Blog posts can be a total tease. You get to the end and you’re ready for more, but all that’s there is maybe some post navigation, and if you’re lucky a few comments. If your appetite was whetted by the awesome post you just read there’s no place for you to go, except maybe to a search engine to look for terms around what you just read.
Post or permalink pages probably account for about half of the pageviews on your blog.
One of my favorite things about Youtube is that you can start with a single video and then see something else interesting in the related videos and you lose yourself and next thing you know it’s four in the morning and you’re watching disco pilates videos. My fancy term for this is lateral navigation. (Which the rest of the world seems to think has something to do with flying.)
Well now you can have that same experience across WordPress.com.
In a feature we’re calling possibly related posts we’ll now try to show posts related to yours a little section at the end. If we find any posts on your blog that are related, we’ll put those at the very top and in bold. Next we’ll show other posts from around WordPress.com, and finally we’ll check if there’s anything in the mainstream media.
The result is a handful of links that should provide you and your visitors something interesting to check out. On blogs that cover the same topics frequently related posts could cause a 5-10% increase in traffic overnight. You could also start to see traffic from lots of other blogs. It’s a bit of an experiment, and we’ll be tweaking it a lot based on your feedback and the data that we collect once everything is live.
Right now this is just for English blogs, but we’re working on the technology to roll this out for every language we support. We’ll also be adding some ways for you to tweak the results to your liking.
If you want to remove the related posts from your blog entirely, just go to Design Appearance > Extras and check the box to do so. But if you remove related posts from your blog we’ll remove you from other people’s blogs, so you won’t get traffic from that.
We hope you like this new feature, that we developed in partnership with our good friends at Sphere, and that it nets you a more interesting reading experience and maybe a bit more traffic.
WordPress.com News 
That’s a great feature.
Would like to see that feature for Indonesian blog posts.
I’ve only just started my blog, and I don’t want others skipping away from it to other sites! So I’m turning it off.
It sounds great in theory and would be great in practice, if in fact the related links were actually related to the blog entry. I have an anti-diet blog and I got pro-diet links put on the end of my post. If the link had of been relevant, I would have left the feature on. As it is, I have opted out. Let’s know if you work out how to make the links more pertinent to the blog entry they are being added on to.
I’m likin’ this. First I hear about the new WordPress search engine — now possibly related posts…
Keep chuggin’ out those ideas guys
This is a great idea. “Lateral navigation” rocks!
It might be live, but I have been through a bunch of posts and none of my posts feature the new feature. I know I am not that unique!
Can I change the wording to make clear that these are recommendations from the WordPress computer, and not necessarily posts that I agree with or endorse?
Hmm, interesting add on, but without any control, except to turn it off or on. The way links have been inserted in my post as if I have put them into my post. It should be distinctly displayed.
Some feedback on how this was done. There’s a lot of furor and confusion on the support forums about this – some of the related links go to irrelevant stuff, or posts that contradict the blog poster’s, or in the worst case to mature/porn content.
People get rightfully upset when a big change appears on their user-facing blog without notice. Many people haven’t even discovered this yet, because you only see it when you link into a specific post as opposed to reading it from the front page and not every page is getting related links for whatever reason. So you’re going to have irate people “discovering” this for a month plus.
Things to keep in mind.
1. Communication. Not everyone who sets up a blog bothers to really get into the WP community – that means reading this blog faithfully or hovering on the support forums. Many blogs aren’t “post twice a day” affairs either. Some kind of better notification, like alerts on the user’s dashboard or even email, would be appropriate when adding stuff like this.
2. Default setting. Setting it to opt in rather than opt out by default is a major error in judgement. It couldn’t have been any more difficult to add it and set everyone’s to “Hide related posts”. Or at least combine it with communication as above so the information on how to turn it off is
3. Graphical design. The way the related posts appear, they visually can be mistaken for part of the individual blog post itself – they are in the same font and are right at the end even before the tags etc. I think even people that like this feature are thinking twice because it’s unclear that these links aren’t specifically posted by them.
