I recently noticed WordPress.com hosted blogs started displaying three to four links to “possibly related posts” WordPress has deemed related to their hosted page’s content.
Usually the first link is pointed to somewhere else within the same blog while the balance of the links are then distributed to other blogs which more often than not appear to be other WordPress blogs.
I have been watching my referrals and haven’t noticed hardly any new traffic coming in from other WordPress blogs but I have noticed my search related referrals have dropped by nearly a factor of 10.
My drop in search traffic appears to coincide with the launch of the WordPress “possibly related posts” automatic link generator.
If I were to to guess why my search traffic dried up I would guess it is because my blog posts that had enjoyed near constant search positions have been devalued vis-a-vis the links WordPress has now inserted in all of my pages.
WordPress blog comments automatically receive the “No follow” link attribute so as to not unnecessarily pass site value to spammers so why does WordPress think they can rob all of their bloggers of the value each one has built in their blog by redistributing their sites search value to other blogs – especially other WordPress blogs?
Regardless of whether my search engine traffic dropped because of the addition of the “Possibly Related Posts” links now being generated by WordPress, WordPress.com should add the “No Follow” attribute to their “Possibly Related Posts” link scheme to preserve the continued good will of the bloggers who’s content produces WordPress traffic.
Search Marketing Communications 
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