Only old posts show up in related posts

Hi there,

A full sync is a good first step, but you might also need to publish a new post on your site first as well, to force an update of the Related Posts cache.

If you still don’t see your newer posts appear after publishing your next post, please give the URLs of a couple posts, and we can check on our end whether they’re being indexed or not.

Thanks for the reply! We’ve published a new post today: https://www.uscreditcardguide.com/ubereats-aeroplan/

It seems the related post part disappears for now. Maybe it’s doing some work and will show up with correct results some time later? I’ll report back.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by physixfan.

Okay, so that post is indexed. But we’re not returning any posts that are related to that post, which is why the post itself isn’t showing any related posts. I see the related posts HTML in the browser inspector, but because it’s empty it’s being hidden automatically.

I do see related posts for this post if I check the API directly, though, so something is blocking that from loading on your site itself.

I see you use the Autoptimize plugin. The script minification feature of that plugin could be causing a conflict with the Related Posts feature, so can you check if disabling that makes any difference?

If that doesn’t do anything, the next step will be to disable all your plugin except Jetpack to check if something else might be causing this.

If you are able to install plugins, install Health Check. On the troubleshooting tab, you can click the button to disable all plugins and change the theme for you, while you’re still logged in, without affecting normal visitors to your site.

pro-tip; you can disable Autoptimize on a per-request basis by adding ?ao_noptimize=1 to the URL.

if the problem is not there at that point, some autoptimize (re-)configuration might be needed to fix this. there are troubleshooting tips and info on how to exclude in the AO FAQ.

hope this helps debugging,
frank (ao dev)

@optimizingmatters thanks for that tip!

@physixfan,

If I view your post at the URL, https://www.uscreditcardguide.com/ubereats-aeroplan/?ao_noptimize=1, the related posts still don’t appear, so you’ll need to test disabling all plugins except Jetpack, using the Health Check plugin, to check if something else on the site might be blocking related posts from loading.

Thanks for your reply! Health Check is really an awesome plugin. I’ve found the problem: Polylang Pro. It is a plugin for multi-language site, which is essential for our site. If I just disable this plugin, then the related post feature works correctly. Are you able to resolve the conflict between Jetpack and Polylang?

@physixfan ah — we have seen that before. I’ve noted your case here:
https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/7203

You might also contact Polylang Pro to see if they can help.

Also:

All the posts showing up in the related posts part are old post before some time in 2017.

I’m curious whether syncing with Polylang Pro off temporarily would help. If you’re able and willing to try that, let us know what you find.

@supernovia Thanks! I submitted a new post in the Polylang support forum here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/conflict-between-polylang-and-jetpack-related-post/

We are not able to sync with Polylang Pro off temporarily, because Polylang Pro is really an essential part of our website and the Jetpack sync takes more than a whole day to finish…

Okay, I’m going to mark this thread as resolved for now, as there isn’t anything more we can do from our end at the moment, but if Polylang support suggest anything that can be done on our end, please do let us know.

Oh no, please don’t mark it as resolved. It seems the author of Polylang knows this issue existed for quite a while, but he said:” Most of the related posts code is on Jetpack servers and there is unfortunately no way for me to debug this.”

@physixfan do you think they’d be willing to work with us here?
https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/7203

@supernovia I’m not sure. According to this support topic https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/jetpack-compatibility-issue-3/ :

The code for the related posts compatibility is there https://github.com/polylang/polylang/blob/2.6.4/modules/plugins/jetpack.php#L119-L123 and hasn’t been changed for years.

We have tried working with the author of that plugin in the GitHub issue at https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/7203, but they have not replied to questions our developer asked there.

Until they do, I’m afraid there’s nothing more we’re able to do in this case.