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 
nice , waiting for the arabic supported version..
I agree that it would have been a great idea if the posts linked WITHIN my blog. I don’t want to drive traffic off to other people’s blogs — especially blogs that are totally random. It makes it seem like I like/approve of those blogs. You may as well stick an ad on my blog.
It’s actually worse than an ad because an ad looks like an ad and everyone knows it is an ad. This looks like something I have posted. Even though it says automatically generated. Nobody knows what that means. People think I have posted those links to blogs — and I have not.
This was very badly implemented from a usability standpoint. It is NOT clear that the links are from other blogs. I feel the same about the links in my blog posts — why do they link to WP pages for that tag? It does not make any sense. That is not standard practice for tags/blogs and I think it is confusing for users.
Secondly, when I went to turn the feature off, it says, ““this blog won’t show up on other’s blogs or get traffic that way”. Ugh. Clearly WP is in love with this feature — that copy is pretty biased.
Lastly, if you are trying to build a community of blogs — you should tell us before you add big features like this, offer the option of adding the feature. Don’t just add it to our blogs and expect that we are going to love it — and then bury the opt out. I had to google to figure out how to turn the thing off.
An email would have been great. Or even just an announcement on the dashboard.
It DOES link to posts in your blog. If there are enough related articles in your blog, it won’t even show anything else!
I am turning this off until you find a reasonable way of measuring similarity/related posts. What you are coming up with right now is very bad and looks pretty bad on the blog. I also agree with the above comment that it should be an option to enable just on my own blog.
If the accuracy improves in the future, I may turn this back on. I’ll check back in a few months.
I like the concept, but I need to be able to restrict it within my own blog, or at least have it clearly identify the links that are to external blogs as such. Instead, readers of my blog may think that they are clicking on things I’ve written when they are not, and that is not acceptable.
For now, sadly, I’ve disabled it.
I really don’t like this posting “possibly related posts” at all without user consent. I’ll be moving my blog elsewhere soon if it is not removed. Ditto for Google Adverts. Let us opt out of these “features” now.
Thank you matt for this 🙂
In theory, this is an interesting concept. In reality, oh boy. I’ve disabled it for now. The possibly related posts had no relationship to what I posted for today’s blog. In truth, I was a bit horrified. I have to wonder what was linked to earlier posts. It wasn’t until today that I realized they were linked to the page where comments can be made. Also, it gives the impression that I have personally suggested those possibly related posts, which I am not comfortable with at all. In fact, I feel as if I have to apologize to my readership.
I love WordPress. It’s innovative and cutting edge. But, this concept badly needs tweaking. I agree with the poster who suggested that the default setting for these options should be set to off and bloggers can turn them on at their discretion.
I appreciate, as always, the opportunity to give feedback.
Turned it off as soon as I could. As others have said, there are now posts which have the OPPOSITE of what I write now linked to mine. If I mention gender or sex or research – I get porn links.
No, sorry, this is just like bad Google ads and I just can’t stand it. Good idea, but just doesn’t work when it’s just a machine making the links.
The Rooster gives you TWO SPURS UP!…way UP! All my hens say CLUCK!
Definitely one of the best ideas you’ve come up with. Congrats to whoever! I really like this. I used to do it manually but lost steam after a while. Seems someone took pity and did this. Thanks.
Thanks for letting us disable this option, I have no interest in seeing other people’s pretentious posts in my lighthearted blog.
Thank you for your explanation. I noticed these links and wondered how they got there. It’s similar to those used by online portals like Yahoo or MSN.
I love them and take the opportunity to express my appreciation.
WordPress rocks!
Omar.-
very nice!!! hope it’s comin’ for other languages too…
gratz WP team!!
Well… are there any related posts to this one? 😦
Well, that explains that. I’m wondering if Esther[ar], above, has a point. I hadn’t followed any of the links because I didn’t know where the heck they were being generated from, but I’m wondering how many of those links are to blogs I don’t necessarily want recommended to my readers.
Hmm – guess I’d better be checking this out further.
It’s bad enough on the free blogs but on paid for ones it is an uncalled for imposition which will not be appreciated by many people.
I’ve just looked at an entry on a friend’s blog and the related posts are anything but!
This does not reflect well on WordPress, who seem to have gone very quiet on addressing such concerns.
