As someone with a general interest in commercial aviation, I used the trending page to get a sense of what's going on in the aviation community.

Used to spend >30min a day on FT, all driven from the trending page. I haven't spent a minute on this website since the trending page went away.

Indeed, so can FT please reinstate the function ?

That is a pretty poor decision. I used to always land on the Trending page and spend my time browsing the site from there.
I cannot imagine why you would want to remove it, rather than move it?

Like others, I have barely been on here since it was disabled. I, too, assumed it was a technical issue.

As a newer member on these forums Trending is the page I would always check as I have 0 alligence with any other Flying Program so I enjoyed looking at what was popping up. My time on this forum has significantly decreased. If that was the plan by the site administrators than they did a great job.

I’ve been using flyertalk for years but never really posted, until now, just to say please bring back trending. I loved reading the trending page for a few minutes everyday, without it I wouldn’t visit flyertalk unless to look something up

This thread is really most appropriate for our Technical Support forum, so I'm moving it there and will flag for the forum moderators, who will likely merge it into this existing thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/tech...-top-page.html

chgoeditor
co-mod, Info Desk

If you look at the comments, you will see that for many people this was simply, useful. If others did not like it, they don't need to use it.

Surely instead of look at "drivers" and wanting to be "competitive" you could simply provide what some users would like to continue using.

Surely some route back to the system that provided the trending threads MUST be simple and possible ?

I asked about the algorithm in this forum two years ago because I was curious about it, and learned that nobody knew much because the guy who built it left IB several years prior to then. So, maybe there's some reticence to continue using a black box that might no longer be cutting edge? If so, making a new algorithm wouldn't have to be super challenging. I've mentioned that showing new posts only would be an improvement over the current solution (i.e. nothing). And, this could presumably be optimized in short order... perhaps even based on input from those of us that use the website.

The Trending Page has to be returned. The current format isn't working for me.

The page would need to exist in the first place in order for us to determine whether or not it was working.

There are two forums that are of primary interest to me. With the trending forums, I was enticed to visit other forums as well because of an interesting thread or question that I felt I could contribute to answering. Now I'll just go to my two forums = less engagement and less time on FT.

Has anyone noticed a drop in posts? I have noticed a drop in posts but I don't remember exactly when it started...it is definitely noticeable now though. Didn't think much of it then, but definitely seeing it now. There are days where only one or two subscribed threads are updated. I do remember thinking it was odd but could have been because people were getting busy at the time.

I wouldn't know, I've only visited pre-existing subscription threads as I found most of my content on the Trending page ;)

i dont have unlimited time to scroll through a dozen forums. FT is pretty much useless unless I have a specific issue to look up.

SEO does not work that way, unfortunately. You can get actively penalized for certain things (that are frequently opaque)

If the trending page is hurting your SEO (and I fail to see what rule such a page would violate, at least on the Google side of things), what would be the issue with a link to the old trending page and just exclude it from crawlers?

Just seems like killing a mosquito with a nuclear warhead type of solution.

Please count one more vote for bringing back the trending page -- even if it's not a default.

+1 to bring it back.

I used it nearly every day to discover topics besides the forums I look at more regularly. Not even sure how I’d replace this behaviour. :( so I’ll end up visiting certain forums sporadically.


To the FT team: as someone who is in tech and knows a thing or two about business models such as this … Private Equity can squeeze money out of assets - but can also kill them in the process. :) FT is nothing without its most actively contributing members. FT has dismissible value without the free work of mods and the contribution of everyone. Posts with lower engagement, less reasons to be back, stagnant functionality, constant and annoying bugs that never get fixed and more experience degradation will eventually hurt. People aren’t going to flee overnight … but slowly and steadily they just might (death by a thousand paper cuts kind of thing)

looks to me completely pointless to pick a fight - even if the sample of members here is small - with members over keeping a link that has zero apparent negative impact.

just the 2cents of someone that got a lot of value and joy from this and would like the site to thrive !

Sorry I have no idea what SEO is and do not understand anything you wrote, can you explain in plain English ?

No problem
So "SEO" is "Search Engine Optimization". It is a major form of online marketing and involves trying to game the system of Google's algorithm (Google never explains the exact way its search algorithm functions) by doing various things. This includes choosing the right words to publish, making sure you minimize dead links, use proper coding, foster a sense of trust in your information, et cetera.

Doing the opposite will create a penalty for the site. Sometimes that's passive (you keep using a more complex word instead of plain English, for example) and sometime's Google decides you're doing something that's harmful to the way people use websites like yours (overcomplicating the browsing process, for example).

I've taken SEO courses, had meetings with people whose entire job is SEO, and it's still confusing and sometimes backwards.

