With the contracting economy, businesses and public relations firms that represent them are looking for affordable, effective, alternative ways to market and promote themselves. The purpose of a press / news release is to generate media and public interest in the products and services offered by businesses, organizations and individuals. Many press release distribution sites offer their services for free, but their value at driving public interest is often negligible. To assist press release publishers in their efforts to find quality Web sites to distribute their releases, Bignews.biz created this list of the top, free, PR distribution sites.

After 4 years of posting thousands of news releases to hundreds of different press release distribution sites, BigNews.biz has compiled a list of the top free press release submission sites based on four important criteria.

1. The site must offer a free press release distribution service to their users. They can also offer premium services for a fee. 2. Have a Google pagerank greater than 4. 3. Must be ranked in the top 100,000 Web sites on the Internet by Alexa.com 4. The majority of releases published to the site are picked up by Google News.

Many sites fit one or two or maybe even three of the above criteria for inclusion but out of 80 sites evaluated, only 15 sites qualified for the November 2008 list.

"After following online traffic to these news & press release distribution sites for over 6 months now, we've seen a remarkable increase in their popularity." said Phillip Davies managing partner at BigNews.biz. "All of the sites listed on this months list have shown substantial increases in traffic every month for the past 6 months. This upward trend in popularity for an entire service sector shows that the public is hungry for online information sources and the services that these sites provide. The growing popularity of these sites creates a tremendous opportunity for people that publish press releases."

To view the complete updated list of the top free press release distribution sites, please visit: http://bignews.biz/blog/?p=6  . The list is includes dynamically generated data for each site listed. Please note that BigNews.biz is not affiliated with Google, Alexa or any of the Web sites listed in the November 2008 list, unless otherwise noted. The list is provided as an editorial service for press release publishers and BigNews.biz does not necessarily advocate the use of the listed sites.

About BigNews.biz

A public relations and Internet marketing firm with over 14 years of experience in online PR. The company also designs and sells software for building press release and news distribution sites. The founders have over 18 years of experience working for news media companies such as the LA Times, The Associated Press and Newsday.

Contact info: Phillip Davies Phil@BigNews.biz