Evaluating 21 Free Press Release syndication web services

About a month ago (December 9th 2008) we submitted a press release “LEADSExplorer Listed on ‘Post-Click Marketing Analytics’ Vendors Overview” to several free Press Release for syndication in order to find out how effective they were.

Remark: before submitting any press release: use a spelling checker and the Press Release Grader from Hubspot.

The results:

The results are grouped by findability by or speediness of appearance in Google search or specific benefits.
PR indicates the PageRank of the website. The higher the number, the better for your website.

THE BEST:
The Open Press PR4
Great several inserts:
- Google news
- Digg
Links: not working
Advertising: None

PRZoom PR5
Difficult to retrieve on Google
Advertising: several
Links: Not working
However linked to Newswire Today which syndicates to several other aggregation websites: BtoB.us
PRZoom is strictly for businesses, whereas Newswire Today is generic distribution network.

PRLog PR5
Links: work
Advertising: a few PDF document for download

Free Press Releases PR5
Difficult to retrieve
Advertising: several – however the print view is without
Links: not working

PR.com PR5
Press releases get aggregated by others: Newstin PR4
Advertising: several
Links: not working

PR USA PR5
Links: not working
Advertising : several

THE GOOD:
1888 Press Release PR5
Advertising: quite a lot
Links: not working

PR Inside PR4
Advertising: several
Links: work

Pitch Engine PR5
Advertising : None
Links: not work

Press Box UK PR5
Advertising: several
Links: not work

I-Newswire PR3
Advertising: Minimal presence
No longer found by Google search
Links: work

THE OK
Free Press Releases (UK) PR0
Retrieval: difficult
Advertising: several
Links: work

BusinessPortal24.com PR0
Advertising: No
Links: not work

THE DISAPPEARING PRESS RELEASES:
These websites had our press release on their website, but now the page has disappeared.

Click Press PR5
Press Method PR4
24-7 Press Release PR4
PRFree PR4

THE EVALUATORS
Only if your PR is good or interesting enough, then it will be published (ours wasn’t):
NPR PR9
Beta News PR7
Seen the high PageRankings of these websites, you have all the good reasons to get published on them.

THE NOT PUBLISHED:
For an unclear reason, the press release didn’t got published on these websites.
OpenPR PR5
Freshnews PR5

The evaluation:

In total the effort generated about 164 to172 links on Google, a slight decrease from about 195 in mid-December.

The story wasn’t picked up by any real blog or journalist as it wasn’t that important.
Still it appeared on several news aggregation sites.
Getting on Google Reader and Digg is a major plus thanks to The Open Press.

On the website we retrieved a minimal number of visitors that had clicked on the links in the press release on the syndicating websites.
However LEADSExplorer had a slight increase in visitors using ‘Direct Hits’: entering www.LEADSExplorer.com directly into their browser. Of course we can’t prove the source of their action.

The questions are:
- How much better does a paid Press Release syndication score?
- Will any journalist pay attention to these free Press Releases?
- Do journalists and bloggers only pick up stories from paid syndications?

What is your experience with paid Press Release syndications?