Google's Got a New Related Links Feature
Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for this pointer to a new feature from Google: the ability to pull a related links list from Google into your pages along with pointers to relevant news, etc. Check it out: http://www.google.com/relatedlinks/ index.html.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already been extending its news-discovery tools through recommended news. Related Links takes that recommendation logic beyond Google’s own results pages and makes it available for publishers to place on their sites.
The feature arrives alongside Google’s news recommendation effort and a newly launched Maps API, signaling an expanding strategy of distributing Google services through third-party webpages rather than limiting them to Google properties.
First-order effects
- Publishers can add Google-selected related links and news to their pages, giving readers additional routes to leave an article or explore adjacent coverage.
- Google gains a new distribution surface for its relevance and news recommendations across participating sites.
Second-order effects
- Publishers using the widget hand part of their on-page navigation and referral flow to Google, making Google’s link selection more consequential for which sources receive clicks.
- Competing site-navigation and related-content providers face a Google offering that can bundle general links with news recommendations.
Third-order effects
- If publishers broadly adopt externally generated related-content modules, search engines can become infrastructure for discovery within webpages as well as between them.
- The shift concentrates editorial-adjacent recommendation power in the provider with the broadest index, raising the value of publisher control over placement and outbound links.
The trend: Search engines are expanding from destination sites into embedded recommendation services that shape how readers move across the web.