Related Tag Surfer
Got a ton of good feedback from the related posts test, and thanks to that I’d like to introduce the Tag Surfer. Basically this takes the functionality of the related posts page, but gives you infinitely more control over what types of content you’re getting. The feature has also been renamed to “Tag Surfer” to give you a better idea of what’s going on.
Related posts would look at the tags you use and then grab posts based on that. Depending on your tag usage, it was either great or awful. If you tend to use tags like “music” or “life” that are very high volume and not too specific, your page was probably constantly scrolling with new, semi-random content.
The first thing you’ll notice about this new iteration of the related posts / tag surfer is that there is a list of your subscribed tags in the left-hand column. This is auto-populated from you tags the first time you view the page, but after that you have complete control. You can add tags that you’re interested in, or click the “X” next to any tag to remove it from your tag subscriptions.
Next the posts area on the right has a few minor improvements. The typography has been improved to make it a bit easier to read, and under the tags the ones that match your subscriptions are in bold, so you can easily see why a post is included on the related posts page. Finally if you happen to come across any spam or questionable content, there is a handy link to report it by each post.
Now when you see something you’re not at all interested in, you can see which tag brought it in and prune that tag from your subscriptions in the left-hand column. We also fixed a ton of reported bugs, but if you find any more simply use the feedback form at the top of your dashboard.
You can find the Tag Surfer under your Dashboard.
Aug 13th at 10:09 am
Awesome, makes it much more useable, thanks.
Aug 13th at 10:18 am
Great stuff, thank you!
Aug 13th at 10:29 am
Yep, I also think this is much more usable. Keep up good work
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Aug 13th at 10:34 am
Really cool.
Thank you, sir
Aug 13th at 11:16 am
The tag surfer is a huge improvement. I’ll be using that. Would it be possible to have the output available as an RSS feed too? I’d be interested in putting the headlines in a widget for my readers.
Aug 13th at 11:59 am
This is a great improvement on the related posts concept. I’ve already noticed more relevant posts. Great job as always!
Aug 13th at 12:11 pm
Great job! Looks great!
Aug 13th at 12:16 pm
I love it! Found a lot of new interesting stuff out there immediately!
Aug 13th at 1:10 pm
Great stuff.. thnx guys..
Aug 13th at 1:30 pm
this is great functionality, but it looks awful on firefow
Aug 13th at 2:11 pm
Very nice stuff. Thanks a lot!
Aug 13th at 2:26 pm
Great work, thanks guys!
Aug 13th at 2:28 pm
wonderful! now i can easily find other posts similar to my interests.
Aug 13th at 2:28 pm
Very nice improvement over the Related Posts thingamajig. To put it simply, I
Aug 13th at 2:42 pm
It’s very interesting to see you guys tweaking this new feature to make it work. One thing that’s really terrific about WordPress is the transparency of the people who’re putting it together and the conversations they host about what they’re up to. As for the related tag surfer (which sounds like the thing you can do on Amazon where they let you pinpoint the sorts of books you like and probably has a real name, although I’m such a non-tech person I wouldn’t know it!), I’m impressed you’ve thought to give us a tool to find like-minded blogs. This is the sort of thing that adds immeasurably to the creation of a community — and that community is the signal achievement of WordPress. Thanks for working so hard on these kinds of things.
Aug 13th at 3:04 pm
That’s a great feature. As always, thank you!
Aug 13th at 3:35 pm
good work , thanks
Aug 13th at 4:08 pm
Guys, the tag idea is great…. so much of an improvement on the earlier related post beta… the choice this gives to choose tags makes all the difference… good work … thanks
Aug 13th at 4:29 pm
Wow! This is much better!
This is such a cool idea. It takes the wordpress.com community to the next level.
The use of tag filters is absolutely brilliant. I instantly found some very interesting blogs, that I probably would have otherwise never heard of.
The icing on the cake, is the ability to add tags. This is actually sort of like a feed reader within wordpress.com itself, but with the ability to actually find blogs based upon tags.
I notice that by default all of my tags are there. This makes it very easy to find what others are writing about based upon similar tags, tastes, and interests.
