Facebook Does Away With Click-Bait Headlines

If you're tired of seeing headlines like "You won't believe what happens next," or, "The shocking truth revealed," litter your Facebook feed, you're in for a bit of luck.

The company has decided to do away with this kind of advertising, otherwise known as "click-bait" headlines. While it's true, these links do usually garner lots of "likes," Facebook has found that its users have tired of them.

In a blog post, the company explained, "When we asked people in an initial survey what type of content they preferred to see in their News Feeds, 80% of the time people preferred headlines that helped them deicide if they wanted to read the full article before they had to click through. Over times, stories with "click-bait" headlines can drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about."

Facebook then took the opportunity to announce its decision to do away with these kinds of headlines. "We're making two updates, the first to reduce click-baiting headlines, and the second to help people see links shared on Facebook in the best format... "Click-bating" is when a publisher posts a link with a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see. Posts like these tend to get a lot of clicks, which means that these posts get shown to more people, and get shown higher up in the News Feed."

To determine whether or not the headline is click-bait, Facebook will monitor the bounce rate and visitor duration for each article. If a certain article gets many clicks, but readers leave after a short period of time, Facebook will conclude that the headline is click-bait, because the reader didn't bother to engage with the article or video they clicked on.