I am not sure I like this. I would want the feature to maybe suggest possibly related posts as I’m about to publish a post and let me approve them before they are displayed on my blog. It makes it look like I personally endorse these other posts and I might not.
Thats a pretty cool idea. Yeah, I too, was looking at an old entry (because of a new comment there) of mine and thought…I don’t remember writing that.. lol =P.
Thanks for the visual improvements setting off the Related Posts from content I wrote. It’s pretty minimal, and I think “WordPress.com Recommends Related Posts” would have been preferable to “(automatically generated)”, but it’s enough for now—with luck, it will be improved in the future as you fine-tune the feature.
Another vote for the request to be able to turn it off per-post, especially after letting it happen and seeing that none of the posts are actually related.
Another vote to be able to make it run only on my posts, or perhaps to have a separate tool that I can tell to only produce related posts of mine, or maybe related posts from my blog and a set of blogs I choose, perhaps my blogroll.
Would be good if we could control what other blogs could be linked to this way. So, for instance, if I had the ability to select 20 other wordpress blogs and those were the only ones from which a related post could come. As estherar said, I may not want to recommend some of those blogs to my readers, but it looks as if I am.
Sounds like a win-win solution for traffic and continuity of information
Personally I don’t like it. It makes my site look like a cheap, ad-based blog. If there were some way of tastefully (i.e. very subtly) incorporating this feature, then I wouldn’t mind, but my initial thought when I viewed my blog was that I somehow got spammed.
Call me a whiner, but I’ll be turning this feature off for now. It’s got some potential, but I prefer the “Next Blog” button on the options bar.
Let me take it back. I opened my mouth too soon. I realized it doesn’t work most of the time. I had a bunch of posts related to each other but except for one, the system did not get it. Instead, my posts were linked to other blogs that are completely irrelevant to my topic. Now I will have to go back to manually doing it. Good intentions, but sorry it doesn’t work.
I love the feature! My traffic has dramatically increased the last 3 days, or especially the last two days.
I did like it until something that might be considered offensive by some of my regulars showed up as a possible link and I didn’t have any way to delete it without shutting off the entire thing.
Shouldn’t I have some say? It is my blog and my writing. I like added exposure but there is nothing that indicates the links aren’t to my own archive or to let me get rid of links I don’t want.
This is great. It’s brought me some more traffic already!
I can’t wait to see this in Spanish. Sounds interesting especially for my very specific blog.
Thought at first someone had hacked my blog. Then I checked here. Not sure I like this. Don’t care to be directing folks to blogs I haven’t checked out first and might not like.
I’ve read through ALL the comments and have to add my two cents:
1. I was taken aback when I first saw this on another person’s webpage; I thought they had written it and that it was tacky. When I saw it on my OWN website, I was horrified. I think it sounds like a child wrote it “possibly related posts” … what does that even MEAN?
2. I don’t appreciate being told that if I turn this feature off, that I will be losing a potential source of readership, as my blog won’t be available for others to link to through this feature. It’s like a little scare tactic, wrapped up in a bow.
I’m turning mine off, for now. When the wording, font, or positioning changes, I’ll opt back in.
If I wanted this, I could have done it myself with an image and post links. What bothers me is that people link to other sites when the whole point of running your own is to make people want to use yours and not the competition’s.
Another Surprise eh 🙂
Good Thing 🙂
I honestly thought at first that I’d like this feature. However, having checked my blog tonight, I find that the “Possibly Related Posts” were *not* something that I personally would have chosen for my blog to link to. They also appeared to be something that I personally was endorsing – which is *not* the case. I have disabled this feature and do not plan on turning it back on.
This is the first time since I began blogging on WP two years ago that I’ve *ever* had a negative reaction to something you guys have come up with. I sing WP praises to everyone I know when they ask about blogging. But honestly? This one just doesn’t work for me.
You guys ROCK! Loving all the new ways to help us each spread “the word” and learn about others out there related to our own ideas! Thanks a bunch!
Roldan
http://www.on-common-ground.com
Good idea in theory. We’ll see how it works out. My concerns have been voiced previously, but I’ll go ahead and add my opinion here. First, I agree that it should be more obvious that wordpress or sphere is making the recommendations and not the blogger.
Also, so far, the related posts linked to my blog have not been relevant to my post or my blog. Also, I am VERY concerned that somehow the “possibly related posts” will link to mature sites, (or worse), that I would be very opposed to recommending.
