3 Types of Recommendation Engines to Increase Audience Engagement and Drive Traffic

For years, Amazon and Netflix have used internal recommendation engines to keep audiences engaged and buying more. Now, online publishers can use the same

For years, Amazon and Netflix have used internal recommendation engines to keep audiences engaged and buying more. Now, online publishers can use the same technology to drive site traffic and increase page views.There are three main types of recommendation engines that online publishers should know about:

  1. Internal recommendation engines: When a site visitor lands on a page on your site, these recommendation engines suggest content from your site in order to keep the visitor engaged by simplifying discovery of more relevant content. (Think “users who viewed this also liked…”). LinkWithin is a free WordPress plugin that will create these sorts of internal recommendations on your site.
  2. Third-party recommendation engines: These platforms and plugins place thumbnails and text links on third-party sites linking to your content, leading to paid discovery — a far more powerful alternative to PPC for content sites. Major players include Outbrain, nRelate and Taboola.
  3. Advertising recommendation engines: These platforms and plugins are like third-party recommendation engines, except they link to advertorials and sponsored content. Major vendors include AdBlade and ContentAd. (A bit like Google’s AdSense, but instead of straight advertising, these platforms host ads with some sort of editorial content.)

Most paid content sites are going to be concerned with the first two types of recommendation engines, with the second type targeting new audiences. However, keep in mind that you can’t link to paywalled content with third-party recommendation engines (unless you’re willing to let site visitors view your premium content for free, as some meter sites do). Also, each vendor reserves the right to reject content links (and their reasons can be subjective).Nevertheless, third-party recommendation engines remain a good marketing channel for many subscription content sites because they target audiences according to topical interests. You can find out more about how you can use this technology to increase site traffic by up to 12% in Subscription Site Insider‘s How-To: Using Recommendation Engines to Drive Traffic from Third-Party Sites, which includes a handy comparison chart of the cost and services by vendors Outbrain, nRelate and Taboola.

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