Possibly related posts (automatically generated)- do I like this new feature?

WordPress has recently added in a feature which adds automatically generated links at the end of posts which as they say are “possibly related”. Is this good, bad or neutral, from my point of view?

First off, it seems that perhaps only posts of a certain length may recieve this treatment (or perhaps only posts which are keyword rich enough, who knows?). Secondly, they don’t appear on the main blog, but only under individual entries. Thirdly, if I really dislike them, I can apparently disable them (though I haven’t tried to yet). They are getting a fair bit of discussion in wordpress forum threads such as these:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=27419&replies=15
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=27282&replies=15
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=27356&replies=22

So, how do I personally feel about them? Ambivalent at the moment, but generally positively enough not to disable them (for now anyway).

On the down side- spam/porn blog linking potential (or just blog posts that I would never personally link to) and links to unreciprocating MSM sites.

On the upside- referrals from other blogs to my posts and potentially interesting further reading for both myself and my blog’s readers. These are really sort of like auto generated Google ads without the downside of having ads. OTOH, they don’t necessarily have the potential upside of ads either (income- which I’m not interested in selling out my blog for) except perhaps for potentially bringing in new readers.

Here are some reasons why I think they’re worth keeping:

Firstly, I usually try to make my headlines descriptive enough so that people interested in what I’m writing about will get a pretty good idea of what they’ll encounter if they stop by, which is one of the recommendations which “uber blogger” Cory Doctorow gives for making a blog more sucessful, which you can see in this video. I think this gives me an advantage over bloggers who don’t.

Secondly, I don’t have a problem with sending my blog traffic elsewhere for further reading. This blog has never been designed in order to keep readers “only here”. Not that I think it would be sucessful if I did try to design it in that way.

Thirdly, I think it offers the potential for like minded bloggers to find each other and start conversations, exchange links and build community.

Fourthly (and this point is still ambivalent) I think wordpress will continue to improve the feature enough to make the upsides mentioned above outweigh downsides such as links going to sites which I don’t want to send traffic to. I think that wordpress can do that by

1. offering bloggers more options and control- such as allowing them to exclude MSM links if they choose and to go with wordpress only links

2. making the feature an entirely reciprocal one- if I get an auto generated link to a blog post, that blog post should have one to my post.

3. making it very clear that this is a wordpress feature, and that the blogger (currently) has no say in what links appear through this feature, so caveat emptor (or clicker).

4. improving the AI’s reading of relevant posts so that the quality improves

5. continuing efforts to identify and purge spam and identify adult content

 

Anyway, though I’m not completely sold on the feature in its current form I figure it doesn’t cost me much to leave it turned on. But, readers should be aware that they visit such links on their own recognisance or some such. In other words, along with the good you may also see the bad and the ugly if you use the feature yourself or click on the autosuggested links.

 

 

Tags: community, blogging, links, blogs, file 13, file thirteen, wordpress, features, possibly related links, referrals, common interests