Pure genius!!!!
Great work!
Aug 13th at 4:58 pm
I noticed it this morning and spent time looking at a few posts. Love this stuff. Here are a few suggestions.
1. Can we get this relative posts as an RSS feed? (I know I can individually subscribe to each tag)
2. Can we add a simple tag search to the interface and add some of the new tags to our list? This will help us track others that we do not blog about.
3. A tag cloud would be good. Will help us know what is happening in the wordpress community.
You guys are simply wonderful. I have not seen another company that responds so fast to users requests.
Aug 13th at 5:08 pm
Excellent. “Tag Surfer” is way better than “related posts”, which I didn’t like at all.
Aug 13th at 5:23 pm
I love this feature. Great work. Thanks.
Aug 13th at 5:37 pm
I wrote a very lengthy comment praising the tag surfer changes to the sky on a forum post in this thread below but the comment disappeared. http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=3369&replies=23#post-21883
I’m wondering if that’s because you would have preferred to have me post it here which is what I came here to do to copy and paste it from the forum. But I can’t do that now because the text is gone from the forum. Well, I meant every word I said so I hope you will post it here [she said while scratching her head].
Aug 13th at 5:44 pm
I BIG improvement on the related posts test.
I will properly explore it later, but it appears to have good potential.
Nice addition
Aug 13th at 5:45 pm
On my blog I tend to use tags based on an Eastern philopsophy-Pagan-New Ager lexicon, and not too many people blog on Paganism and New Ageism. It’ll be nice to find other blogs and comment on them, too.
Aug 13th at 6:05 pm
Content is much more targeted, thank you!
Aug 13th at 7:00 pm
Yes! This is a great feature…very usable!
Aug 13th at 7:07 pm
I wrote about this in the forums, but I guess I can repeat it here. I think this is a great addition to the already impressive range of things availible here. But if I could just make one suggestion…
Could you enable the user to select the language that the searched posts are written in? For instance, I write a lot about politics. In Swedish the word for ‘politics’ (and the tag) is ‘Politik’. Unfortunately the word ‘Politik’ exists in german, danish, norwegian, dutch and a whole other group of languages as well – which means I don’t see relevant posts for that tag in a relevant language.
Thank you!
Aug 13th at 7:12 pm
I like it. However, the Science tag has little value as people seem to use it somewhat randomly. I can remove other tags by clicking the X, but I can’t seem to remove the Science tag this way – ???
Aug 13th at 7:21 pm
i am not too bright — but i think i get it —- thanks
Aug 13th at 7:35 pm
Cool. Thanks.
Aug 13th at 7:53 pm
This expanded the “related” feature from something that was kind of interesting, into something that is a very useful tool.
It is impressive how you took your users feedback and turned it into such a usable feature so quickly.
Already found some great new blogs that I would have never found by just using the “next blog” or “tags” features
Aug 13th at 8:18 pm
One prob: if you run multiple blogs it uses ALL of your tags, instead of the tags for the blog whose dashboard you are viewing it from.
It kind of makes more sense that it would do the initial population from the blog you are viewing, not from the user account, no?
Aug 13th at 8:32 pm
Wonderful, much better now.
Aug 14th at 4:39 am
great job!
Aug 14th at 9:27 am
great work!
Thank you.
Aug 14th at 10:51 am
just a note:
ù
if you add a tag to surf, the system will add A CATEGORY to my blog. So if I want to surf for 30-40 tag, the result is a lot of caos in my categories !
Aug 14th at 3:08 pm
great work! only one thing: imo posts should be sorted by date. I don’t like that a post written 6 months ago appears before one written today! thank you!
Aug 14th at 4:23 pm
Thanks a lot for this fantastic feature… I have been playing around with this feature and found that one of the tags are assigned by default (like Videos) and you could add more tags as you wish but you cannot remove the original tag (Videos). It just doesnt remove them. I don’t know how the default tags are assigned but it would be good if we could control which tags we want and not want…
Aug 14th at 9:43 pm
The ‘My Comments’ section is GREAT! You guys are smokin!!! Keep up the great work!
