This Headline Left Intentionally Boring

Culture

from the does-it-work? dept

The New York Times got quite a bit of buzz this weekend for an article about how journalists and editors are changing how they write, to accommodate search engines. Specifically, the claim is that some sites have changed their headline or section naming styles to be more “boring” since search engines don’t understand humor. Apparently, the BBC even goes so far as to write two separate headlines on many stories, trying to trick search engines into believing the boring ones are the legit headlines, while showing the catchier ones to humans. The article also notes some other “tricks” that journalists may need to start pulling to attract more search engine traffic. All of this is interesting, especially considering how some newspapers seem to actively try to stop search engines from sending them traffic. Clearly, that’s not true in all cases.

Of course, a few other interesting thoughts come out of this. One is the basic worry that things have gone horribly wrong when we’re writing headlines for computers, not humans. The computers should be adapting to what the humans want, not the other way around. The other idea, though, comes from Clive Thompson, who relates a story from Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow crediting much of that site’s traffic to their boring, but straightforward headlines. Of course, it would be helpful if there were more of a control to compare it to. In our case, over the years, we’ve found that the catchier headlines definitely tend to receive more traffic (though not necessarily more comments) than straightforward headlines. Of course, much of that depends on how catchy the headline is. Sometimes, in trying to be too clever, you end up in some obscure world where almost no one gets what you were referring too (though, those who do get it seem to appreciate it even more). Catchy headlines also have a second benefit: it’s easier to spot when someone else copies your headlines as well.