Press Releases and Panda 4.0

Barry Schwartz recently published a story called "Press Release Sites See Huge Drop In Google Ranking After Panda 4.0" at http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-4-press-releases-18631.html. Being the owner of a press release distribution service, I’ve already been contacted a few times about his article. My opinion? -- Barry is absolutely right. Press Release Sites did get slapped hard and I believe that they will continue to get slapped even harder.  However, I want to be very clear that both Barry and I said "Press Release SITES," not "Press Releases." When he talks about Press Release Sites, he's talking about domains like PRweb.com, BusinessWire.com, PRNewswire.com, and PRLog.com. These are services that sell press release distribution, but have worked to build their own domains into a platform for “gaming” Google. These Press Release Sites contain no legitimate news, and do no actual reporting. Yet they were ranking for tons of keywords. It's very unlikely that anyone ever goes to the homepage of PRweb.com to read through the top stories of the day. Therefore, in my opinion (as well as Google’s), that makes it a Content Farm. However, Press Releases on actual news websites are still ranking as well as they ever were. It simply comes down to whether the distribution you’ve purchased is going to real news websites, rather than the Content Farms many marketers have been relying on. We saw that coming when Matt Cutts tweeted about press releases last year, which is why our goal from the beginning has been to syndicate and distribute Press Releases to the websites of actual news organizations. Websites that run real news stories and have useful homepages that get lots of legitimate traffic. Sites like Yahoo Finance and the biggest ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox Affiliates in the country.  Our releases have been unaffected by this update. They’re on the same domains and featured in the same sections as real news. If your Press Release strategy currently relies on something like PRweb.com, it's time to adapt. Learn about our distribution at http://pressadvantage.com/distribution

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