Compared with Paid search, online PR is limited in its tracking capabilities, simply because you cannot publish tracking code in your press releases in order to view visitor paths and conversions. Nonetheless, there are still some ways of getting around that – and many of them will be familiar to PR professionals who have long experience running offline PR campaigns.

Brand tracking
Hopefully you have a unique or unusual brand name for your business, or for some of your products. Track the number of people searching for these brand names through Google Trends, or Twitterholic.

Create unique landing pages to track visitors
There are lots of benefits to this. Firstly you have the opportunity to tailor a landing page with the most appeal for new visitors. If the landing page is only accessible to readers of your PR content, you have a clear view of the impact of your PR campaigns.

Unique paths for calls-to-action
If you have the capability to create unique telephone numbers, email addresses and other contact details, this is one of the most tried-and-tested ways of assessing the success of PR campaigns.

This can include custom coupon codes that relate to specific news – and with the large number of consumer forums that share information on coupons and discounts, this is another effective way to spread your news.

The Econsultancy Online PR Trends Briefing says that the metric of measurement are crucial for online PR in 2009.

From ClickThrough Marketing: “Metrics such as improvements in search can be an effective way to benchmark online PR, but such measures neglect the wider value of company reputation…”