What Is a Press Release and What Does It Do for a New Business

Ask around before a business launch, and someone will tell you to send out a press release. The promise is that it will put your name on news sites and lift you in Google. Google's own spam policies say otherwise about the second part. They list optimized anchor text in press releases on other sites as link spam.

A press release is a short, factual announcement of news. It's written for the people who decide what gets published, such as journalists and editors. The editor decides whether and how the story appears, and that's what makes it different from an ad. A release can help a new business, but on its own it rarely brings customers or better rankings.

So we'll follow you through the decision to send one, moment by moment, as your launch gets closer.

The first search: what a press release looks like

You start by looking up a few sample releases online. They all seem to follow the same pattern. There's no official standard for a press release, but most guides describe the same set of parts.

Some of the words are new to you. An embargo asks outlets not to publish before a set date and time. The five W's are the questions your first paragraph answers:

• who
• what
• when
• where
• why

Some guides add how.

The body follows the "inverted pyramid" order. The most important facts go first and background comes later. Photos and video are often hosted on a press page of the company website. Canva suggests a boilerplate of one or two sentences. Some releases add "Notes to editors" after the end mark.

You'll also see AP style mentioned a lot. It's the writing style of the Associated Press, and many US guides recommend it. The AP Stylebook released its 58th edition on August 1, 2026. Some widely read guides, Purdue OWL among them, still rely on the 2012 edition.

Length and headline: the guides disagree

Then you try to find out how long yours should be. The numbers differ from one source to the next, so read them as conventions.

Purdue OWL notes that a text longer than about two pages reads as a news article. PR Newswire even gives two different headline limits in its own materials. What all the sources share is a preference for a short, factual text that an editor can scan quickly.

The real question: whether your launch is news

The format turns out to be the easy part. What decides a release's fate is the news inside it. Rutgers University's guide says a release should show an editor or reporter the "newsworthiness" of something.

Guides list many types of releases. Two of them show how wide the range is.

For a company that has only just started, the usual news is one of these:

1. a launch or an opening
2. a new product
3. a hire
4. a partnership

Each has its own test for whether it's news.

Your launch is the most natural announcement you have. It's stronger with something concrete: a date, a place, a product people can use. A new product or service counts as news when it's new to the market or the area. A page added to your own website usually doesn't. An event release depends heavily on timing.

A new hire tends to interest outlets when the person is known in the industry or the community. A partnership works when the partner is a recognized name or the deal changes what customers can get. An award is worth announcing when the award itself is recognized.

Some things rarely interest an editor. A new logo, a redesigned website or a general claim to be the best in your field won't get you coverage. In practice, one thing decides whether a release gets attention: whether the news matters to someone outside the company. The format, the length and the headline all come after that.

What your release can do for you

Say your launch passes that test. A release has a narrow job, and for real news it does that job reasonably well. The SBA notes that releases are often sent out online through press release services. Those services can put them in front of journalists and bloggers and into search results. That's the main purpose.

Your release also leaves a dated, factual public statement that your company launched, opened or signed an agreement. Journalists, partners and customers can quote it and link to it later. The boilerplate gives them a short, accurate description of the company to reuse. And the same facts and quote can appear on your website's news page and in social media posts.

That public record matters when someone checks whether a young company is real. A release is one of the things they may find. They'll also see your website, your business profile and your reviews. More on how people assess a new company is in How to Tell if a Business Is Legitimate, and How a New Business Looks Credible.

What it won't do, however well you write it

The limits matter as much as the benefits. Purdue OWL states plainly that editors decide whether to run a release. The value of the information to their audience counts for more than the writing. So sending a release guarantees nothing about coverage, and the news matters more than the wording.

Journalists are quick to delete. In Muck Rack's 2025 State of Journalism survey, as reported by PRNEWS, 86% of journalists named irrelevance as the reason they deleted pitches.

A release also has no predictable link to sales. None of the sources we reviewed connects releases to a measurable number of customers. We have no data of our own that would, either.

And a release sends readers on to other pages. Journalists and customers who read yours will look for your website and business profile next. If those are missing, the release ends in a dead end. What a small business needs online is covered in What Is an Online Presence and What Does a Small Business Need.

The promise of Google rankings from press release links

Now to the advice about Google. Many people pay for press release distribution because they expect links from many sites to lift their rankings. Google's own rules point the other way. Its spam policies list this as link spam: "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites".

Anchor text is the clickable wording of a link. "Optimized" here means filled with the keywords a company wants to rank for.

The same policies treat paid links as spam unless they carry rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". These are small code labels that tell Google not to count the link for rankings. Google says buying links for advertising is a normal part of the web when the links are labeled this way.

