Do small-business press releases get covered?
We followed 102 small-business press releases sent through five newswires this summer, then checked, 30 to 90 days later, where each one had appeared and who had written about it.
Usually not. 84 of 102 got no independent coverage.
Most releases were reposted somewhere. Very few were written about by a journalist, an editor or an independent writer.
A wire release mostly produces copies of itself.
Of 102 small-business releases, 84 (82%) had not been written about by any journalist, editor or independent writer we could find 30 to 90 days after they went out. For those businesses, the release itself was the coverage.
What the wires did reliably deliver was copies. 64 releases (63%) turned up, word for word or lightly reworded, on wire partner sites, the press-release sections of local news sites, financial portals and news apps. We found 167 such copies, 20 of them rewritten by software and credited to a bot or labelled “By AI”. Our searches see only a fraction of the copies a wire distributes, so the real number is higher.
Where independent coverage did happen, it usually followed news that a particular audience already cared about: for example, a venture firm’s new fund in national business outlets, a rebuilding service in the local paper of a fire-damaged neighbourhood, a specialist component in an engineering trade title, and a film trailer on an entertainment site.
We counted generously. A mention in a list, a profile on a site that sells placements and an article written by another company that quoted an owner all count as coverage here. One release accounts for 14 of the 39 independent pages: its author, a well-known media founder, died the day it went out, and the pages are his obituaries. They count under our rules, though none is about the release.
Every page that named the business was read and put in one of four groups.
Copies of the release · 167 pages
The release reposted or rewritten on wire partner sites, press-release sections, portals and news apps, including automated rewrites.
Own pages and listings · 192 pages
The business’s own sites and profiles, its other press releases, directories, shops, maps and company databases.
Earlier or unrelated · 282 pages
Pages published before the release, and pages about a different business or person with the same name.
Independent coverage · 39 pages
Written by a journalist, editor or independent writer in their own words, on or after the release date. Doubtful pages were counted here.
No wire stood out.
| Releases | Sampled | With independent coverage | Reposts per release |
|---|---|---|---|
| EIN Presswire (two a day) | 34 | 7 (21%) | 2.12 |
| The other four combined | 68 | 11 (16%) | 1.4 |
| All five | 102 | 18 (18%) | 1.64 |
The other four are PRWeb, PRLog, 24-7 Press Release and Newswire.com. We report a single service only where we sampled 30 or more of its releases, which applies to EIN Presswire alone. The difference between it and the others is within the margin of error, and one of its covered releases is the obituary case above, so we draw no ranking from it. Reposts per release are those our searches found.
39 independent pages, across 18 releases.
28 were news or trade articles, 6 were syndicated copies of those articles on portals such as Yahoo, 4 were mentions in lists or rankings, and 1 was a profile on a site that sells placements.
If you count only news and trade articles, 15 of 102 releases (15%) were covered.
Method, written down before we looked
We fixed the sample days in advance: every Tuesday and Thursday from 23 July to 17 September 2026. On each day we took the first qualifying small-business releases in each newswire’s public listing: two from EIN Presswire and one each from PRWeb, PRLog, 24-7 Press Release and Newswire.com. To reach 102, we looked at 625 releases and set aside government, public-company, non-profit, advice-article and market-report releases, logging the reason for each.
On 21 October we ran every release through PitchBud’s own coverage check, the same searches our customers’ releases get, plus one more search for the business name. We fetched every page that came back and kept the 680 that named the business.
Copies of the release, pages dated before it and the issuer’s own other releases were sorted by rule. Every other page was read and put in one of four groups. When in doubt, we counted a page as coverage.
PitchBud sells press-release writing and direct journalist outreach, so we have a stake in this question. That is why the method was written down and fingerprinted before any data was collected, with every later clarification in a dated log.
Read the full method and its dated change log.
Limits
- Searches find coverage on the web. Print, broadcast without a web page, paywalled or unindexed coverage can be missed.
- Copies are undercounted: each search returns about a dozen results, and a wire may post a release on hundreds of sites.
- With 102 releases, the margin of error is several percentage points either way.
- The sample covers five services’ small-business releases from one summer, not every press release, and not large companies.
- We cannot tell whether a journalist found the story through the release or through the business’s own pitching.
Treat the release as your source page, not your outreach.
A wire puts your announcement on many sites, which helps people who search for you find it. It rarely puts it in front of a journalist who then writes about it.
The releases that were covered carried news a specific audience wanted. Find the few writers who cover that audience, and send each one a short, personal note.
Write your release and find the right reporters, free“Most small businesses send a wire release hoping a reporter will see it. In our sample, more than four in five got no coverage at all, only copies of the release itself. The release still matters as the official record of your news. It just doesn’t do the pitching for you.”
Bo Bennett, PhD, Founder, PitchBud
Cite or ask about this study
Journalists may cite or reuse the figures with a link to this page. The full list of releases and how each page was classified is available on request through our contact page; we do not publish the names of the businesses.
