Publishing Press Releases after Google Panda 2.5

[BeTheBoss]

For the past few years I have been publish press releases on my site for a number of business. I have high traffic on my site.

I noticed that with the Google Panda 2.5 update PRNewswire.com dropped visibility by 83%.

Should I stay away from publishing press releases now? Does Google consider Press Releases to be "content scraping" since multiple sources are publishing the release?

[AnthonyMangia]

In short, yes.

Don't get me wrong.  It is perfectly fine to publish press releases on your website.  Google isn't going to lose trust in your website from selected content that might be syndicated elsewhere.  Give them a little credit.  Google certainly recognizes that press releases, however boring and uninspired, make up a necessary part of how companies communicate, and thus a necessary segment of content on the web.  Their algorithm, for all of its faults, is not completely without common sense.  Moreover, having selected content on your website that is duplicated elsewhere isn't necessarily a dealbreaker.  Google, particularly with Panda, seems to evaluate the trust of your website as a sitewide sort of factor, and a couple pieces of duplicate content aren't necessarily going to mess up your day.

But if press releases do make up a significant portion of the content on your website, I would say you're definitely at risk.  Google will learn that your website isn't dishing out unique content, and they'll trust your website less because of it.  Moreover, press releases aren't exactly the world's best type content, even if they are completely original and don't exist elsewhere on the internet.  The fact is that there are much better opportunities to create original, engaging, and shareable content, and taking advantage of those opportunities will help your SEO efforts much more than any amount of press releases you could possibly publish.