Search Engine Land reported that John Mueller of Google advised nofollowing links in press releases to be safe. Distribution services and the SBA give similar warnings from their side. The SBA says too many links can get a release marked as spam, by distribution sites and search engines alike. PR Newswire's 2025 guide suggests one to three links with descriptive anchor text.

AI search follows the same logic. In May 2026 Google published guidance on optimizing for generative AI search such as AI Overviews. Gigazine summarized that guide. According to that summary, these still help:

• traditional SEO
• unique and valuable content, which matters most
• accurate Google Business Profile information

The same summary says special files such as llms.txt aren't needed. Neither is rewriting content for AI systems. So a release can help people find your news. Its search value comes from the news itself and from the pages you control. See What Is a Google Business Profile and Why a New Business Needs One.

Two weeks out: the work of writing a press release

If you still want to send one, the next surprise is how much work it takes. Writing the text is the smallest part. Before anything goes out, you have to find the actual news angle. That means answering three questions:

• what changed
• for whom
• why a stranger would care

Then you gather and check the facts:

• the legal company name
• the location
• dates and figures
• product details

The person quoted, probably you, has to approve the wording of the quote. After that, the work goes on:

• editing the release for length and accuracy
• choosing a distribution route (your own journalist list, a wire service or both)
• answering journalists' questions after it goes out

Timing is where you'll find the fewest solid answers. The sources give only a few concrete points, and most come from vendors:

• News releases go out when the news is announced, or under an embargo that sets the publication time.
• For events, Newswire, a distribution vendor, advises sending about two weeks before. It also suggests a reminder three days before and a wrap-up afterwards, without evidence.
• In the 2025 Muck Rack survey reported by PRNEWS, 50% of journalists said one follow-up is fine. Ideally it comes 3 to 7 days after the first email.
• Canva suggests sending Tuesday to Thursday between 10am and 2pm.
• PR Newswire suggests off-peak times such as 11:07 instead of 11:00. Neither shows data for this.

Deciding who writes and sends the release

Once you see the work, you can decide who does it. You can also combine the options. Many businesses write the release themselves and pay only for distribution.

The wire prices come from Prezly's September 2026 review of PR Newswire's US rates. $355 is the state tier and $850 the national one, for up to 400 words. Extra words, images and translation cost more. Wire prices change often. Prezly also reports that PR Newswire's own pricing page returned an error, so confirm current prices with the vendor.

Doing it yourself works when you have a clear piece of news, time to check every fact and a few journalists you can actually reach. Hiring help makes more sense in these cases:

1. you don't know which outlets cover your field
2. you're outside the US and can't easily answer US journalists
3. your hours are better spent on customers

Our team writes press releases for new companies as part of a US launch. We check every fact with the owner and keep the text plain enough for an editor to read.

When you ask ChatGPT to draft it

At some point you'll be tempted to let an AI tool write the text. It can draft it. But it can't supply your facts, your quote or the approvals.

Google warns that AI output may contain inaccuracies, sometimes called "hallucinations". It says the output should be checked by hand before publishing. Google also says that using generative AI to churn out many pages without adding value may break its scaled content abuse policy.

The draft on your desk: why press releases get ignored

Whoever writes it, your release can still be ignored. The guides and surveys cited above point to the same reasons:

• it reads as an ad, full of hype and superlatives, so editors stop reading
• there's nothing new to report, the most common reason of all
• a date, name or job title is wrong, so every other fact looks doubtful
• the headline doesn't say what happened, so the rest is never read
• it carries too many links or keyword-stuffed anchors, which the SBA and Google warn about
• there's no named contact with a working email and phone
• it's treated as an SEO tactic, when its value lies in the news

Before you press send

Some of those problems start before the release is even written. A journalist who reads about a new company usually checks a few things next. So have these in place first:

• the company itself, already formed, with its legal name and state of formation
• a website or landing page carrying the same news, for the release to link to
• a working Google Business Profile, if the type of business is eligible

The choice between a website and a landing page is discussed in Do You Need a Website for a Small Business? Website vs Landing Page.

The release itself also needs a few things ready. You need a named media contact with a working email and phone, and a founder or manager who can give and approve a quote. You also need a news hook that rests on facts that can be checked, plus a logo and a few photos that journalists may use.

What to do this month

Start by asking whether your news matters to someone outside the company. If it doesn't yet, wait until you have real news, such as the launch itself or a partnership. If it does, check that your website and Google profile are ready, because journalists will look there next.

Don't buy distribution for the links, since Google treats optimized anchors in releases as link spam. And get help when you don't know the outlets in your field or can't easily answer US journalists.