4. Relevancy. Right now the relevancy is really bad; often the first couple links are OK but links 3-5 are where the random/mature/etc stuff sneaks in. How thoroughly was this tested?
Anyway, none of this is to say it’s a bad feature, and after tweaking on #3-4 it’ll be fine, but I think #1-2 is something to take to heart in the future.
I find that my question was already answered on a forum by Vivian paige (to whom thanks.) See:
https://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=27314&replies=13
So now my readers have the opportunity to explore the links, but don’t think that I’ve recommended them. Works well.
When they do this on Youtube (your example) it’s obvious to visitors those related links are other peoples work.
The way it’s done currently on WordPress it looks to be a part of the post written by the blogger. It’s not obvious that this is not a list of links selected by the author.
I’d like a tweak in the design so it’s clearer that it’s ‘related’ rather than my personally carefully selected links?
So, I write about racism or LGBT issues, and I get a whole bunch of racist or gaybashing posts attached to my stuff.
GREAT.
Or, I write about bogus alternative medicine treatments, and then get links to the treatments inserted to my post, which make it look like I’m endorsing them (and giving them google juice.)
I like this feature, but I would like it a lot better if there was a way that I could veto some of the links that contain content I find offensive.
I’ve reluctantly turned it off. 😦
I am definitely NOT interested in having “possibly related posts” to outside sources from my blog. I imagine there are many others who feel the same. Perhaps I would feel better about it if there were some definite mention that the author of the current blog has NOTHING to do with the content of the “possibly related posts.” Just a thought.
Love it Matt! Great work dude! I always wanted this. Thank you!
The idea sounded good at first, but now its annoying. It makes it look like you posted the “Possibly Related Posts”, because it is in the section of your post. Put it where it doesn’t look like that next update, and I will be very, very glad.
~Guineapig119
I’m sorry, but I am astonished at how this feature was added. The particular blog that I run on WordPress.com is a professional blog with important content, and now to see something called “Possibly Related Posts” appearing in the exact same place and format as my own content, displaying links to blogs that I have no control over (and many of these links having absolutely nothing to do with my blog and linking to very inappropriate non-PG, non-English content) is quite infuriating. It’s fine that this feature can be turned off, but shouldn’t it have been opt-in, instead of opt-out?
This is a very inappropriate feature that was recklessly planned and implemented by the WordPress.com folks. This feature should have been opt-in (not opt-out) and should have been beta tested to receive appropriate feedback before it went live. This is going to cause a lot of grief for bloggers who are now going to be embarrassed that they are using WordPress.com for their content and is going to encourage them to look elsewhere, unless the WordPress.com folks get their act together and start acting more professionally themselves.
Why not give us the option to allow the links generated to other posts on our own weblog, while hiding the links to other weblogs? That would be great. But I have to turn the current feature off, because I don’t want to promote links and sites that too often show up that don’t function for the purpose I set up my weblog to fulfil.
So the feature is no use to me now, though you could easily tweak it to allow links to my own related posts that do further the purpose of the weblog. Thanks.
I saw that on one of my postings earlier today and I was stunt, thinking that someone has hacked my blog.
I like the idea generally, but may be you ought to make feature that optional for the blog owner.
OK. I just have to add my two and a half cents. I like the idea in theory, but right now the way it works it looks like I might be the one recommending these links to my readers (I often do just that at the end of a post) and since some of these are so off base, that makes me uncomfortable. Also it takes readers to another page in the same tab and so I lose them. Luckily on my Work Coach blog it’s not on most of my posts yet, but for that blog I don’t think I want it the way it is now. (For my other one, which is not as focused, I think it’s a plus. Almost like a more targeted “next” feature.)
I know some folks love it, but glad you gave us the ability to opt out. Thanks for that. I think I too could grow to love it (and the increased traffic) with just a few small tweaks – such as if it made it clear that WordPress and/or Sphere was suggesting these links (and not me) and if it would open in a new tab.
Thanks for letting me have my say. Usually I am a huge fan of all you do, but this one falls a bit short for me as it stands.