Aug 14th at 10:19 pm
Nice feature. Thanks!
Aug 15th at 2:09 am
These are some really awesome things you have put out today. WordPress is really cool.
Here’s one feature you should have, though, on the Tag Surfer: could you make it so you can “x out” of the posts you don’t want, in the same way you can “x out” of the tags you don’t want? That way, I wouldn’t have to scroll down the page and find a post all over again every time I wanted to see it.
You guys are awesome. I can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with next.
Aug 15th at 4:00 am
I like the idea, but the results don’t seem to work for me. Unrelated, stuff in Spanish, and lots of food pictures??
Clicking on the ‘x’s beside the tabs doesn’t seem to change results.
Didn’t make me want to visit any blogs, but did make me want to go visit the fridge.
Aug 15th at 4:05 am
Ignore my previous post, there. I just figured out that if I just delete a bunch of my tags, I can make my results much more focused & relevant.
I can avoid the fridge.
Aug 15th at 4:10 am
Okay, and one suggestion…
It’d be cool to be able to click on the tab name, and see displayed only the posts relevant to that tag.
Only way to do that now, that I can see, is to delete all the other tags. Kind of a pain if you do want ‘em.
That’d be a really useful addition for me.
Aug 15th at 1:18 pm
i realy like this….
Aug 15th at 2:20 pm
Tag Surfer works! Well it might work better for less fussy surfers. I entered ‘Bovine accordion teachers’, and ‘Big boobed rat faced librarians’ – nothing. No-one out there even interested in ‘endophytes’. Oh well.
Aug 16th at 8:14 pm
Apparently my default tag is “photos” — imagine how long it takes to see this page on dialup! I would love to get rid of that tag but x-ing it accomplishes nothing.
However, I have been able to add and remove other tags, and I think this is a promising feature.
Like others have commented, it would be nice to click on a tag and get only posts with that tag, and it would be nice if the results were posted in chronological order.
In addition, it would be nice to be able to set the number of results displayed, particularly for us dialup folks.
Aug 17th at 1:47 am
I have a problem with the “photos” tag as well. I try to X it out and it doesn’t change the results or disappear from my subscribed tags. I can delete other ones, but not this one. It’s a very general tag so I’m not interested in seeing it, but it won’t delete. What’s up with that?
Once it’s working properly, this seems like it will be an awesome feature. Thanks!
Aug 17th at 7:08 am
This is great. I love it! Thank you.
Aug 17th at 10:29 am
Great again. I think this would be more useful than related posts… thats for the innovative moves….
Aug 17th at 4:10 pm
Great work indeed guys!
Aug 17th at 8:03 pm
love it!! surfing just got a lil easier!
Aug 19th at 8:08 am
One flaw with this feature is that some blogs tend to post a whole lot, while other blogs tend not to post quite as often. I am interested in posts tagged “China”, for example. At the time of writing there are 38 posts total on the Tag Surfer page related to China, and 30 of those 38 posts all belong to one blog, chinaview.wordpress.com. It would be great if either WordPress.com would limit the number of posts any one blog can have on the Tag Surfer page to no more than 5, or give users individual control of how many posts they want to see on the Tag Surfer page from any particular blog, ranging from zero to all.
Aug 26th at 2:23 am
Yea, the tag surfer changes evrything!
Neath
Aug 30th at 3:05 am
Tag surfer is great.
Sep 1st at 1:35 pm
Sebuah kerja yang baik dan memuaskan,(Nice work.thank)
Sep 2nd at 7:39 pm
looks great to me too … but still to do the real hardcore tresting
Sep 5th at 8:02 pm
First: Tagsurfer is great. Second: What about a feature which filters out certain tags, kinda blacklisting-feature?
For instance i want to see all the Science tags but not Science postings which also have a Faith or Religion tag.
Pretty please?
Keep going! Great job!
Alex.
Sep 7th at 8:26 am
how do i apply tags to my blogs, so that people who want to read the topics, which i write can be seen by them?
Sep 10th at 4:55 am
ayos! thanks a lot.
Sep 12th at 7:12 am
Ok…now I know how this work =) Thanks!
