Press Ranger Labs: Opt-In Experiments for Press Release Nerds

Press Ranger Labs is a set of opt-in experiments that give you fine-grained control over how your press releases get distributed, posted, and indexed. Most customers will never need it. Labs is for the growing group of you who care about press releases as much as we do and want the knobs and dials. Labs is live today on every account.

Labs is where new ideas live until they prove themselves. If an experiment works, it becomes the default for everyone. If it doesn't, it goes away. That lets us keep pushing on press release distribution without putting your releases at risk, because nothing in Labs changes until you turn it on.

The first three labs

1. Bing IndexNow

Your Press Ranger newsroom should be the hub for your company's news, and it should rank in AI search. Turn this on and we notify Bing through its IndexNow API the moment a press release goes live. Bing's index powers ChatGPT search and Copilot, so they can find your release right away. Turn it on if you run a white-labeled newsroom on Press Ranger.

2. Social post headlines

Every Gold release gets posted on seven social platforms. By default those posts use your release copy word for word, because we don't want to guess what your clients want said about them. The tradeoff is that each post reads as one more syndication of the release and can't rank on its own.

This lab lets us write each social post to rank. Choose "Optimized for rank" to vary the posts and target commonly searched keywords. Keep "Same as release" if your brand team, your lawyer, or your boss reads every word.

3. Social post highlight link

Each social post carries one link. By default it goes to your website. But the most valuable thing a press release earns is a placement on Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, or StreetInsider, and the more those placements get linked, the stickier they become. Choose "Best placement" to point the link at your strongest placement instead of your site.

How to opt in

Go to Press Ranger Labs in your settings and switch on what you want to try. Each lab shows what it does before you change it.

The fine print

• Labs are off until you opt in. Every default stays the same.
• Settings apply to every company on your account.
• Only the account owner can change them.
• The social post labs apply to Gold releases, since those are the releases we post to social.

More labs are coming

These are your labs. If there's something about how your releases get distributed, posted, or indexed that you want to test, tell us and we'll put it in the lab. When an experiment earns its place, it becomes the default on every release in our press release distribution. All new labs will show up in the changelog.