Ah right thats excellent, nice handy tool.
I noticed this. It’s very interesting.
Cool. But hasn’t shown it’s pretty face on my blog so far. Is it because the search engine hasn’t found anything “related” yet?
now this is “laterally” fantaaaastttttiiiicccc matt … 🙂
Turned it off, the links that were inserted into my posts had nothing in common.
It was there, leading me to look here and see what was up, but it is not there any more. I will probably turn if off, though — I am wary about sending my readers who knows where with possible content I couldn’t endorse.
Hmm…I haven’t even noticed.
Two thoughts…
1) It would be cool if you could see this feature from the main page, without clicking on the post
2) It would be really cool to see where my post ends up. Where are my posts being linked as possibly related.
It’s good idea, yes. But I really would like to be able to keep it, while having some control of it. Like, to have my video on a trip to Mexico by a religious community related to a website called “American Idol”…that doesn’t excites me. Actually, I would prefer it limited to related posts from WordPress, and not whatever website. Thanks anyway for your constant creativity!
Super!
Does it work retroactively or only from now on?
I would have liked this feature a lot more if my post about convicted terrorists didn’t invite a link from a martyrdom propaganda site. I’ve also read in the forums that folks had links with NSFW material bestowed upon their SFW posts. Lovely.
Is there going to be a way to get rid of inappropriate links on individual posts, or do we have to disable the feature entirely to prevent these things from occurring?
I thisnk that’s a great idea! keep up the good work.
Generally, I like the concept but isn’t that why tags are clickable?
I also think there is the possibility that this feature will actually take away traffic from other parts of my blog and even prevent readers from reading and leaving comments since it is positioned between the end of the post and the beginning of the comments section. Once you click on a “related” post, you basically navigate away from the original page you were viewing and you might never come back…
Will this be something that can be turned off or repositioned after the comments?
That’s very exciting! Looking forward to seeing where it takes me!
I’ve turned off mine. The links were not relevant to the content on my posts, and I didn’t want to confuse my readers.
Does this allow people to go to other blogs for posts? If so, I will do my own little related posts project.
Better than the feature,
I like the option to turn it off easily!
🙂
I don’t want to give my readers the impression that I’m recommended they read something!
Thanks!
I thought this is what categories and tags were for. If someone was interested in related posts, they clicked a topic tag. You got to choose what tags. Then your reader chose which tag and sites listed on the tag to visit. If you really liked a post you could link to it yourself in your post and the reader knows YOU are the one who chose to link to the site. You don’t have this control with “Possibly Related Posts”. If its irrelevant or personally offensive, they still show up by default unless you turn off this feature. Also, you don’t know the content of the pages where your posts may show up as “Possibly Related Posts”. If it was very obvious WordPress is the one putting the related posts on the page not the blog owner, it would be better. Until then, I’ve turned them off. Perhaps make the default off or have a better way to inform bloggers why this suddenly appeared. The title of this “Possibly an Announcement” is very vague. It would have been nice to see it in an e-mail last week rather than surprised and confused today by my sight.
Quite interesting! 🙂
»Adam«
I’m finding the vast majority of my “possibly related” links are to other posts of mine, which I think is hilarious.
Another thing I notice is that this feature only seems to show up on about 40% of my blog entries, with length apparently not affecting whether or not links are generated.
So far, there has only been one external link generated that is actually something I consider related, or would have linked to myself. I appreciate the idea, but this seems like “auto-pilot” blogging, and I’m not impressed so far.
It is curious, too, that I haven’t seen this feature so far at ANY of the external sites I’ve visited as a result of generated links. If I’m related to THEIR blog, aren’t they related to MINE?
Bizarre implementation, WP!!
Hmm… This should be interesting.
I’m joining the “I don’t like this” club. The one “related link” had nothing to do with my post. I liked the suggestion of it only linking to other related posts in my own blog, rather than taking the readers out of my blog.
This sucks. I agree that it should have been “opt-in” not “opt-out”. The links are not sufficiently related to the topics in my posts, and it sends people away from my blog.
