Put Recommended Articles Higher Up the Page

1. 96

   eugbugposted 7 months ago

   Some of my articles have pages and pages of comments. That in addition to the two pages or so of "Recommended for You" clickbait ads means that it's unlikely that readers would ever see the recommended articles, listed at the bottom. Is there any way these could be suggested elsewhere, maybe before comments?

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2. 83

   Venkatachari Mposted 6 months ago

   Recommended articles used to be on side panel. But, they got changed to the bottom of the article to accommodate the mobile platform audience. We all know that mobile view has only a single column and no double-column view provision.
   So there's no use in showcasing the recommended article thing at all. You may have that facility only on the desktop mode.

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3. 94

   PaulGoodman67posted 6 months ago

   It's not something I'm greatly knowledgeable about but I believe the changes were a result of Google punishing the site's link architecture.
   
   HP's response was to demote "recommended" and (re)introduce an internal (text) links system to claw back some SEO karma points.

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4. 94

   Shesabutterflyposted 6 months ago

   It looks like they are testing out a new format on Pethelpful.
   
   On my laptop I'm seeing a trending now section on the right hand side that contains 4 of the latest news articles. I think last night it might have had an article or two, so I'm thinking whatever the newest content is, might get inserted there. With the news being more frequent, the right side bar will more often than not be news. There is also a recommended for you in the middle of the article, but it only contains one article (or news) and is not related most of the time.
   
   A section of 6 Pethelpful articles appears before the clickbait ads, but they do not have a heading and still follow the comments/Q&A if there are any. If the author has enough articles in the same category those 6 all belong to that author. There are no other articles after the clickbait, and unless there are links within the article itself, other author content is not being recommended.
   
   Edit: I noticed on Owlcation that the recommended section under the clickbait is now smaller (only 6) and contains most of my articles, related or not in some cases. Different than the old set up with pages of random articles and the option to see more (still on Wehavekids). I do not know when that changed as I do not monitor as often as I did in the past, but a move of the related section above the clickbait would at least be a move in the right direction, even if it does not contain related content or articles from other authors.

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   1. 94

      Solarasposted 6 months agoin reply to this

      Good God.  I went to one of my articles and could not read it.  So many ads and videos, that I had to click on page not responding 50-60 times.
      
      Clicked on Skip This Ad, and all that did was make the botton to skip the ad go away.  Clicking the x in the top right corner had no effect either.  That is gross, having fake buttons.
      
      A minute or two in and I was able to skip the ad video, as the button had reappeared.  I stayed on my own article because I was curious to see where the recommended articles where. Eventually I forgot why I was there and closed out of it.
      
      Sad. The greedy overabundance of advertisements is obscene.

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      1. 94

         Shesabutterflyposted 6 months agoin reply to this

         It's sad when a person can read faster than a page loads. If I'm missing pictures and ads because I'm ready to keep scrolling, they are not having the intended affect. They are simply causing the page to be jumpy.
         
         If the banner ad and HP video load right away I can close out of them and it seems to help a little, but that does not usually happen. Although, I've noticed no matter how long I wait the ads lower on the page do not always load until I get closer to them. Maybe that's due to the pop up ad that appears if you become idle too long. Not a good user experience at all. I'm constantly reminded why I avoid the niches and it has become very disheartening.

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         1. 96

            eugbugposted 6 months agoin reply to this

            Usually that's the way pages load. It's called "lazy loading". The alternative is called "eager loading". There's no point loading all the elements in a page unless a user scrolls down because it slows everything up to load all images and also uses bandwidth and users data (which they may have a limited amount of unless they pay more to their ISP). The disadvantage is that as a reader scrolls down, they have to wait some time before further images load. The problem with the niche sites is that ads are so slow to load that images have to wait before they're loaded, hence the potentially lengthy white spaces if there are several consecutive images. Once a reader is in the middle of say three white spaces corresponding to three images, scrolling up or down just displays more white space and they're lost in a white desert, not knowing what to do.

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            1. 94

               Solarasposted 6 months agoin reply to this

               It is shameful for everyone involved. 
               
               The engineers should be ashamed of their work product.  They should be forced to read 10 of our niche articles a day, at home, before they may partake of their dinner.

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               1. 96

                  eugbugposted 6 months agoin reply to this

                  It would make more sense to load images first, but maybe that's not technically possible. I'm sure the engineers would fix the problems if they could, easily. It's not like they're the enemy. There's probably lots of factors involved like maybe the code can't be easily changed due to not enough staff to do it, lack of expertise, maybe it's an off the shelf product so difficult to change etc, etc. Ads definitely slow everything down though. I've been on the other side of the fence when I was a software engineer, developing applications in a company and was more or less a one man software department. Meanwhile companies wanted all sorts of bells and whistles added to our software, but it's not the sort of thing that could be done overnight. Eventually we started outsourcing the code development to other people.

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                  1. 94

                     Solarasposted 6 months agoin reply to this

                     It was not always like this, and it has been like this for over a year.  Someone needs to make management at TAG actually try to read the articles over here, and get a clue that they are ultimately killing the site because readers can't even see the content, much less the ads that never load.  They need to rethink the strategy of ads placed every 8 lines of text.
                     
                     I went over to Sports Illustrated, and their ads are slow to load too.  But they put  more text between ads, therefore there is always some form of text on the page, and not long blank stretches of white.  I think they are using the same software platform.  Evidently, it allows the engineer the ability to select the number of text lines between ads.

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                     1. 96

                        eugbugposted 6 months agoin reply to this

                        Yes, I think that's true with those ads, the number of lines between them can be chosen. Unfortunately it only seems possible that they can be placed at a <p> tag in html (i.e. a new paragraph). That's how we can force them out of text by using shift enter which only creates a new line, not new paragraph. If it was possible to place them at a dummy tag, we could control where we want them by using the HTML editor in edit mode in text capsules.

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