Related posts aren’t actually that related

  • Resolved Alexander S. Kunz

    (@antermoia)


    4 years, 4 months ago

    Hello,

    I recently published a post with a gallery of my 10 favorite photos from 2019 (it’s something like a tradition on photo blogs). When I look at the Related Posts shown under that article, they aren’t quite closely related to this article:

    https://www.alex-kunz.com/favorite-photos-2019/

    I thought I’d give the Related Posts thing/algorithm/magic 😛 “a little hint” and manually added links to the same posts from previous years, but it doesn’t change a thing. The Related Posts section stubbornly shows three of my “monthly end notes” which really, really are NOT very much related to the year-end-favorites kind of post, at list form my human point of view.

    By comparison, here’s the same thing from 2018. It shows at least some other “favorites from…” articles as related, which is more what I would expect:

    https://www.alex-kunz.com/my-favorite-photos-from-2018/

    I’ve been noticing for a while now that (some of) the Related Posts seem to be rather random on my site, and it isn’t easy to understand how the tubes behind this feature determine WHY a post that shows up in there is considered related when from my point of view, it actually isn’t. Any clues what might be causing this?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Contributor James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Volunteer Moderator

    4 years, 3 months ago

    Adding content to the post generally won’t help, it’s one of the weakest weights. In order of weight, related posts are selected based on Categories, Tags, keywords in the post tile, and keywords in the content.

    In this case though, you’re right it appears wrong. I think it’s picking up on the 2019 in the title, but it should definitely be picking up on categories and tags before that.

    I’ve started a re-sync for your site, which can take up to 24 hours to finish, so please check this time tomorrow to see if there’s any improvement.

    Thread Starter Alexander S. Kunz

    (@antermoia)

    4 years, 3 months ago

    Thank you very much for your help, James. I’ll wait for 24 hours and will take another look.

    Thread Starter Alexander S. Kunz

    (@antermoia)

    4 years, 3 months ago

    I’ve given it plenty of time now but the related posts shown for that post remain pretty unrelated. The only thing that seems to change is the third one in the list, the other two remained the same, despite the re-sync. Either way, all three posts shown as related are not a good match at all.

    I also noticed a terrible slow-down of the back-end of my site, and I’m assuming that was due to this “re-sync”? (it’s back to normal now but FWIW, I have >1000 posts on my site).

    Thanks for further help
    Alex.

    Plugin Support KokkieH

    (@kokkieh)

    4 years, 3 months ago

    the related posts shown for that post remain pretty unrelated

    Are you using any caching plugins, or is your host doing any caching on their end? Try manually clearing the site cache and see if that causes an update. You might also need to publish a new post (if you haven’t already) for Related Posts to update, even after a full re-sync.

    Have you noticed this affecting other posts as well, or only this post?

    I also noticed a terrible slow-down of the back-end of my site, and I’m assuming that was due to this “re-sync”?

    Jetpack sync processes happen on our servers, not yours, so you should not see any lag on your site due to this. Something like that would more likely be caused by bandwidth issues on your or your host’s end, or server load issues at your host.

    If you suspect a particular plugin is causing something like this, the easiest way to check is to disable the plugin and see if that makes any difference, so keep that in mind for the future.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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