1st – you can easily control the behavior of our recommendtions through the outbrain control panel. You can choose to have recommendations stay strictly within your site and never send a link out. Please note that even when you choose this option, your posts will still show up elsewhere on our network when they are relevant.

2nd – We do not promote any sites in any way within the recommendations. The links we provide are purely a result of the algorithms we’ve developed. We constantly test improvements, but as with any algorithm – results can sometimes seem weird. The case above seems like a result for a recent algorithm enhancement we’ve been testing where we try to find contextually relevant links to compliment our recommendations (I assume this showed up on a post discussing the MacBook?).
In fact, all 3 sites in those recommendations (Engadget, Gizmodo and TUWA) are *not* carrying our widget and we have no relationship with them. We have no interest in showing them, other than the fact that our algorithm thought those are the best ‘related’ links from trusted sources to show on your post.

I hope this clarification helps. We constantly strive to give your readers the best possible recommendations. I appologize if this seemed like a glitch. Again – while I wouldn’t encourage it, feel free to limit the recommendations to your site only.