Thanks for listening.
I like the idea of reading other content out there that pertains to my blogging subjects. However, I’d like to have the links clearly identified as not produced by me and I’d like to have the ability to disassociate my blog with others that have content I find to be inappropriate. This has been mentioned in several comment. I’m to the point that I’ll probably turn this feature off until it’s been tweaked some more and refined, because of some of the content my blog has been linked to.
Thanks for the explanation Matt. I was wondering about that. Thanks for giving us the option to opt out. That was fair. I will however leave it on and see what comes of this new feature. At the moment, it seems to be suggessting links that are completely not related. I guess that’ll improve with time.
That’s awesome : D It’s like linking to blogs and getting the right audience 🙂 In this way, hidden ‘treasures’ can be discovered by linking to them and the readers also get to benefit! I think it is a win-win situation for all of us : D Keep up the good word, WP and keep new ideas rolling in!~
i agree with the negative comments!
related topics are quite random chosen.. and yes, i am not so happy ot have people flying off from my blog.. and never come back..
blog is usually a personal thing, i post story of myself about myself.. and find these links to *nothing* i am interested in..
not a good improvement.. 😦
wow nice thought
where did it go? worked for a day, then not.
This should be optional feature. I would not like to have links that “somehow” related to my posts. I do not like the idea that my visitors to be navigated out of my blog. I understand that you want to increase page views of wordpress.com, but if it is so great feature then most of users will not disable it.
I can admit advertising in my blog because users understand that this is advertising. But when you show the “related” links they rather to think that the blog owner posted them.
I cannot admit that my blog content is modified.
So this can be a reason for me to leave wordpress.com Please, take in consideration
Hi. Now that a few of my posts have these ‘recommended posts’, a few observations:
1. The recommended posts only show if someone clicks on the comment link. This is NOT a complaint, just an observation.
2. The recommended posts are completely unrelated or irrelevant. For instance, my factual post on note-taking (how-to, whether-to etc) serves up a random post on someone’s pregnancy announcement. I can see the algorithm at work but still it is irrelevant. 🙂
I have not disabled it universally because I am curious to see how this works. And if there is no way to give feedback, I cannot see how WP can improve it.
Anyway my tuppence.
I like this new feature! Keep ’em coming!
Brains and Beauty!
Matt, this can be a nice tool, but it might be good to let users opt-in rather than just turning it on and messing with their blogs. My wife wrote a blog post regarding spring in Minnesota, and when my 10-year old daughter read it she found a link to a post that was, shall we say inappropriate for a 10-year old girl to read? We have no idea how WordPress determines what’s a related post, and we certainly can’t figure it out from that particular link. It could be a cool tool for someone who wants it, but just popping it in the middle of a family blog page didn’t do much for your reputation. But thanks for helping my daughter to learn a little more about what people are doing out there in the world. I really appreciate that.
I agree with estherar. I wish it stuck to posts within my blog. Links are popping up to sites I wouldn’t send people to. Is it possible to give people the option to turn the feature off and on on their blogs?
Well, it happened. One of the automatically generated links provided was to another blog showing a picture of David Beckham in his underwear in a very provocative pose. Not something I necessarily want to promote on my blog!
Also, some of the links provided don’t make sense. That’s because rather than being related to the post, the links are related to a subject I may have mentioned in an earlier post on my blog. For that reason, the automatically generated links seem rather random. They lack the human touch and you can just tell it’s done by a computer.
Too bad we can’t pick and choose which links we want associated with our blog. Perhaps we could approve or disapprove them like we do our comments. Leave some and delete the ones we deem offensive.
For now, I’m turning this off.
Not seeing this on my blog at all.
Good because I write a blog that most of the time deals with my experiences with my disability Spina Bifida, but I don’t want just other people who are disabled reading my blog. I want all types of people with all types of interests to see it.
We were surprized to see this “feature” show up on our blog, and we were glad to discover that we could turn it off, which we did right away. As others have said, the “related posts” weren’t necessarily related, and it did look like these posts were endorsed by the blogger.
It also seems to us that there is no need whatsoever for this feature — since clicking on the tags will lead to “related posts” that are actually related. The tags already create easy and coheret “lateral navigation” if that is what you’re after.