Wow!
Isn’t this gr8!
Maybe there should be an option of separating putting up related links in your blog and in other blogs rather than bunching them up together.
This is a cool feature, but it’s really a shame that it doesn’t apply to old posts, too. In a way this largely negates the usefulness of it, if “laterally navigating” through blogs is going to turn up lots of posts that aren’t laterally linked to anything else…
Okay after checking this new feature out a little, I have a couple suggestions (probably common ones):
1) Can the feature be post-specific rather than entire-blog specific? So we can decide to use the feature on one post and not another? This way, just because we don’t like using the feature on a small handful of posts, we won’t have to decide to delete the feature from our entire blog.
2) Can there also be a way we would be allowed to delete links we deem unrelated or don’t want to link to?
Thanks for all the hard work.
Sounds promising. Esp because I started doing this manually some time ago, off and on.
I have the same question as Ruhi. Can we choose posts only from our blog?
More importantly, is it ‘live’ yet? I cannot see it in action (esp since under Design –> Extras, I have not checked the ‘hide’ option).
Great Idea. Needs fine tuning. I was linked to blogs that were not relevant. While I welcome all, I disabled the feature for now.
I inadvertently disabled snapshot which was very useful. Please advise. Thank you for all you do,WordPress.
It would have been a great idea if the related posts were restricted to within my own blog. Most of the “possibly related posts” I’ve been getting are places I definitely don’t want to recommend to my readers!
This one took me by surprise ! Though it definitely is exciting to see the hits go up but then not at the cost of irrelevant posts showing up as linked. I turned it off. And i for one do not see a real solution to it.
1. There cannot be a control over those individual posts which the system is listing automatically. Even if there is then what is the assurance that those links aren’t going to change in future ? (blogs aren’t static)
2. Who would keep going back to that section on related posts for each and every post in one’s blog ? Moreover, as the no. of posts go up this task would only become cumbersome.
3. One cannot change reader perception about endorsement when they see unrelated links there.
4. If there is a probability of increase in hits then there is a equal probability of decreasing hits. Repeat visits might also suffer.
5. And then, one doesn’t know on what all blogs one’s own posts are getting listed ! I may not want my posts on certain blogs… what about that ?
I hope wordpress would do some user survey before finally releasing this feature.
It is amazing. REALLY.
What a superb feature! Within 2 seconds I got 15 hits…
Looking better now, with a horizontal rule to separate it from the main post and flagged “(automatically generated)” … nearly there, now… thanks, Matt!
I have mixed feelings about this tool, but am gonna give it a try!
Super idea! Love it! It’s great!
I’ve loved many of your other new features, but not this one. I agree with estherar and many others. It’s pulling completely unrelated posts, and there’s been absolutely no increase in traffic. It’d be great if it at least pulled posts from the same category!
I’ll continue to manually add my own related posts until this is tweaked a bit better.
It seems nice in theory, but in practice it’s not. My links were unrelated and not what I’d recommend to my readers, and I echo the other members who say it should be more clear that the links were not put there by me. I’m going to have to opt out.
it would be good if it worked. the only examples of it i see on my blog are links for not very related topics. my post is about art in charlotte, and its linked to ohio and canada art galleries. not very helpful to my readers. ill give it some more time to see how it works out, but will probably have to drop it.
I can see this being useful to me if I can choose PER POST when to use it. I sometimes write about parenting teens and I can imagine needing to turn it off for a post or two and then wanting in on others.
WordPress, I love you but I totally didn’t need random visitors floating in from prostatemilking.wordpress.com. I’ve disabled this feature and yet they come on a’comin.
yuck. it is a nice, very democratic idea and all, but i really don’t want to be linking to entries by bloggers i don’t know anything about. i agree that it would be better if it linked only to related posts within one’s own blog. nobody wants to endorse or advertise for people they can’t vouch for. i also found it irritating that instead of having to enable this feature, i had to look up how to disable it, which was a bit of a waste of time.
