Press Releases May be Treated Differently by Google than Other Types of Content

According to Google’s John Mueller, press releases can be handled differently in search results than other forms of content.

According to Search Advocate John Mueller, Google seeks to differentiate press releases from other forms of content and may treat them differently in search results.

This subject was addressed during the February 19 Google Search Central SEO hangout.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a Michael Lewittes tells Mueller that he often sees news outlets cover press releases and give them a higher ranking than the original source.

The initial source is occasionally a respectable institution like the Associated Press or Reuters.

How can news outlets republish the same details when ranking above those sources, asks Lewittes?

Mueller responds that it may be related to how Google handles press releases. They may be treated differently than other forms of content, he says.

John Mueller, Google’s VP of Engineering, on Press Releases in Search Results

Mueller claims that Google attempts to consider cases in which the same article is republished and treats it “appropriately” in quest.

“It’s hard to say. I think in most cases we try to recognize situations where exactly the same article is being republished and then to treat that accordingly in search by showing the original or the one we think it might have come from.

But there are lots of cases where we can’t recognize that completely. And it’s sometimes a matter of — this content is here but someone also wrote about the same topic somewhere else — and then we have those two viewpoints.

I don’t think there’s anything technical or anything specific that is happening there where it’s like — if it gets republished here then we just take that one.

But any time you have content that is syndicated it can happen that our systems don’t recognize that we should be showing this version instead of the other version.”

Robb Young enters the discussion and attempts to extract more details from Mueller on the subject.

He specifically inquires as to whether there is a distinction between a news release and other forms of content. That is, in Google’s view.

Mueller claims that Google tries to distinguish press releases from other material in this region. It’s common knowledge that press releases are bits of material that are republished on a number of websites.

Without going into depth, Mueller states that Google behaves “accordingly” with the expectation that press releases will be circulated elsewhere.

Mueller then goes on to explain how Google News handles press releases.

He’s not sure whether Google News distinguishes between press releases and search results. Google News did, however, seek to explain when several sites were writing about the same subject at one point.

“I don’t know if Google News does something slightly different than web search in that regard though. So that might be something that kind of plays in there.

I know from some book about Google a long time back where, in the early days of Google News, they definitely tried to recognize the situation where people were writing about the same topic, or writing with the same content, and trying to understand does that make this topic or this article more important than other topics.

But within web search it’s mostly a matter of these are different HTML pages and we find content there and we try to index it.”