We really like wordpress. Please don’t screw it up.
Doesn’t seem to work very reliably. I mostly post about roleplaying games of the pen and paper variety, and the related posts are about computer games, as often as not.
If this feature could be restricted to just one blog, or, better yet, to blogroll, it would be far more useful.
I just saw a big jump in my blog traffic despite having made no new posts or made any other changes. It’s premature to conclude that it’s due to Possibly Related Posts, but at the moment I have no other explanation.
The Possibly Related Posts links so far as only so-so with respect to applicability, and I’m not crazy about sending people AWAY from my blog. But given the possible increase in traffic, it may well be a great overall benefit.
I think we should all give it some time to see how it evolves.
It is not showing on my blog. Can someone tell me why?
I do not like this at all. Looking at the “suggestions” nothing was related to my posts. I consider it rather insulting to have some automatic system attempt to add what it thinks is relevant to content I spend hours creating to be useful.
In fact, several are sites I would NEVER recommend to my readers, based on the content of my site. Very Very bad.
I have disabled it and will not enable it.
Aweso,me. But can I get a “possibly unrelated posts” tool as well?
I don’t like the related post suggestions. The ones listed on my blog have nothing to do with what I blog about. 😦
You know what would be awesome? If, while drafting, bloggers could SEE some of the possibly related posts and then decide whether to link to them.
Not that this would have prevented what is evidently a spam blog from linking to me. I still get visitors from prostatemilking and I am pretty sure they are still disappointed to find that there are no prostates on my blog at all.
This doesn’t work when WP has allowed folks to wrongly and unfairly label your blog as “adult,” when you clearly have a political blog (that some folks oppose). WP category and Tag matches to your blog are then blocked from being included in returns. The only possible way for folks to reach your blog via tags is from OUTSIDE WP! Why? Because WP has a flawed policy, like YouTube, Digg, etc. on how blogs get treated. Our blog receives an average of 5-800 hits per day. If it weren’t wrongly rated as an ADULT blog, it would receive perhaps 5000 hits per day. So thank you WP!
And I’m sure this comment won’t see the light of day. I see your mouse curser seeking the delete button now. Go ahead, click it!
I love this idea.
I do have a question though (and bear with me if someone else has already asked this… I haven’t read all the comments): I was wondering if we have the power to deselect ‘related posts’ because it, possibly, may not be related?
This isn’t working in my blog. I’d like it to, it would be fun. And even if it isn’t 100% related, I don’t care. I just like the fun.
Wow! It took me like a half hour (okay, several minutes) just to scroll down to the bottom to make my suggestion … one that has probably been stated already.
I love the feature, and I’m not concerned about someone being sent to material that has an opposing view … it helps people think, and for goodness sake, the star cast of contributors at my blog don’t know it all. I selected them because they were political independents in thought, not Gods.
On the other hand I like what sphere has done for the Wall Street Journal – and I’m not sure this is your answer, but it might be.
They have automatically generated lists:
1. Related Articles From the WSJ (with a couple of selections)
2. Related Web News (with a couple of selections)
And there is a note that states “powered by Sphere” – which will take care of complaints from those who are afraid that their site endorses the links.
I don’t know the cost or complexity of doing this, but it seems to me this might help resolve the crisis.
How can I complain, in my first 6 weeks Sphere placed three articles from one of my blogs in the top two at the Wall Street Journal, one top two placement in Time Magazine, one top two in the Washington Post, one top two in the Dallas Morning Times.
If I were an aspiring writer, and I thought the quality of my work was high, I would not be worried about an automatically generated link provided by a fantastic provider, with the best templates, best support, great speed, etc., etc., so well linked to provide instant traffic – no, I would be grateful, and just focusing on doing such great work that folks want to stay, and will know the difference between their sites and others.
Thank you WordPress for the best blogosphere on the Internet!
Thanks. It’s a great idea. However, I have the same question as Jessc18. Can we deselect unrelated posts?
Haven’t seen a single remotely-related link yet from anywhere outside my own blog: while tabletop RPG’s may be a limited sort of subject, I find it hard to believe that the best matches that can be found are discussions of Gmail changes, terminal server errors, and mccaffee update errors actually have anything to do with a game session spent exploring an alternate earth devestated by an asteroid impact. Now, it might have been related to mecha, battletech, d20, dungeons and dragons, and a host of other topics, but no such links appear anywhere.
