Using the “Read More” Feature: Good or Bad?
by David Peralty on August 4th, 2006 
11 Comments
A reader asked Darren Rowse, Problogger.net, what his take on using the “read more” rather than posting full texts on the front page of the blog.
I have never really thought about how this could effect a blog or its readers. Long content gets a “read more” link, and shorter content doesn’t need it. I usually don’t use the extended entry feature, as I don’t want to force my readers to click any more than they have to.
Darren has a slightly different take, as he uses it in many places.
The reason I use the extended entry feature is not to increase my earnings but rather to keep some order to the front page of my blogs.
I like readers who come to my blog to be able to quickly be able to see titles to the last two or three entries that I’ve made. I publish a lot of longer posts on many of my blogs and to have them appear in full on the front page of my blogs would mean that there would be a lot of scrolling down needed to view the last few entries.
The thing of it is, that if people liked these truncated entries, then why is there all this hype about partial versus full feeds. Will we see a smaller battle for partial versus full content on the actual blog pages? Or does the feed war have more to do with being able to syndicate the content or read it offline?
Some people would prefer to use excerpts on their front pages to increase revenues, I agree. But as with Darren, I do it on my personal sites for usability and aesthetic purposes (I don’t even have any ads at all on my main racoma.com.ph blog). IMHO, feeds are a different thing altogether.
Know More Media, which I blog for, encourages us to use read more, but as a reader of blogs I find it distracting. One problem I notice is that the “Read More” link itself is hard to see, lost among “Digg This” and other links.
If the site does the “Read More” link right, I have no problem with it. The “right” way (my opinion) to do it is to have the link “expand” the post instead of going to a new page. This way, you don’t have to locate where you were reading to continue reading.
i would prefer ppl come to my single page, as there’s the “related post” plugin inside, this can increase the page view
I agree Dave. That is why I use this plug-in.
http://blog.chweng.idv.tw/wordpress/ajaxified-expand-post-now/
David, both you and Darren are right and there is no right or wrong. But I have another reason for using the “read more” feature, and that is I don’t want my front page cluttered with advertising. I don’t want to put off a new readers with ads in their face.
They should be able to browse my main page and sift the posts quickly until they find what they want. Only when they click an item that they want to read will they see any ads. For me it is the polite thing to do, and a similar reason for only considering putting ads in “summary” feeds. But that is another matter.
Cheers!
Blog Bloke, you could simply not use ads.
Do you really make that much money with them? I found, when I was getting a ton of hits a week, that I still didn’t make that much money off of ads I had put on the site. The income was way less than what I was paying for the hosting.
I’m sure sites like Digg and Newsvine make a lot in ads, but I just don’t see it myself and really don’t see the point in annoying any potential readers I happen to get.
Plus, I figure if I am going to get readers, they are going to be using the RSS feed and not even see the website. I post my full stories on my feed and don’t worry about ads there too. Personally, ads in the RSS feeds annoy me even more than ads on a site.
Anyway, that’s a bit off topic. To me the “Read More” just breaks up the story and can potentially make the reader lose their train of thought before they get to the meet of the story. Or they may think that the story isn’t really worth reading, yet if they were to read on a few more sentences, they would change their mind.
Here’s one more reason to use excerpts on the main page – you get to determine which posts/articles are being read by people (if you use a read counter). If they’re all on the front page, then this would be more difficult to determine.
However, I do agree with you, Dave M, that this might discourage some readers from reading the full post. But if you make the interface clean and fast enough, then I don’t think there would be any trouble.
I use the plugin “Evermore” .. So, all the posts on my main page looks to be the same size .. about 2 paragraphs or 200 words. It’s the same setting for my summary Feedburner feed – 20 words.
I am a firm believer myself that front page blogs are for scanning and I shouldn’t have to read your clutter or 1000 page article and get scrolling-finger-itis .. But, if there is something of interest on my front page that you like and find it’s worth reading – then you will have to click to it’s permalink. There I will try to get everything in to keep you on my site .. the related posts (as WTN said), ads, a comic strip, and the kitchen sink too. I’m quite my blog is the type of site that you will know within the first 200 words if it’s worth reading or passing over to the next feed story in your reader.
Although, specific messages and pet shelter and rescue ads I have been using the “Nevermore” attribute to leave it as a full feed on the front page to emphasize.
ugh – that was 200 words in my feedburner, not 20. My keyboard needs a blowjob
I agree completely with Darren about the use of “read more” feature. And I think the last paragraph: “…The thing of it is, that if people liked these truncated entries, then why is there all this hype about partial versus full feeds…” is a bit off topic.
When I read an article on the blog in the browser, it just seems natural to press a link to see the continuation of the story if I just like a little of what I read so far. Maybe it’s the conditioning but most good articles in mainstream press come that way (Check Wired, NY Times, Cnn, etc;).But I read my feeds in stand alone feed reader. And if it’s only a partial feed, I have to open the window or tab in another app (browser) to read it.
It’s only a minor inconveniece when I have Interenet access, but it’s enough of a bother to not continue with the story unless I’m really interested in it. And if I don’t have Internet access at the time it’s not even and option. That’s why I delete most of the partial feeds from my reader, but read many interesting articles with “read more” links.