Filmstrips became popular a few years ago after claims that it "improved pageviews". We never saw data to substantiate this, but added support due to user demand.
We now recommend all sites running Feast to remove this as a a best practice.
Why should you turn it off?
- USER EXPERIENCE: seeing a quasi-related posts at the top of a post distracts from the actual purpose of the page, which is the actual recipe that people specifically went to that page for - the main recipe should be the sole and intentional focus above the fold
- SEO: search engines now value user experience more than nearly all other metrics, and the best user experience is giving the user specifically what their looking for at the top of the page
- PAGESPEED: filmstrips add multiple images above the fold, which forces the browser to download and render them prior to rendering the page - it also adds DOM nodes which can ALSO slow pagespeed - and if not using the Feast Filmstrip, the javascript from third party plugins can cause further pagespeed slowdowns
- REVENUE: Raptive has stated that the Slickstream filmstrip is associated with lower RPMs, and disabling it may lead to higher RPMs
The fact that this is simply a bad user experience, without exception slows pagespeed, and may negatively impact RPMs, means that we now recommend everyone disable it and remove it from their site.
How to disable
If using the Feast Plugin Filmstrip feature, go to Admin > Feast Plugin > Filmstrip and disable it:
If using Slickstream, please contact them directly for instructions.
If you have NerdPress, please also contact them to remove any optimizations for it.