I just checked out my last 10 posts to see what was “possibly related”. Some were from my site, that helps. Some were from music related sites, that helps too. But there was one “possibly related” post that showed up on every post that was a link to a blog selling CDs…..every post there’s the link! I’d like to be able to have posts on my blog show up not spam/merchant sites.
Two of my tags is Heavy Metal & Metal…..I found a few “related posts” for Zinc, minerals, vitamins, steel, etc. I’m turning the feature off until the bugs are worked out.
I don’t see it in my blog. What am I doing wrong? It IS in the English language….
It is difficult to determine whether one’s post failed to generate a possibly related list, and why. Like even an internet algorithm said you are dull as hell, go away…. he, hehe, somewhat weakly said.
It is still a good idea, but I would feel comforted if I knew better how it worked and could use it, versus simply feel an unexplained impact of nothingness.
I am, of course, attempting to assure myself, that nothingness is not the proper message I should expect to receive in response to my posts. It may be, but if it is, it should be clearly stated, and not slowly delivered.
How should I measure myself in response to this addendum?
I think it is a great idea but I would love to see the referral posts open in a new window (thereby also leaving them on our blog)!
-Godfather (theslowbleed.com)
Thanks a lot Matt, I’ve been looking for this feature and was wondering why this is not available on wordpress.com while .org users can use plugins for the same.
I saw the checkbox of the feature in design->extras but it is not seen in the posts.
Would it come automatically or do we need to do something?
Wait for bahasa Indonesia.
Thanks People!
yoshi~
This is a terrific new feature. My little blog is getting increased traffic I can see as a result of this. THANKS!
Ok good idea.
Love the new “possibly related links” feature. Quite awsome. My traffic has significantly increased just when I thought it had plateaued. Posts that got little response before are now “off the charts” confirming my original reason for the post. I’ve read that many others “hate it.” Not me. I know my readership has broadened and increased. Your ideas are as prolific as your generosity. I commend your efforts and applaud you unabashedly. It’s like working for an organization that anticipates your needs. We make a terrific team. Thank you.
Might be a bug, but sometimes the links are circular. I.e. I updated an old blog post, and the blog post points now to itself in the possibly related section.
I was surprised to see that feature at the bottom of my post and didn’t know where it came from. Now I know, and I like the idea very much! Thanks!
yeah, i’ve noticed this and i totally liked it… i’ve even discovered a lot of good blods to read in this process… i love wordpress so much!!!
that’s cool, I’ve already made a couple new friends that way, who probably otherwise wouldn’t have found my blog, and vice versa. Thanks
Hi Matt,
Before disabling the feature I remember seeing 2 of my own posts getting listed in Related Posts. They both were listed in Bold and were right on top. But what made me decide otherwise was the rest of the posts listed therein. Both were unrelated.
I sincerely hope wordpress works out a solution so as to give greater control to bloggers on each listing in Related Posts. This way the feature would be a great hit with blog owners.
so many comments lol, cool idea 😀
preety cool idea,feature is active in my blog.
but i have some additional tips,which must be added(i think).
1) Enable / Disable this feature. [ if a user don’t want this feature in his blog then he can enable or disable it]
2) where to search :
i) Entire Web
ii) entire word press blogs
iii) only in own blog.
pls let me know ur views,i new at word press,replying first time to u.
(Please Ignore-if someone else has already sujjested this,or if its already developed…,I haven’t read all the comments)
I turned it off. Some of the “possibly related posts” were quite alarming to my fellow Critters.
a
w
e
s
o
m
e
EXP!!!!! man! dude, this helped me get more friends that like the same thing as me! thanks!
Awesome! I’m gonna use it soon…
I think it’s a great idea, but I would hope that it’s a feature that can be turned off or on by the Blogger, like a widget. Some of the “possibly related posts” have linked readers to something that they may find offensive which puts neither the Blogger nor the reader in the best situation.
i was surprised the other day to see related posts. i think it is a great idea. thanks for this feature!
good idea, i hope the version in spanish is coming soon, mientras tanto esperamos 🙂
Great! Having fun with it already!
Nice
we still don’t like it
but will give it time to see how it develops and evolves
Cool! Haha. 🙂
DAS IST GUT!!!!
AWESUM!!!