That’s unfortunate: nRelate is shutting down

It seems I’ll have to find a new related-content plugin. I haven’t really kept up with a lot of technology or web news lately, so I didn’t know of this until I updated the WordPress plugin and this message showed up at the top of the administration panel:

Farewell from nRelate

Dear nRelate User —
As they say, all good things must come to an end. As of Wednesday December 31, 2014, the nRelate service will officially be switched off – forever. Please deactivate, and delete all nRelate plugins from your site before then, as they will no longer work. Thanks for the memories, the great content, and coming along for the ride. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. For more details, please visit our blog.

The nRelate Team

nRelate is a related content plugin that uses algorithms to deliver related content to readers. Instead of simply relating content by categories or tags, it analyzes the post content, and finds other posts/pages/links on your site with similar content. It’s what I was using until today under the content to show related posts. However, nRelate said on Monday that it’s shutting down five years after its founding. IAC’s Ask.com search unit acquired nRelate in July 2012.

Founded in 2009, nRelate provided a marketplace for marketers to buy sponsored content on third-party websites, with a product that competed with such companies as Taboola and Outbrain. It will stop serving recommendations to publishers on Dec. 31. For those using their ad service, payments will be sent out on schedule in the new year.

Now I have to find another plugin or platform that can do the job, or get rid of the related content for a while.