"Related Posts" feature shows random posts! How to make it show similar tags?
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Hi, I am helping to manage a website that shows blog post/news articles.
The “Related Posts” feature at the bottom of the page is quite frustrating, as it seems to show completely random, unrelated posts. I would like it to show posts that are actually relevant i.e. related to the post the reader is currently looking at.
Initially, I thought it would do this if I gave the articles tags.
However, I have just gone through giving a series of articles the same tag, and when I view them on the website, “Related Posts” still only shows completely random posts, and not posts with the same tag.
Why is this? Does related posts not use the tag feature?
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Hi there,
On what site are you working? The account you’re using to post here does not own any sites on WordPress.com, nor do you have any Jetpack-connected sites, which are the only two options for the Related Posts feature offered by us.
WordPress.com Related Posts uses an algorithm that looks at key words in post titles, content, categories and tags, and doesn’t show any posts if no related ones can be found, rather than just showing random posts.
If you have a self-hosted WordPres ssite, and you’re using another Related Posts plugin, please contact support for that plugin directly for help.
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It’s not a site connected to this account – it’s https://thesocialist.org.au. It is a WordPress.com site, and it does use Jetpack, but the Jetpack option for related posts is switched off.
We only want Related Posts to show things with similar tags – at the moment the list of related posts appears very truly random.
I have just noticed this morning that it seems to be showing “related posts” from the same category – but the categories are extremely broad, and this may be why the related posts appear random. For example, the post https://thesocialist.org.au/review-dark-emu/ is in the Reviews category, and it shows “related posts” that are also reviews. It is not tagged “reviews”, but rather is tagged “Indigenous”, so I would have thought it should show related posts that also have that same tag.
I know that there is apparently a feature in Jetpack to show related posts by category rather than tag, but like I said, the related posts function in Jetpack is switched off, so I assume it is using the default WordPress.com behaviour.
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https://thesocialist.org.au/ is not a WordPress.com site. It is using the open source WordPress.org software, and is hosted by https://netvirtue.com.au/
That site is connect to WordPress.com via Jetpack using a different account, but that site does not have Jetpack’s Related Posts feature enabled. The Related Articles section you’re seeing on that site is added by the theme itself, so you’ll need to contact their support for help with that feature.
If you want to enable Jetpack Related Posts instead, you can see how to do that here:
Jetpack’s Related Posts feature does not show only posts with the same tag, though, and you will probably still need to disable your theme’s related posts feature first.
For help with Jetpack’s Related Posts feature, you can contact their support at https://jetpack.com/contact-support/?rel=support, though you will have to be logged into the WordPress.com account that owns the Jetpack connection first.
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