--- description: Mostly no. Google says it ignores most press release links and expects paid ones to be marked sponsored. What a release gives you instead, with sources. modified: '2026-11-13' resource: https://pressonify.ai/blog/do-press-releases-get-backlinks tags: - SEO - Backlinks - Press Releases - Google - Best Practices timestamp: '2026-11-13T12:00:00Z' title: Do Press Releases Still Get You Backlinks? type: article --- # Do Press Releases Still Get You Backlinks? **Mostly no.** A press release gets you links, but Google treats links in a release as placed by the company itself and says it ignores most of them. Buying a release for the backlinks is paying for something Google says it mostly ignores. A release is still worth publishing, for reasons that have nothing to do with link counts. ## What Google says | Source | Date | What it says | |---|---|---| | Google spam policies, link spam | Page last updated 28 August 2026 | Lists as link spam: "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" | | Google, qualify your outbound links | Page last updated 10 December 2025 | "Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value." Such links "will generally not be followed" | | John Mueller, Google, in a webmaster hangout | Reported 29 June 2018 | "We try to ignore links from things like press releases because we know in general companies put the press releases out themselves" | *Google's documentation read on 13 November 2026. The Mueller quote is as transcribed by Search Engine Roundtable.* Sources: [Google spam policies](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#link-spam), [Qualify your outbound links](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links), [Search Engine Roundtable](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ignores-press-release-links-25979.html). In the same session Mueller added: "I just wouldn't rely on kind of press releases as a strategy for building up links for a website because like I said we do ignore most of those." Google is also clear that marked links are fine: "It's not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value." ## Sponsored, nofollow and "regular" links - **rel="sponsored"** marks a link that was paid for or placed by the company. Google prefers it for this purpose. - **rel="nofollow"** is the older way to say the same thing and is still accepted. - **A link with neither** is not a loophole. If it sits in a release the company distributed, Google's stated position is that it tries to ignore it, and keyword-stuffed anchor text can count against the site. So a "sponsored backlink press release" and a "regular" one end up in the same place for ranking purposes. The first is simply honest about it. ## How we mark links on Pressonify The link from a Pressonify release page to your website carries `rel="sponsored"`. It is there for readers to click, and it follows the rule Google sets for links a company places itself. We do not sell a release as a backlink. ## What a press release does get you 1. **A permanent page that states the news in your words.** It is the version a searcher, a journalist or an AI answer can find and quote. 2. **Structured data about your company.** Schema.org markup tells search and AI systems who published the release and what it announces. See [whether an AI press release helps or hurts SEO](/blog/ai-press-release-help-or-hurt-seo). 3. **A source for AI answers.** Answer engines cite pages. A release published under a [verified company domain](/blog/domain-verification-why-it-matters) gives them one to cite, and [citation tracking](/press-release-citation-tracking) records when they do. 4. **The chance of earned links.** When a journalist or site owner covers the story and links to you by choice, that link counts, because you did not place it. See [whether press releases get media coverage](/blog/do-press-releases-get-media-coverage-2026). ## If you want links, do this instead - Publish something worth citing: original numbers, a dated price table, a clear answer to a question people ask. - Tell the people who write about your field, one at a time. Our [journalist outreach rules](/blog/journalist-outreach-best-practices) cover how. - Use the release as the reference page those people link to. If the choice is between a wire and an agency for this, our [service versus agency cost comparison](/blog/press-release-service-vs-pr-agency-cost) sets out what each charges. And if you have not written the release yet, see [whether services write it for you](/blog/do-press-release-services-write-the-release). ## Related Reading - [Does an AI Press Release Help or Hurt SEO? Our Tracking Data](/blog/ai-press-release-help-or-hurt-seo) - [Do Press Releases Get Media Coverage? What Tracking Shows](/blog/do-press-releases-get-media-coverage-2026) - [Press Release Distribution Pricing Comparison](/blog/press-release-distribution-pricing-comparison-2026) - [Press Release Citation Tracking](/press-release-citation-tracking) --- *Written by the Pressonify team in Dublin. We build the platform described above, publish our own citation data, and correct it in public when it turns out to be wrong.* ## Knowledge bundle - [Pressonify OKF bundle root](/okf/index.md)