I turned off this feature as soon as I read this article — I don’t have a huge amount of traffic to my blog, so the idea of having related links intrigued me.. for about 4 seconds. The links to other sites is decided by me – things/people/blogs that are related to mine, or that I, myself, find interesting. My own blog is a simple one, about things that interest ME, and the people who come to my blog, and are not to be decided upon by some unknown algorithm that I have no control over.
The best way, imo, to implement this feature is a widget, that allows the blogger to decide what can be “related”, set up in a similar way as comments. If the link is something I want, I allow it. If it is not, I should be able to disallow it, not only by the actual link itself, but to the entire blog if necessary.
The other option would be to just allow related posts within the blog itself (I’d like that quite a bit).
Otherwise, I see no advantage in this.
The “possibly” part of “possibly related” is far too tenuous for me.
Aha! So that’s why I have incoming links from blogs I never heard or read before. It’s kinda cool but I have to agree with some of the other bloggers. Sometimes it bothered me that my post were linked to a blog which I didn’t want any connection with (sorry…). But on the other hand, it did help raise the traffic.
Anyway, the ever growing feature of WP are amazing!
I agree – I want the related posts to be within my own blog, not sending people off of my site. However, that can be good, as well, since other blogs will point to mine.
It would have been nice if the new feature was disabled by default, then enabled on an individual basis.
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! It sure beats the heck out of doing it by hand!
I love it and I love WordPress!
Hi Matt. I like the feature, and have had some interesting actually-related posts linked on my blog. However there are also some irrelevant ones.
So I suggest, as well as the option to block certain blogs that you’ve mentioned, there should also be an option for the owner of the blog to delete any particular links which he/she doesn’t feel are relevant or interesting to the post. Just as the owner can delete comments.
I LOVE IT! Thanks!
I like this function although there would be a couple additional features that would be nice to see.
1.Have the gobal on off switch but then enable us to disable it on a per-post basis (kind of like comments and pingbacks) This I would find usefull when I am using the blog to notify of an event.
2.Possibly having the option of approving/disapproving suggested links. This would be more of a challenge but I am noticing a lot of very irrelevant posts. I can see that irrelevant posts may be somewhat of a “feature” in a way though. But like the person above said there are some site that I just would not want mine linked to.
And what if we don’t like it? I don’t think it’s a good idea, or at least I don’t think everyone would like it. I definitely wouldn’t want to link some other pages or posts on other blogs if i haven’t checked before what i’m linking to.
This type of features should be optional, just like the “next blog” link. I think users should not be imposed connections or networking that they do not control in any way. Unless they want to, of course.
Plus, it’s an additional drawback for educators using your service with students, because it becomes really easy to see your students exposed to inappropriate content (or so judged by parents and/or authorities).
I like this feature but I do not like the fact that it’s going to other blogs that I wouldn’t necessarily approve of. I don’t think I should automatically be penalized for removing a link. I suspect the links that I remove from my blog wouldn’t want to be linking to my blog either. Just let us be free to choose.
I think it’s a great idea… but it obviously needs some work. I left the feature active over the weekend, and while I did get perhaps 1 out of 4 ‘related posts’ that were actually related to the topic I was addressing, I also saw my spam count skyrocket to more than double in just two days! The feature is off now… when the bugs are worked out, I’ll be glad to try it again. Like I said, it’s a great idea!
I noticed that and I LOVE it. It’s such a great idea! I betcha alot of my visitors will use it!
I don’t like having unapproved links on my blog posts. ruins my integrity.
this is interesting
I’ve turned it off.
I would be happy to use something like this, especially because it’s a way for WordPress to get more overall traffic, and that means they can sell more ads, and then earn a bit more and go on developing WordPress, as well as feeding themselves and their kids. So enabling it is a way of giving a little bit back to WordPress in return for the great platform they provide.
But like other people here, I’m unhappy about some of the links that the generator came up with and I’m unhappy that it looked like I was the person recommending the links. Plus I do kind of want people to stick around and read the the comments on my blog.
So I endorse the suggestions other people have made:
1 – Make it clear these are WordPress generated, not generated by me.
