Revealing the trend for links in press releases - is it enough?

Following on from comments made by US-based technology and media commentator Tom Foremski, we've taken a look at the proportion of press releases on our wire that include embedded links.

Tom argues that including useful links in releases helps journalists do their job. He recently highlighted research by BusinessWire that showed only 13.5 per cent of releases on their wire include links.

BusinessWire's research does not indicate whether they were counting just 'raw' links - which could include the homepage web address of the client or PR agency at the end of the release, or just embedded links - text in the body of a release that links to a relevant page - or both. Either way the figure seemed very low so I decided to look at our own Response Source/SourceWire Press Release Wire.

We found that in May 2010 89 per cent of releases on the Response Source/SourceWire Press Release Wire included links of any kind. However, I think the best measure is embedded links, as it is these links that are likely to be of most use to a journalist (and of course help to drive traffic for the release submitter).

In May 2010 67 per cent of releases on our wire included embedded links. That shows an increase over previous years, up from 40 per cent in 2007.

What do these figures tell us? Well, to be honest I think 100 per cent of releases should include embedded links and I'm a little surprised the growth from 2007 isn't steeper. Including embedded links not only helps journalists but helps drive traffic. The latter alone is enough for many clued-up companies to insist all their releases are distributed online with embedded links so surely everyone should be doing it.

Comments

[Tom]

Thanks for this Daryl. This is supports our notion that embedded URLs in our press material help our audience find information faster and with less hassle (through SEO) plus by including embedded URLs it means the most relevant connected information is just one click away. It might be interesting to explore what percentage of press releases delivered with embedded URLs get published online with those URLs intact, which online publishers publish them and which do not?