Free Press Release Sites - 2013 test results

For the 2013 update, we started with 82 sites made up of the original sites from our 2011 review plus some new ones we'd found since. We then eliminated some sites if the site failed to register a login or if the url wasn't working. Eleven sites were no longer accepting free submissions which left us with 48 sties to play with. 41% of the 82 sites didn't work or were charging for press release distribution.

Who published all of our releases?

Of these 48 sites, eight published all of our releases.

BusinessPortal24
Exact Release
Information Online
IT Director
PR Inside
PR Log
Press Box
Press Release Circle

Not all the releases were, shall we say, fantastic, interesting news, so we expected sites with good editorial to reject some of our releases.

Who published some of our releases?

Editorial control, i.e. sites chosing not to publish weaker stories should be a good sign, however often it appeared the releases were often rejected at random.

1888PressRelease published two and rejected three
Free Press Release published two and rejected three
I-Newswire published one (restricted to one release per week). Two releases were considered un-newsworthy, one was rejected as it contained "press release" in the title.

Some sites didn't publish the releases for no apparent reason, in other words, there may have been editorial control, but we can't tell for sure.

Idea Marketers published two but after the site was re-branded our login didn't work.
Live PR pubilshed three releases. Two never appeared (no response)
Online PR News published three releases. Two didn't appear (no response)
PR Urgent published one release which is the only release to appear in Google News. However, none of the other four releases appeared
Big News published two releases. Three didn't appear (no response)
Express Press Release published three releases. Two were still pending after several weeks
Free Press Index published four releases. One didn't appear (no response)
Free Press Release Center published four releases. The url didn't work for the fifth.

Some ate our homework!

26 release sites allowed us to upload all our releases but having done so, the releases remained either "pending" in our account profile or when "published" couldn't be found via a Google search. The sites that 'ate' our press releases were:

Astro Business
Beta News
Bit Boot
Biz News
CGI Directory
Click A News
Click A News Europe
E Comm Wire
E News Wire
EMEA PR
Net Biz Resources
Net Force News
Net Force PR
Net Force Technology
News Active
News In Sites
News Phase
Open PR
Our Newsletter
Page Release
Post A Free Press Release
PR Fire
Release Wire
Techni Future
Techno Frantic
Tectrical

2012/2013 best release site for Google News

PR Urgent was the only site from which one of our releases appeared on Google News

2012 winner: PR Urgent
2011 winner: Online PR News

2012/2013 best free press release site for appearing in Google web searches

Both IT-Director and PR Log achieved visibility on google.co.uk searches for every release. IT-director was on page one for every release and achieved first placefor one release. PR Log achieved first on two occasions but otherwise appeared on lower pages. Press Box appeared on page one of Google searches for all but one of our releases.

2012 winners: IT-Director.com, PR Log and Press Box

2011 winner: PR Fire

Best free press release site for appearing in Google web searches

How many of our releases could be found in Google web search and how high did they rank?
Site	Page 1	Page 2	Page 3 or lower
IT-Director	5
Press Box	3
PR Log	2		3
Free Press Index	2	1
Big News, Idea Marketers, Online PR News	1
Press Release Circle, The Open Press		3
1888 Press Release, BusinessPortal 24, Exact Release, Express Press Release, Free Press Release, PR Inside		2
I-News Wire, Information Online, Live PR, PR Urgent, PR Zoom, Press Release Ping			1

Best free press release site for building links
We don’t believe you’ll get a lot of value from links from these sites – there have been some recent (late 2012) comments from Google’s Matt Cutts about the value (or otherwise) of links directly from press releases. However, if you’re interested in which sites did give links here’s the ones we found: