a single source, nothing corroborates it

Treat the paid wire as an experiment, not a channel

Paid press releases do technically appear in Google's news carousel: one wire service accounted for thousands of appearances over six months at submission prices ranging from a couple of hundred to well over a thousand dollars. The economics do not make it a route you can build on, and the cheap alternatives that rank pull almost nothing, one of them managing about ten thousand monthly visitors mostly on stock terms. Read their own marketing copy sceptically.

The method

1. 01

   A paid press release can technically land you in Top Stories, so treat it as an occasional experiment rather than a channel you build on.

2. 02

   Do not buy a cheap press release on the promise of search visibility: the low-cost wires that do rank pull almost nothing, and their own marketing copy should be read sceptically.

What it returned

• 0.03%

  PR Newswire was the 472nd most prominent domain with 0.03% market share, which Ahrefs translates to somewhere between 100,000 and 400,000 monthly Top Stories visitors, and an estimated 2,554 separate press releases appeared in the feature over six months. TrustRadius puts submission prices between $199 and $1,649. Glen Allsopp says the economics do not make it a primary route.

• 1,000

  OpenPR ranked 773rd of the top 1,000 sites, offers free submissions with paid ones starting around 19 euros, and Ahrefs credits it with only about 10,000 monthly visitors from Top Stories, mostly on stock-related terms.

Sources

• The Sites Dominating Google's Top Stories SERP Feature in 2024 - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · PR Newswire May Give Anyone the Chance (Technically) to Appear in ‘Top Stories’ · 2024-08-29