The web pioneered a new brand of headline: Clickbait. The headline, also referred to as linkbait, was a blogging invention. Bloggers found clickbait headlines a great way to make visitors click. But it was Upworthy and Buzzfeed that founded an empire that rested heavily on clickbait headlines. Today, you cannot escape clickbait headlines on the net.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes Clickbait as, “Something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest.”
This is a very damaging description. Wikipedia is equally severe. “Clickbait is a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks.”
The social networking giant was so tired of clickbait headlines that in 2014 it decided to penalise the writers of such headlines. Its anger was easy to understand. Wrote Facebook, “Posts like these (that is with clickbait headlines) tend to get a lot of clicks, which means that these posts get shown to more people, and get shown higher up in News Feed.”
It decided to show less of such stories. Facebook also explained how it will identify such stories that promise so much but deliver too little.
The first way, Facebook said “is to look at how long people spend reading an article away from Facebook. If people click on an article and spend time reading it, it suggests they clicked through to something valuable. If they click through to a link and then come straight back to Facebook, it suggests that they didn’t find something that they wanted.” Quite clearly, Facebook reasoned that these people were victims of clickbait headlines. Facebook decided to downgrade such articles.
The second method that Facebook adopted was “to look at the ratio of people clicking on the content compared to people discussing and sharing it with their friends. If a lot of people click on the link, but relatively few people click Like, or comment on the story when they return to Facebook, this also suggests that people didn’t click through to something that was valuable to them.”
# Object of ridicule
Clickbait headlines also became an object of ridicule. Three sites sprang up to poke fun. These were:
It randomly generated Upworthy-style headlines and articles. All that the visitor needed to do was to click on the button “Generate another”.
Headline smasher encouraged visitors to locate clickbait headlines and then enter them on Headline smasher. These headlines were then “smashed” to create many more clickbait headlines. People were given the option to save these headlines and even earn Karma points.
This application too entertained visitors by encouraging them to click on clickbaited headlines, and enjoy themselves.
# Clickbaits are here to stay!
However, neither the hate nor the ridicule nor the scorn has diminished the appetite of web visitors for clickbait headlines. These headlines continue to flourish, and prosper.
Reason: Clickbaits arouse curiosity. They give the readers an extra reason to click.
The answer is not to ban them or to penalise them. But to improve them. No blogger or content editor should write a clickbait headline that misleads. The goal should be to write a headline that accurately sums up the key points of the story.
The reader should never feel cheated. If this is done then clickbaits will thrive even more in the coming years.
See also: 5 characteristics of web headlines
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