An experiment with randomly-generated links

I’m currently experimenting with a random link generator called Outbrain. You can see this by looking at the footer of each article and (somewhat annoyingly, I have to say), the article summaries on the front page  or some of them at least. I’m interested in whether it enhances the visitor’s experience by providing suggestions for other articles on the ICT in Education website. That’s what I’m hoping, of course, but it could prove to be an irritant.

As far as I can tell, the article suggestions are randomly generated, ie they are related to neither popularity nor context.

I should be interested in what you think about this. Does it bring to your attention articles you may not otherwise have come across? Are there too many suggestions (I have opted for 5)? Or too few?

Furthermore, could this be useful in a school context, ie to increase the attractiveness of a school’s (public-facing) blog?

You can set it up, as I have, to generate leads only from within the site. That has the advantage of ensuring that no unsuitable content is promoted, but would not be very useful if only a few articles were on the site to begin with.

Ideas? Suggestions? Feedback?

Over to you!