PR Newswire Takes Action Against Spammers with New Press Release Guidelines & Deletion of Low Quality Content

NEW YORK, June 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Effective immediately, press releases and other content submitted for distribution via PR Newswire's wire distribution network will be evaluated under new guidelines to help ensure content quality, the company announced today. These guidelines are designed to reduce the distribution of low quality content over PR Newswire's distribution network and the exploitation of press releases on its website to artificially manipulate search rankings.  Additionally, PR Newswire has taken steps recently to identify and remove low quality content from its website.

These efforts supplement the company's already robust press release acceptance guidelines, including the verification of sources, authentication of the sender's identity and attribution to the source, among other requirements that all messages must meet before distribution by PR Newswire.  

"PR Newswire is committed to continuously improving the quality of the content distributed via our network, website, and other digital channels in order to better serve the millions of journalists, bloggers and members of the public who read press releases each month," said Ninan Chacko, PR Newswire's CEO. "By reviewing each piece of content to ensure message quality, and deleting releases we find to be of low quality, we will increase the value of our content and website for our audiences, and limit the exploitation of content distribution for questionable SEO tactics."

Recommended press release content quality factors

Under the new copy quality guidelines, PR Newswire editorial staff will review press releases for a number of message elements, including:

• Inclusion of insightful analysis and original content (e.g. research, reporting or other interesting and useful information);
• Use of varied release formats, guarding against repeated use of templated copy (except boilerplate);
• Assessing release length, guarding against issue of very short, unsubstantial messages that are mere vehicles for links;
• Overuse of keywords and/or links within the message.

Identification & deletion of low quality content on PRNewswire.com

Going forward, PR Newswire will also analyze press release data to identify and delete low quality content on an ongoing basis.

"Google's recent algorithm update is essentially a technology-based editorial guideline for content quality, and PR Newswire is aligning our processes with those standards to ensure that press releases distributed are high-quality, authenticated content," noted Jason Edelboim, senior vice president of global product for PR Newswire. "Google's recent action targeting low-quality content in the Panda 4.0 update affirms the importance of ensuring press releases and other content distributed via PR Newswire's network are of real utility and interest to journalists and bloggers, as well as the general public."

PR Newswire's website is one component of the company's multi-channel distribution network, which together deliver unmatched reach to media, influencers, investors and public audiences, including: 

• PR Newswire for Journalists, a service used by more than 30,000 credentialed media and bloggers;
• Direct delivery to newsrooms;
• RSS and social media feeds;
• Syndication of content to more than 10,000 websites worldwide.

About PR Newswire

PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry 60 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

Media contact:

Sarah Skerik, vice president of strategic communications
201-360-6710  
[email protected]

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SOURCE PR Newswire Association LLC