Comments on: Sphere – Show Your Readers Related Content [REVIEW]

By: Miguel Wickert

Miguel Wickert — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:32:15 +0000

I submitted my blog. I’ll keep ya posted! :) Thanks for sharing about Sphere.

By: uwak

uwak — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:02:11 +0000

ehm…..I thinks, you are already to recommend good plugins, thanks for information…..

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:13:11 +0000

I have used sphere on our blog on and off.. When I make a general post that has a news like appeal I turn it on and than I turn it off. There is no reason you should have it on all the time. So use it when you make a new post that you think will get posted somewhere else… Great plug in- easy to use- mixed results.

By: paul

paul — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:34:03 +0000

Not sure how they determine which articles get featured in their related content widget and I don’t know what kind of traffic to expect.

Anyway, I have submitted my site and hoping that they will approve it soon.

By: content writer

content writer — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:27:20 +0000

Related content still drives traffic to your site since these related articles are pointing to the same homepage. As such increases your site’s relevance. Besides, making users browse over different contents on your site may mean that your site has been constantly visited and a plus point in page rank.

By: Jason Brown

Jason Brown — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:32:11 +0000

I like the idea of this plug-in, the notion that I could have my content appear on CNN and other high traffic websites is the holey grail of links. The major downside I’ve found with it though is that it is very America centric when you use the balanced politics plug0in like I have.

This is OK if you are a US political blogger, but for me who is a British based political blogger who writes only about British politics I can see it maybe causing some problems. Why cant it include content from the BBC and Britons première newspaper.

Im not giving up on it yet and will see how things develop and keep you all posted.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:37:08 +0000

I installed this widget and actually thought it hadn’t worked – it really does just show the “related content” button until you click on it, so it doesn’t clutter the blog at all.

It is showing related content, and I don’t think I will be a problem with sending traffic away from my blog. I’m more than happy to point other writers in the direction of useful resources, as much as I’m happy to discover them myself.

I have submitted my site to Sphere, but I haven’t heard whether it has been approved or not. Any additional traffic it could generate would be appreciated, but I’m not able to comment on whether or not it would work in my case – yet!

Thanks for pointing this out. I would never have discovered it otherwise.

By: Sue

Sue — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:05:47 +0000

I have 2 self-hosted wordpress blogs and installed the plugin. Not being able to constrain the results to the specific niche areas of either of the blogs, caused me to have to disable the plugin as some of the content presented as related was highly inappropriate. So, once we can constrain the topic areas, this service and plugin will be of significantly greater value to a far wider range of bloggers.

By: Black Zedd

Black Zedd — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:53:16 +0000

I’m not sure about sending my visitors away from my site. Furthermore it will compete with current in-house ‘related post’ section that most bloggers have currently.

I’ve never submitted my site to them before, but I had visitors coming from a CNN article through the Sphere widget..all I did was linking my post to that article.

By: Papa Razzi

Papa Razzi — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:51:26 +0000

Yeah I think I will have the same problem Milinda had. Its still worth a try. I just hope it doesn’t clutter my blog up as well.

By: Papa Razzi

Papa Razzi — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:49:52 +0000

Sounds really interesting I’ll have to give it a try next chance I have. I’m not sure how much related content my paparazzi blog will get though. Maybe photography.

By: Milinda

Milinda — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:28:08 +0000

After some time sphere widget started to work. But I think it didn’t perform well on my blog. Because most posts are not that much related to my posts.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:14:44 +0000

This sounds like a great tool to use to increase traffic, but I haven’t tried it yet so I can’t speak personally about my experience with it. The only con is that users will be clicking on links that lead them away from your blog; if they are relatively new, this is far from beneficial.

By: Milinda

Milinda — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:02:30 +0000

I tried on my blog. But when I click the Sphere related content link it only shows the widget and the loading animation with we're getting you the good stuff. Did anyone know the reason for it. Also it didn't ask me to register my blog when I am getting the widget from sphere.com.

By: Albert

Albert — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:45:52 +0000

For those saying they’ve had their article linked to from CNN through sphere, I’m curious as to what kind of extra traffic you receive from those sites?

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:27:26 +0000

I used it for a little while easy to set up but in the end I didn’t think it did a great job finding related articles and took up space at the of articles I had posted where I might want to have a call to action or Adsense advert

By: Manzanillo Blogger

Manzanillo Blogger — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:55:21 +0000

I have had a few of my articles featured on CNN. Was an accident at first, I just linked to one of their articles in my blog. I noticed a bunch of traffic coming to my site and figured out it was from their sphere plugin.

It’s a great plugin if you blog about anything that would be featured on these sites. I am very niche in my site, so I don’t tend to get many links with them. But it’s a great little plugin that adds a lot of potential!

By: Robert Barr

Robert Barr — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:06:41 +0000

Don’t like the idea of driving people away from my site. I already get content on Reuters, CNN, and major newspapers without having to trade away readers.

By: Ark Lady

Ark Lady — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:29:12 +0000

I tried a blog community widget on my sidebar for a while but it didn’t give me too much exposure and eventually I decided to remove it.

Next, I created some widgets at Widget Box and use them between my blogs to drive content back and forth but not to move readers out to other sites. I use them on the static portion of my website but not on the blog.

Thanks for writing on this topic since I had not heard of Sphere previously. I’ll check it out and perhaps will have more input on it down the road.

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:09:36 +0000

Nice review!

No, I haven’t tried out Sphere yet. But posts from my blog have appeared on websites like CNN after I had linked to an article or something. They have a cool little widget that shows related blog posts from around the internet below most articles.