Failure mode: 'related pages' modules that link by recency, not relevance

Failure mode: 'related pages' modules that link by recency, not relevance

Auto-related blocks filled with "newest pages" or random rows spray link equity across unrelated topics and confuse the topical clustering you're trying to build. The module is busy work, not a signal.

Related-link SOP:
— Step 1. Owner: data. Define relatedness from data: same category + nearest attribute (geo distance, price band, shared tag). Score and rank candidates.
— Step 2. Owner: dev. The related module pulls the top N by that score, deterministically, so it's stable across rebuilds.
— Step 3. Owner: SEO. Audit 30 pages' related blocks. Gate: >= 80 percent of related links are in the same topical cluster.
— Step 4. Owner: SEO. Confirm no page links to itself and no orphan-only targets get all their links from one hub.

Guardrail: internal links flow along data relationships, never along publish date.

Ship gate: don't publish until all boxes are checked.