Sep 15th at 12:49 pm
Yippee!
Sep 16th at 6:23 am
Well..it works =:) Thanks & Nice Regards.
Sep 16th at 3:21 pm
Cool tips, tag surfer is perfect utilisable
Sep 17th at 6:17 pm
Brilliant !!
Sep 19th at 2:08 am
Is there a way to ‘tag’ your own site so people can ‘tag’ yours?
Sep 20th at 3:53 am
oh wow!!
Sep 20th at 1:29 pm
Great!
Oct 2nd at 8:02 pm
This is a great feature.. I can really see what others in my area are talking about and add my two cents too.. GREAT JOB!!
Oct 5th at 1:02 am
Is there a reason that tag surfer routinely brings up posts that are weeks, months, or even years old? Is this intentional?
Oct 7th at 5:07 am
AWESOME, this should help.
THANKS
Oct 10th at 8:32 am
yeah… gr8..
Oct 10th at 7:56 pm
Thanks for Tag option.
WordRider
Oct 21st at 11:18 am
That is very good
Oct 21st at 12:06 pm
need to try this Tag thingy
Oct 29th at 4:51 am
I love the function but it needs a bit more randomness in authors. I see the same peoples posts day in and day out in the “news” tag. Also tags like Rick Perry (gov of Texas) has only one hit. I know of at least 5 wordpress.com blogs that tag Rick Perry freduently.
/Note to self….quit yer gripin the dang function is “free”. Be grateful.
/Note to self..self… OK
Thanx for your work Matt
Oct 29th at 11:03 am
Non ho ancora capito bene a cosa serve questo “Tag Surfer”…
qualcuno può spiegarmelo in italiano… grazie mille!!
Nov 19th at 6:01 am
Thanks for making WordPress so great to use!
Nov 20th at 7:57 pm
excellence function …
Nov 25th at 4:45 am
WordPress is Great!
Dec 1st at 6:12 am
I think the tag surfer is great, and use it daily.
One suggestion I would have is have a way to sort or limit it by date. Sometimes I will be scrolling through it and come across a series of posts from 8 or 9 months ago and stop, not realizing that there are posts from 8 or 9 hours ago after those.
But thanks, and keep up the good work!
Dec 11th at 12:46 am
Nice!
Dec 12th at 5:14 am
Keep IT UP!!!!
Very Nice
Dec 16th at 8:43 am
thanx guys it is great
Dec 18th at 10:45 pm
I think this is a great idea. I am new to the whole blogger thing and all the features you have on this blogger site are cool. thanks.
Dec 30th at 7:16 pm
Dec 31st at 6:23 am
The function is a great idea. However, it should be possible to block posts from certain blogs from the tag surfer.
Here is my problem:
I have tagged e.g. “Australien” (Australia in Danish) as well as other themes in which I am interested in reading about in Danish.
Here is what happens: Posts from a hyperactive, hateful Danish anti-Islam blog, which also has the tag “Australia”, appear all the way down in my right-hand column pushing almost all other posts out.
Hate-blogs do not interest me at all – whatsoever the subject, so as a result my tag surfer is dead unless I remove “Australien” and other Danish tag words which also appear in “Hodja’s” impressing variety of Danish tag words.
So in my case, the tag surfer is useless unless I can block posts from that particular blog.
Dec 31st at 8:22 pm
Anne, we’re definitely going to add a blocking feature, keep your eyes on the WP.com blog for an announcement.
Jan 1st at 4:07 am
That would definitely be cool; my tag surfer is plagued by entries from one particular blog from months or years ago interspersed among the standard recent entries from other bloggers.
Jan 1st at 4:19 am
Matt@
I’ve had a similar problem to Anne’s above and am glad to hear there will be a screening feature.
Would you also consider the following as a feature? If I had a summary “teaser” I could readily make the choice “I’m interested’” and become a hit statistic on my friend’s blog in a single click. And long blog posts I may not really be interested in wouldn’t take up the whole screen.
Jan 1st at 11:34 am
Sounds great
I am looking forward.
Timethief’s suggestion sounds like a great idea too.