Google and Press Release Distribution Site Penalties

[engine]

Since Google's Panda 4.0 and the latest updates were introduced in the last few weeks, some news wires have been badly hit.

Some wire services may not have the profile and clout of others, however, PR Newswire, one of the bigger services, has hit back. It's announced new guidelines to raise the quality of the content in news releases. In addition to that, it's taking steps to identify and remove "low quality" news releases that are using "questionable SEO tactics" from its own site.

Clearly, when it hits the bottom line, the site needs to do something. Now, its less likely to accept any old story for cash.

Has Google Panda 4.0 meant the day of SEO news distribution hit an end?

[netmeg]

I thought it already had.

[engine]

Well, yes, obviously. Where next for all those press release distribution sites? Their day must be over, too.

[netmeg]

There used to be some services that actually provided traffic from press releases - my industrial clients got nice leads there. Dunno if that still happens though; I've been out of that gig for a while now.

One of those things that *should* work if done right, but got ruined by spammers (and Google to some extent). Oh well.

[vandelayweb]

I haven't really checked post-Panda 4.0, but they were still being used by many in the genre of one of my sites for exact match anchor text links. I kind of wanted to write these competitors to ask if they had been living under a rock for the past couple of years.

The PR websites let this activity go on. These "articles" go through an editorial approval process and yet they still they get stuffed with links. I find it a bit comical that they are just now standing up to combat low quality news releases. Or maybe they just knew this was a cash cow they didn't want to disturb kind of like Godaddy during the days of exact match domain names.

[engine]

>Or maybe they just knew this was a cash cow they didn't want to disturb...

That's very likely.

I was getting emails from some of these sites encouraging submissions at special deals up until only recently.

Perhaps the best of these sites will survive and flourish as they clean up their act.