The social platform designed for PR professionals known as PitchEngine, recently announced that their free service will no longer include publishing media releases to their PitchFeed, effective May 30, 2009. In turn, free content will no longer be discoverable by Google News.

PitchEngine made the decision to charge for this service after spammers used the PitchFeed to increase their Google rank. The company believes that a fee will keep spammers at bay, while helping to regulate content. PitchEngine stated that the updated free content policy is necessary to protect the integrity of their service.

The free service will still packages stories and share them with users’ social networks, friends and media contacts via the social web, but in order for stories to show up on Google news brands will need to subscribe for a fee of $35 per month. In addition, this fee will keep stories active, while releases submitted under the free service will expire after 30 days.

For more information, check out www.pitchengine.com and follow them on Twitter @pitchengine.

Holly A. Simpson is an intern at Wicked PR in Atlanta, GA. She is a senior Communication major at Kennesaw State University with her emphasis in Public Relations. Follow her on Twitter @hollishter