I hate clickbait as much as the next user, but using that technique to get users to click appears to have even become part of the core business model of previously prestigious outlets.
As a subscriber to several newspapers, it's always interesting to see how different the headlines are between the dead tree editions, and the online versions — even for the same story.
The dead tree headlines are almost always very factual and to the point. I don't think I've ever seen anything close to something like "Here's four awesome tricks to get China to admit to the Tiananmen Square massacre" as a headline in actual print.
More importantly, if the content is actually relevant to the user's search, does it matter whether the title is clickbait or not?
Clickbait pisses me off when it's used to waste my time, but a good search engine wouldn't give me results that waste my time.
In other words, it could give me a relevant result with a clickbait title.. I guess that'd be a little annoying but I don't know if I would want Google to be the judge on what's clickbait or not, and even then I don't feel like it's their place to override titles. I wouldn't want useful pages be downranked just for having a poor title.
A poor title reduces the quality of the resource, though. I think it’s reasonable that there is some penalty imposed for poor titles, and that could include clickbait. If the result is the best one for the search, sure, surface it. But if it’s not clear, though, “clickbait title” is a signal that the result is not the best.
I do agree it’s not really Google’s place to be rewriting titles, though. That feels very suspect.
> A poor title reduces the quality of the resource, though
Is there an objective way to assess quality?
A click-bait title on a page full of ads and text that keep the visitor's attention but don't deliver on the title... ?
Then having held the visitor on your site for a minute or two, but managing to leave them unsatisfied, how about ending the page with a big fat block of even more visual click-bait content at the bottom (Taboola, I'm looking at you).
Don't advertisers and publishers love this stuff? Great metrics.
I hate clickbait as much as the next user, but using that technique to get users to click appears to have even become part of the core business model of previously prestigious outlets.
Picking on the WaPo for no real reason:
How the Washington Post pulled off the hardest trick in journalism https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/washington-post-fluff-news...
An Open Letter to the Washington Post: Please Stop Doing Clickbait https://thedailybanter.com/2016/05/letter-to-the-washington-...