Honest answer
Do Press Releases Help SEO?
Press releases help SEO indirectly: most media links are nofollow as per industry standard, so they pass little or no link equity. The real value is brand signals, indexed coverage that AI assistants read, and referral traffic.
Last updated July 4, 2026 · Written by a distribution service that will not promise you rankings
What a press release actually does for search
A distributed press release gets your story published as articles on media sites. Three useful things follow from that, and none of them is a direct ranking boost.
Indexed coverage on trusted sites
When a real outlet publishes your story, the article gets indexed: Google crawls it and stores it in its search database. That indexed coverage is what AI assistants cite when someone asks about your company, and it feeds the results Google assembles around your brand name.
Branded search and knowledge graph reinforcement
Branded search is people typing your company name into Google, and visible coverage tends to lift it. Consistent facts across trusted articles also help Google's knowledge graph confirm who you are.
Referral traffic from real readers
Referral traffic is visitors who click through from the article itself rather than from a search result. It is a trickle rather than a flood, but it arrives pre-warmed from a site the reader trusts.
You can see all three in the wild: the sample proof report lists real placements with live links, and the Genviral case study shows what a campaign's indexed coverage looks like. Notice what is missing from the list above: rankings and link equity. That omission is deliberate, and the next section explains why.
The nofollow reality
A backlink is a link from someone else's site to yours, and SEO treats strong ones as votes of confidence. Nofollow is a label written as rel="nofollow" in the page code that tells Google not to count the link as a vote.
Newswires and most major media outlets apply it to press release links by default, which is why a press release link rarely passes link equity. Check it yourself: open a placement from our sample proof report and view the page source; the links carry rel="nofollow", exactly as this page says.
Outlets do this to protect their own credibility. If paid or submitted placements passed ranking credit, every article would turn into an advertising channel for SEO and Google would trust the outlet less. Marking those links nofollow keeps editorial authority separate from paid reach, which is exactly what keeps these outlets trusted enough to be worth appearing in.
Google goes further than nofollow. Google's spam policies list "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as link spam when the intent is to manipulate rankings. Optimized anchor text means stuffing the clickable words of a link with the exact keyword you want to rank for. So when a vendor promises that a press release will pass link equity or lift your rankings, they are promising the one thing the industry is built to withhold.
So when is a press release worth it?
Treat a press release as a brand and credibility tool rather than a link building tool, and price it accordingly. Judged that way, it earns its keep in a handful of situations:
Launches: a product or company launch with zero coverage looks invisible to anyone who searches you the next day, so distribution puts indexed articles behind your announcement while it is still news.
Funding rounds: funding coverage on business outlets is the first thing investors, journalists and future hires check, and it keeps getting cited for years after the round closes.
Due diligence checks: investors, enterprise buyers and exchange listing teams routinely search a company's media footprint before committing, and named, checkable placements answer that question before it is asked.
If you go down this road, judge outlets the way an SEO would judge any site: check any outlet's domain rating with our free tool (domain rating, or DR, is a 0 to 100 score of how strong a site's backlink profile is) and look at a sample proof report to see exactly what delivered coverage looks like before you pay anyone.
Press releases and SEO: FAQ
Are press releases good for SEO?
Indirectly, yes. Most media links are nofollow as per industry standard, so they pass little or no link equity. The real value is brand signals, indexed coverage that Google and AI assistants read, referral traffic from real readers, and a lift in branded searches.
Do press release backlinks count for SEO?
Mostly no, in the direct sense. A backlink is a link from someone else's site to yours, and most media links are nofollow as per industry standard, meaning they pass little or no link equity, the ranking value SEO tools try to measure. What indexed press coverage does contribute is brand signals, referral traffic and source material that Google and AI assistants use to understand your company.
Will a press release improve my Google rankings?
Nobody can honestly promise that, including us. A press release can lift branded search, reinforce how Google understands your company and bring referral traffic from readers, and all of that supports an SEO program. It is not a substitute for useful content, technical health and editorially earned links, which are what rankings for competitive keywords actually require.
Does Google penalize press releases?
No. Publishing and distributing press releases is normal business communication, and Google has no problem with it. What Google's spam policies flag is using press releases as a link scheme, for example stuffing them with keyword-rich anchor text to manipulate rankings. Distribute for coverage and readers, keep the link text natural, and there is nothing to penalize.
If press releases will not lift rankings, what should I do for SEO instead?
Publish genuinely useful content on your own site, fix the technical basics, and earn links editorially with original data, tools and stories that journalists choose to reference. Then use press releases for what they are actually good at: brand visibility, credibility moments, and being present in the indexed coverage that AI assistants and due diligence checks read. You can vet any outlet yourself with the free domain rating checker on this site.
How do AI assistants use press coverage?
Assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answer questions about companies by drawing on indexed articles from sites they treat as credible. If trusted outlets have covered your launch or funding round, that coverage becomes source material for AI answers, whether or not the links in it pass any SEO value. This is one of the newer and more defensible reasons teams distribute press releases.
Coverage on real outlets,
without the ranking hype
One-time packages from $389, editorial review included, live within 48 hours, with a shareable proof report showing every placement. We will never promise you rankings, because nobody honestly can.