2 – Give me the option to delete links that I don’t like, not just block certain blogs.
3 – Put the recommendations at the end of the comments, not the start.
4 – Let me know if my posts are used on other people’s blogs, and give me the option of removing my posts from other people’s blogs. I write on feminism and atheism, and other stuff, and I really don’t want to end up supporting conservative Christian blogs who think that women should be kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
If WordPress could sort this out, then I would be pretty happy to turn the feature back on.
I’m not a fan as of yet because some of the sites it was connecting to were spam sites. I removed it.
Still not working on my blog yet.
I don’t like it at all. I’ve already turned it off.
Hi Matt and the WordPress team.
While I think this is an interesting feature with potential I agree with other WordPress users that this should have been offered as an opt-in rather than a opt-out excercise. For the time being I will disable the feature (thanks for at least giving us that control). In my case Possibly Related Post would be useful to me because many of my posts take place over a long period of time and relate directly back to earlier posts. If it had an option to only feature chronological related posts from my own blog I would use that for sure. Helps cut down on using the search tool, which may readers don’t even realize is available.
One of the power of blog is to make it linked easily with other posts. If wordpress take the task, I have no objection. It will give the post better dimension and wide readability.
But it would have been better, if the blog owner could edit the linkage like the comments. A blogger must have total control on his blog regarding its content.
The other thing that is missing-one is not informed of the presence of the related posts from the home page. WordPress can develop link for the related post in the home page like that of comments.
Still, bravo!
I have only found it on one of my posts so far, and it does state that the possibly related articles are automatically generated; however, because of where it is placed, it looks bad. I spend a lot of time formatting my posts and placing the images so that it looks aesthetically pleasing. As an Artist it especially important that my blog look attractive. It would bemuch better if it was after the comments so as to not mess with the image alignment or appearance of my post. I have not checked on any of the possibly related articles to see just how relevant they are, so I am not sure if I like this or not. I’ll give it a short time and see if it actually drives more traffic my way and if they work out the bugs–otherwise i’ll most likely turn it off also.
I think that this was poor implementation. I suddenly saw totally unrelated links at the bottom of my post. I found it offensive that suddenly my blog was invaded by worthless, irrelevant, external links. You motivated me to immediately disable this feature.
Please don’t ever add stuff to my blog again. I like the concept, I might even be compelled to add it in, but you’ve got to make it opt-in, not opt-out. In this case, I’m especially annoyed as you styled this stuff just as if I had put it in my posts. Feh!
Especially as a paying customer, I’m tick’d off about this. Next time, I’m moving my blog.
I’m with estherar, and anyone else who may have said the same. While this idea sounds good as a concept, it definitely needs more tweaking. I am glad that there is an option to disable it, though.
The feature has potential but links to too many irrelevant sites – and I really don’t like that it was enabled by default. It should by my choice whether I wish to add these links, and should be disabled by default.
I agree with the above comment – I was shocked when one of my posts was linked to a blog that was totally unsuitable, (NOT GOOD WORDPRESS!) I turned the option off straight away. I don’t want to generate traffic from those kinda sites to my blog thank you very much.
I think that automatically generated links to other posts on your own blog is a fantastic extra, but to drive traffic away from your blog to irrelevant posts on other blogs is dumb and I don’t want to do that.
It is just too random I’m afraid.
I’m not seeing this on any of my blogs. Does this mean I’m the only one blogging about those particular subjects, or something?
I hope this possibly related posts will turn out to be a plugin for your own wordpress.org installation and refer to content created by yourself. I have troubles accepting the suggestions of plugins that are already available. I wish you could at least rate inappropriate content links. I was writing about the Anschluss of Austria to Germany (annexation) and the plugin recommended a Joke compilation post. Inappropriate.
I like your style!
I was annoyed to find this enabled by default, with links from a post I’d written about a sustainable house in Birmingham UK to a Japanese model train newsletter. I suggest you change the text to “There is a remote possibility that the links below may be related to the above page – Matt”.