What makes a good press release

The occasion: news first, everything else after

A press release reports on something that has happened or will happen. Its first lines answer what is new and who it affects. Without that occasion the text is an advertisement, and it will be read as one, however much it looks like a press release.

Occasions that carry a release include:

• a new product, a new service or a substantial change to an existing offer,
• an event: opening, trade fair, anniversary, partnership, award,
• a figure with a source that proves something: revenue, study, survey, market share,
• an appointment or a decision that changes the company.

A quick test: remove the company name. Is there still information someone outside the company would want to know? Then it is news.

The structure: the most important thing first

Journalists and readers decide within seconds whether to keep reading. That is why the inverted pyramid has proven itself: the news on top, background and detail below, the company at the end.

1. Headline: One sentence that says what happened. Active, concrete, no superlatives. 30 to 90 characters is a good range.
2. Lead paragraph: Two to four sentences with place, date and the key answers: who, what, when, where, why. Anyone who reads only the lead knows the news.
3. Body: Background, figures and context in short paragraphs, one idea each. Subheadings help from roughly 2,000 characters on.
4. Quote: A named person with a role says something the text has not already said: an assessment, a reason, an outlook. Not a slogan in quotation marks.
5. About the company: A short paragraph about the company that always stays the same: founded when, does what, how large, based where.
6. Press contact: Name, role, e-mail, phone, belonging to someone who can actually be reached. Follow-up questions are the point.

The language: inform, do not promote

Press language is factual. It describes what is and leaves the judgement to the reader. Four rules that help most texts immediately:

• Use the active voice: "The company opens" rather than "was opened".
• Be concrete: "340 employees at three sites" rather than "a large team".
• Drop the adjectives: "innovative", "unique", "leading" prove nothing. A fact does.
• Give figures a source: whoever cites a study names it; whoever claims a market share says where the number comes from.

How we review

When you release a text for review it does not go online immediately. An automatic content check against our publishing guidelines runs first. The result is one of three levels:

• Green: The release meets the guidelines and is published.
• Yellow: Publishable, but with notes, for example on promotional language or figures without a source. It is published, and you see the notes in your account.
• Red: The release violates at least one guideline category and does not go online. You are told the category and can revise the text and release it again.

The automatic check runs up to 3 times per release. If the text is still red after that, a person reviews it. They either approve the release or write to you about what is wrong. From then on a person decides on this release, not the automation. The categories we check against are listed in the publishing guidelines.

A rejected release does not use up your quota. And you can ask for a person to review it at any time. An informal request from your account is enough.

What we look at for quality

Besides admissibility we assess how well a text is made. This assessment does not decide publication. It shows you where the text can improve, and it decides whether a release is distinguished. We look at seven things:

• Press style: informative rather than promotional, active voice, real quotes.
• Structure: a lead paragraph, sensible paragraphs, the essentials on top.
• Readability: sentence lengths you can breathe through; jargon only where needed.
• Completeness: press contact, company information, place.
• Sources and evidence: links, studies, data sources for claims.
• Headline: length, clarity, whether it carries the news.
• Originality: a voice of its own rather than interchangeable boilerplate.

A press image counts as well: a release with an image scores better than the same release without one.

We make the seven dimensions public because working on them genuinely makes a text better. We do not publish figures, though: neither how the dimensions are weighted nor a cut-off for the distinction. Writing towards a number improves the number, not the text.

If a published release reaches the top stage of the assessment and meets a few further conditions, it automatically gets the mark “Distinguished”. The criteria are fixed and the same for everyone, and money plays no part. The details are under What does “Distinguished” mean?

What to check before releasing

Six questions that expose the most common weaknesses:

• Is the news in the first sentence, or only after three sentences about the company?
• Are place and date given? Does the reader know when and where it happened?
• Does every figure have a source and every quote a name with a role?
• Can every "leading", "innovative", "unique" be replaced by a fact, or simply cut?
• Is the press contact reachable and the e-mail address spelled correctly?
• Would the text still make sense if it were not on your own website?

Press images

An image raises attention considerably, as long as it is a press image and not a promotional graphic. Five things must be right:

• Rights: You may publish the image and release it for reuse. People shown have consented. The author is credited.
• AI labelling: Whether an image was generated or substantially altered with AI is declared on upload. Photorealistic AI motifs are labelled accordingly. The AI Act requires it, and it protects your credibility.
• Motif: The image shows the subject: the product, the place, the person, the event. Logos, banners and text graphics are not press images.
• Caption: Who or what is shown, where and when? One line is enough. Without it the image is useless to editors.
• Format: JPG, PNG or WebP, large enough for third-party use. Landscape works best in most layouts.

Why a release appears many times on the web and only once in search results

Anyone who sends a press release through a distribution service will find it word for word on many portals afterwards. For readers, that is many places to find it. For a search engine it is one text, and it picks one address as the authoritative one. The others do not appear in the results. That is a selection, not a penalty. Which version is chosen is decided by the algorithm. Portals and senders only see the outcome, not the reason.

The same applies between presseecho and businessportal24: if a release appears on both portals, that is two places for readers, not two places in search. So that chance does not decide, the second version here points to the first. Which one counts as the original source depends on the subject area of the release.

The most stable source a company has is its own website. Publishing a release there first and then on portals keeps the original version under your own control. That takes nothing away from what portals do: nobody gets distribution through their own website.

A directly submitted, reviewed release with structured data and a stable address has better prerequisites to be treated as the source than a distributed copy. Nobody can guarantee that.

Further reading

• What does “Distinguished” mean? — criteria and conditions of the distinction
• Publishing guidelines — the categories we check against
• Publishing — from draft to release
• Frequently asked questions