to twist the news … we’re just going to have the good things stand out. That will drown out all the gossip that’s unsubstantiated, because the truth will stand out.”Dennis Yu

Here is the order we work in, with the guide for each step:

1. Harvest what people already say about you. Reviews, podcast mentions, kind words from partners. How to harvest and repurpose positive mentions.
2. Make relationships two-way and public. “If both pages would still exist with no linking benefit at all, it is a relationship. If not, it is a scheme.” Reciprocal credibility.
3. Get covered by the authority in your niche, the podcast or trade site your buyers already trust. Coverage from the authority in your niche.
4. Make Google and AI understand who you are. One name, one site, clear facts, schema. How Google and AI decide who you are.
5. Put a dollar a day behind what already works, so the right people see your best proof. Dollar a Day.
6. Track the AI answers every week. Same questions, same engines, a dated baseline. How we track AI citations.

“When you have the truth and you organize it, and the people that have a good reputation, AI should be able to multiply that. You don’t need PR, marketing, sales, trickery and slogans.”Dennis Yu

A 10-minute test before you buy any placement

1. Search the exact headline of one of the seller’s older releases in Google. Count the copies and see where they live.
2. Look up three older releases from the same section in Ahrefs or Semrush. If they get zero traffic, yours will too.
3. Ask the seller three questions: Are the links nofollow or sponsored? Can I use the outlet’s logo? What happens to the pages if I stop paying?
4. Write down your baseline: five questions your buyers ask, plus today’s answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI.
5. Check again in seven days. No baseline, no lift.

Questions people ask