Backlinks in Press Releases viewed as unnatural by Google

Of course most of us in the SEO community would have already heard this news last week about how Google changed its webmaster guidelines to include backlinks in Press Releases as unnatural.

Now it has been further clarified that both anchor rich and naked links in press releases are considered paid advertisements and should be nofollowed or will be considered unnatural. On another forum someone mentioned:

"Google specifically pointed to a press release whilst i was going for a reconsideration request, they had this and one other as an example of bad links i should clean up. It had my web address and one keyword as anchor, so i suppose they were referring to the keyword rich anchor."

So even a proper press release which has only 1 keyword rich anchor and 1 naked link can contribute to a penalty!

No they will not cause penalty until you have lots of them it is my experience in past. We all do link building and that all is against guidelines of google but we sill do and rank so donot worry too much on guidelines. Otherwise you need to think to stop all types of link building

They will just be discounted by google if it is not a reputable media site, or they will add it to your overall all site profile they use for your page authority and it will be like negative points for these on PR or authority.

well i highly doubt if you still get penalty with only ONE anchor text. i think they are just trying to stop people doing it by scaring the shit out of users.
For the nofollow links, the main purpose of using press release is not for passing links juices anyway, i dont think you should worry too much about it.
moreover, every elements of link building is illegal to google anyway.

You can find some more info regarding this at http://searchengineland.com/google-...ould-be-nofollowed-like-advertisements-168339

Fuck off Google.

Yeah, it seem discounted soon but not penalty. When one door closes, another opens.

Generally press releases are just duplicate content right? How is Google to determine that they are press releases and give them special consideration?

monkid said:

Yeah, it seem discounted soon but not penalty. When one door closes, another opens.

Click to expand...

I must agree on this post Whenever google closes the door, our blackhatters are here to open the another gate not a door.

Well the link will lost the value, I don't think it gets the penalty for this one link.

I'd have to agree with Monkid and Skye; it doesn't make sense for Google to penalize for [normal] Press Releases... Even if Google discounts Press Release backlinks; they [PRs] still make sense for a business [and websites] to use. My recommendation: Use them sparingly; when you have an actual Press Release.

It's when you over-do it that you might get penalized. Better yet, create a "News" section on your site and have those press releases link only to that section. Look at how today's media links out in their stories; very rarely will it link to the home page only. There are usually links to a page/post on the domain that the press release is talking about.