OK.. however how is it a problem to go back to a way to see trending threads ??

Unfortunately, since trending was removed, I look at far fewer posts...if clicks are important, then give us a separate trending page. I don't care and FT traffic patrol would like me to clikety click some more!

We are humans and we forget about things we have knowledge of that we can share. That simple trending title might spark a memory that is relevant to the issue!

C'mon, FT, Help us help others!

I’ve only flown BA twice in my life but learned so much from reading threads on the Trending Threads that were in the BA Forum. I never went there directly but read them to learn about the challenges and triumphs that other travelers went through. I have no interest in trying to seek those types threads out on my own, mainly due to the time involved.

At the risk of repeating something I already said pages ago upthread, but I finally found the right words to articulate how much this stings:

BA has...an interesting moderation style that I wouldn't wish on my own home forums (I'm sure it's tough to deal with all the volume and I greatly appreciate how visible the mods often are), but this leniency produces some of the most enthralling stories contained in a thread that's active for a day or so...until the next one pops up. The Trending page facilitated that.

@birdiedouble you said it quite nicely, "read [trending threads] to learn about the challenges and triumphs that other travellers went through"

Based in Canada but always curious about the US-based carriers and their loyalty devaluations, the Trending page was how I figured out that major news broke on a FFP change and peoples' (million milers, VIP status folk, FOTSG flyers, etc.) immediate reactions to them. The sheer volume of these forums do produce the spammy Trending threads like: "UA devalued their program, how does this impact DL?" "UA announces widebody order, how does this impact AA?". but these issues are resolved after a day anyway...

With Trending's demise, I haven't kept up with much news recently because I much preferred hearing it from FT than subscribing to some sellout blogger or reading high-level details which regurgitate the official press release on NYT or Bloomberg.

The path is well worn but he's another vote for bringing back Trending.

I pop in a few times a day to the home page and always perused that module. I like and enjoy travel and find the topics interesting and occasionally learn a thing or two. Can't say I'm going to go cruising through BA or really any other forums, I'll just visit less.

Because removing Trending has helped us game Google a little better

How about keeping the trending page only for logged in users?

+1. And, maybe try keeping it well hidden also (just like this secret forum).

Ironically, if the Trending feature still existed on FlyerTalk, this discussion would be trending.

Bring back the trending page please!

Another vote for the trending page or some other consolidated landing page. While I’m mostly a AA and AS flier (and accessing their specific threads works fine), viewing the general travel “trends” across all carriers and destinations on the trending page was very useful. Plus, without the trending page, I would have never discovered the story of C-W-S reuniting a little girl with her stuffed bear. Those priceless stories are what gives FT heart and character.

I think another poster mentioned earlier that any page can be removed from the Google overlords "spiders" somehow someway.

I've gone from probably 2 hours per day to less than 15 mins (and I'm new!)

Wouldn't it be easier just to add a bit of code to tell the crawler to ignore the trending page? Then you can have the best of both worlds.

With that I understand better why it was removed. It would have perhaps been better to acknowledge this directly earlier on in the discussion which may have eliminated the need for a lot of posts questioning the motive behind the removal. I had noticed when searching recently using Google for a thread that I remembered being on FlyerTalk but couldn't remember where it was that the FT hits were quite a way down the results. I took to specifying site:flyertalk.com in my Google searches for FT content to bring them to the top, but this obviously would not work for someone not looking specifically for a FT thread or not knowing how to specify a site specific search on Google.

+1 100%. Without knowing the in's and out's of the SEO I am hopeful this could work. It would be a solution that solves everyone's problem.

Another vote to please bring it back. I find myself less on FlyerTalk with trending gone—that’s probably a good thing for me, but sometimes I just want to veg and discover what’s going on in the industry. The only forum that I regularly frequent is the AC one. The rest I normally would get to via trending which I’d normally peek at least once a day.

Again, the Trending Page as it was is simply not coming back. What I'm working on now is getting a different product operational on FlyerTalk. It looks something like this (please keep in mind that I don't know to what extent this is customizable):
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...656b2ad195.png

IBJOEL...why are you acting like an airline with sharing enhancements?

First couple days the trending page won't load. Then the deactivation banner when clicked, leads to " people didn't like it".

LAME!

After reading THIS thread, where are those applauding your decision, in the comments?

Completely tone deaf by IBJoel.

Again what you have said make no sense to me, is gaming google more important that taking care of your customers ?

Again ?? I thought you said yopu would be monitoring activity , but it seems now that as others have said, "I dont care how many people say they want it, it is not what people want as without it we can "game" google. "Game" normally means doin something that is not strictly legit !