If You Think Press Releases are Dead, It's Because You're Using Them Incorrectly

In 2006, journalist Tom Foremski infamously wished death upon the press release in a provocative blog post subtly titled, “Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!” For the next 20 years, the phrase “the press release is dead” became either an accepted fact or a misconception to disprove, depending on your point of view.

Regardless of your position on the matter, if you work in PR and comms, you’ve likely heard this phrase uttered more than once. Perhaps because it has been in the comms lexicon for so long, you’ve found yourself believing it’s true. Well, I am here to tell you that reports of the press release’s death are greatly exaggerated. 

Moving Beyond Media Pickup to SEO

A lot has changed in the last 20 years since Foremski’s screed was published, particularly in how content is found and consumed. In 2006, search engine optimization (SEO) was picking up steam as a way for brands to ensure their content would get in front of anyone searching for it. Two years later, in 2008, the era of modern newsroom employment (broadcast, digital, print) peaked and has fallen precipitously since. Alongside those changes, the role of the press release continued evolving to meet the needs of brands looking for maximum visibility of their stories.

To this day, when many comms professionals think about the objectives of a press release, the first thing that usually comes to mind is that it primarily serves as a tool for garnering media coverage. Historically, that has been the case. However, as the news business continues to shrink and the number of working journalists continues declining, it has become increasingly more difficult to get media pickup on a press release alone. At the moment this reality began coming to a head, an earth-shattering change by Google set the stage for the future of the role of the press release.

In 2013, Google released its Hummingbird update, which was a significant overhaul of its search engine algorithm to better understand search intent. The update brought about an end to keyword-stuffing and instead bestowed higher rankings on high-quality, structured content that supplied answers to searchers’ queries.

Around that time, PR Newswire, the industry’s leading press release distribution provider, began counseling clients on how to optimize their releases for search using keywords relevant to their news content. But keywords were not the only factor in Google’s ranking of content.

In 2014, Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines were publicly leaked and within the document was the introduction of the “E-A-T” framework, which stands for:

• Expertise: How knowledgeable and credentialed is the content’s author?
• Authoritativeness: Is the website’s owner/creator a reputable source in their industry?
• Trustworthiness: How credible, factually accurate and verifiable is the website host and content author? It’s considered the foundational pillar of E-A-T.

At this point, E-A-T was merely a set of guidelines for Google’s human reviewers outlining how to manually evaluate search results. Four years later, with Google’s Medic update, the guidelines were formalized and embedded into its algorithm. In 2022, Google added another “E” to the “E-A-T” architecture for “Experience.” “Experience” refers to the author’s relationship to the content about which they’re writing. Today, Google refers to the framework as “E-E-A-T,” reflecting the search engine’s growing emphasis on content created by people with direct, relevant experience.

To maintain their status as trustworthy sites for news content, premium press release distribution platforms like PR Newswire have a strict process for vetting brands seeking to distribute news on their sites. They also employ editorial teams that ensure any distributed press release content is free of errors.

Additionally, these providers maintain technically optimized websites — including search-friendly architecture, fast and crawlable pages and strong domain authority — helping distributed content perform well in search long after publication.

As a result, and despite the continued shrinkage of the news business, premium newswire sites have positioned the brands they serve for success by ensuring their content remains highly visible on search engines, regardless of media pickup.

From SEO to GEO and AEO

At this point, you might be thinking, “This all sounds great, except for the fact that SEO is dead now.” Once and for all, we need to stop inflicting premature declarations of death on things whose function changes. For example, typing isn’t dead just because we do it now on smartphones and computers. Yes, the word comes from “typewriter,” but we didn’t stop typing once we stopped performing the practice on typewriters.

Just as the function of the press release has evolved, so has SEO. You’ve probably heard that generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) are the new SEO. If you’re already optimizing your press releases for search engines, you’re on the road to mastering AEO and GEO.

AEO is the practice of optimizing content so that AI-powered answer engines surface your content as a direct answer to a user’s question. GEO is the practice of optimizing content so that your brand or content is referenced or recommended in responses generated by large language models (LLMs). So, while SEO is not the same as AEO or GEO, they share some important similarities.

These principles are fundamental to both SEO and AEO/GEO:

• Content structure: Using structured formatting such as paragraph headers, short paragraphs and bullet points makes content easier for LLMs to read and interpret.
• Website architecture: Sites that use a heading structure (H1, H2, H3) and schema markup (a type of code) help both search and AI engines understand what your content means.
• E-E-A-T: For AI engines to ensure credibility, sourcing content that ranks high in Google’s four pillars is essential to providing users with accurate and reliable information.

PR Newswire routinely advises clients to implement content structure best practices to ensure maximum discoverability of their content. As previously mentioned, PR Newswire designed a website structure that aligns with the technical standards that search and AI engines rely on to interpret content. Finally, through rigorous editorial standards and brand verification processes, PR Newswire helps ensure the content distributed on its network meets the credibility and trust signals increasingly prioritized by both Google and AI-powered answer engines.

AI Search is Rewriting the Role of the Press Release

When Foremski wrote his obituary on the press release two decades ago, he could not have foreseen that generative AI engines would not only exist but that they would also become a popular way to search for high-quality content — precisely the type of content high-authority newswire platforms were built to distribute.

In other words, the press release is far from dead. As tools often do, its role has involved. In fact, with the rise of AI-powered discovery placing an even greater premium on optimized, trustworthy and authoritative content, some might argue that it’s more relevant than ever.