Yes of course. Press release is cached by Google as quickly. If the content is quality and unique, that will derive traffic to your site as Google displays press release as #1 in SERP for the anchor text you used.
Agree with fbwebmaster. Also, Press release is basically not meant to get ranked your website. It is a medium to syndicate your news among others, so that they can be aware about the updates in your organization or your product release or anything similar.
Press releases are used to create awareness and to gain popularity and are also helpful from SEO point of view.
Press releases, in and of themselves, are probably not of great assistance. But, getting a story on a major site can help a whole lot - particularly in the short term. For example, we had a site that was referred to on "The View" a couple of years ago. The immediate traffic surge took down the server for the better part of the day The residual effects were a number of natural inbound links that appeared over time (impossible to trace exactly, but trends were highly suggestive). The same will happen with any reference to a site from high traffic and highly regarded sites, e.g. CNN, BBC, PC mag, etc. A well written press release might be picked up by these. Most press releases, in my experience, fall into the waste basket. The exception might be for local events released to local media. If there isn't anything newsworthy, then it is probably a waste of time to be circulating press releases.
yes, it's useful as per search engine optimization. if you can submit press release in higher page rank website, you will get back link from that website after approval, then it's considered strong back link for your website and which you gives boost up to your website in targeted keywords.
Thanks friends for sharing your knowledge regarding to press release. Special thanks for Willybfriendly who have cleared this thing in very good way. Thanks