No More Free Google News from PitchEngine
If you’re a fan of PitchEngine for online distribution of news releases, as I have been, you likely already know about the announcement this evening. For those who don’t — the owners of the site announced that they will no longer include free releases on the feed that goes to Google. What this means is that these free releases will not rank on Google News.
Here’s a portion of the announcement:
We’ve recently been targeted by spammers who are using our tool solely as a means to affect their Google rank, which is simply not in the best interest of our users, especially our paid subscribers. While it’s been a great asset for our users, it’s simply not going to work if this content goes unregulated. We’re also going to step up our SMR and brand authentication efforts to maintain the validity of content hitting our feeds – even for paid subscribers.
Releases from those who subscribe, and pay $35 per month, will continue to have releases streamed to Google News.
I realize that nothing stays free on the Interwebs for long these days, but PitchEngine was an outstanding free way to create and make available attractive social media releases. Now, because the management of the site wasn’t able to police submissions properly, no one gets to take full advantage unless they pay.
I’ve already seen on Twitter a bit of a backlash to the decision, and some support of it. The response from one of PitchEngine’s site builders to the critics has been to say the spammers are to blame, and that the move adds to the value of the paid service.
Spammers are not going away and they don’t care what you think, so if you blame them for anything, you’re wasting your breath. They’re like the common cold in that way. And, as with the common cold, taking a few precautions will help reduce the chance of “infection”. Changing the way you do everything seems a bit extreme.
Note: I’ve updated my ongoing Review of Online News Release Sites to reflect this change in policy.
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Our decision to eliminate free content hitting our public feeds is based on many reasons, not just spammers. I believe, however, that only allowing paid content through will reduce the risk of spammers utilizing our tool to get Google placement.
We have never been a traditional distribution service and I don’t believe the value of our service for core users is Google News placement – PRs can get that from all sorts of services. Therefore, I don’t think dumping resources at an old model is the best direction.
When users want to compile assets and PR content for the social web, we hope they’ll turn to PitchEngine. We were never out to be just another PR distribution service.
Thanks for the post. I happy there are people like you out there that care enough about what we’re doing and I certainly appreciate the feedback.
Jason Kintzler, Founder
PitchEngine
Thanks for checking in, Jason. The only specific reason you gave for the change was the spammers. What were the other reasons?
You may not realize this, but even the $35/month users don’t get to Google News anymore. PitchEngine was officially blacklisted by Google. (It appears even $35/month wasn’t enough to stop the spam).
PitchEngine of course is trying to stay silent about the issue, but users are fleeing in droves. Why pay $35 to post just to the PitchEngine site? (Which isn’t much better than just posting to a blog somewhere). Google News submission *was* the reason people used the service. And now that Google has said “no mas”, there’s not much reason to use P.E.
Sohon – Sorry for taking SO long to approve your post. I remembered seeing it, and I thought I DID approve it, but then it sat in my approval list … unapproved. Sorry about that.
That’s very interesting news about PitchEngine. I had *not* heard that, and I agree — the PitchEngine releases are pretty, but if I’m paying I want Google News distribution.
I don’t suppose anyone from PitchEngine is keeping an eye on this post? If so, can you confirm this?
Gladly!
We’ve been able to implement a new vetting process and eliminate non-subscribed releases from being indexed! We are slated to be re-indexed the first week of November.
As for Mr. Anonymous, “sohon”, we are not losing any users in “droves”. PitchEngine is growing at a steady pace and is now at more than 13,000 brands. I suggest actually reading our blog and learning what using PitchEngine is about.
If you are coming to PitchEngine strictly for seo purposes you are missing the point. Some users love the immediate organic search indexing they get with PitchEngine.
Currently, less than 1% of all referrals to our SMRs come from Google News. Most unique visits come from Google (search), Bing, Yahoo!, Facebook and Twitter to name a few.
The future of PR is much broader than impressions. Our users are interested in going where their influencers are – the social web. As we roll out more new products it will become apparent how we intend to evolve the media relations process.
Thanks for your feedback and support as we go forward.
Hi Jason,
Thanks so much for stopping by to clear things up for us. Your response concerned me somewhat, however.
You have confirmed that your releases are currently not being indexed by Google News, but yet it says clearly on this page of your site that paid releases ARE indexed by Google News.
While I understand that the situation may have been temporary, don’t you think you owe a refund (or at least an explanation) to anyone who paid their monthly dues during the time that you’ve not been indexed?
Good catch, we’ll remove asap.
We have notified all our users, which is why it came up in the first place. The update message was removed two days ago as it has been up for a few weeks. Won’t be an issue anyway when the site is re-indexed. Either way, we make no guarantees that your content will be indexed in Google News. And yes, Google does crawl our site, which has significant page rank, which leads to quick indexing of our users’ SMRs. That’s not a guarantee Google News will pickup your news.
Not sure why this concerns you so much? If you are an not happy with our service, I’m happy to give you a refund.
As to why this “concerns me so much”:
My primary reason for addressing this issue is that it was brought up in a comment on my blog. People rely on me to know which sites are the best for posting their releases, and I appreciate you stopping by to weigh in.
Secondarily, this “concerns me” because I write a blog that deals with SEO, social media, social networking, and how they relate to public relations. This is a topic that obviously falls squarely into that description. I make it a point to know what the various news release sites are doing, because it’s my business to know. I keep in regular contact with PRWeb, Businesswire, PR Newswire, and others, so don’t take it personally.
To boil it down to brass tacks, if your releases are no longer indexed by Google News, that’s important information for my readers and myself.
“Now at more than 13,000 brands” = 13,000 companies have used the free or paid version at least once.
While impressive, it is deceptive to claim that every one time user of your service, including the spammers and porn sites that you’ve had to remove like every blog has to as well, constitutes an active “brand” using the service.
And this is not the first time PitchEngine has been removed from Google News: http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/search.py?ctx=en%3Asearchbox&query=pitchengine&temp_query=pitchengine
Also, any free service that provides do-follow links and is indexed by Google becomes an SEO service whether anyone likes it or not.