Author Topic: Confessions of a professional clickbait writer - The Boston Globe  (Read 1632 times)

rcjordan

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ergophobe

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Re: Confessions of a professional clickbait writer - The Boston Globe
« Reply #1 on: April 02, 2022, 05:44:47 PM »
Two thoughts:

1. Worthwhile read. I liked it.

2. Total clickbait. I'm a sucker.

It dovetails with my comments on quote websites (and your addition of recipe websites as following the same pattern). It feels like it's getting harder and harder to find anything on Google. Any page that does well is copied over and over and over and the authoritative pages are pushed further and further down. Today, I was trying to retrieve that article on how human body temperature has been decreasing since the 1860s. It took me multiple searches to refine the results because my first searches turned up multiple pages of commercial site (Healthline, WebMD, health and fitness sites galore), but not the actual article.

And no, the "reddit" modifier doesn't work - all the top results are without links or citations. Junk. Junkier in fact than the WebMD junk.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2022, 05:49:33 PM by ergophobe »

ergophobe

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Re: Confessions of a professional clickbait writer - The Boston Globe
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2022, 03:14:59 PM »
Talking today with Theresa about all the versions of pay-to-play in the travel industry, it makes me want to write a "Confessions of a destination marketer" piece.

Not as good clickbait though... "destination marketing" is an industry term. I'm not sure what the good clickbait word for that is.

What's your guess on how many typical travelers know that for almost every "research" term they put in for their trip, the entire first page of Google is financially incentivized in some way?

Ten years ago, I would have said that the percentage is very small. Now, though, the SERPs are so polluted with copycat and pay-to-play articles that it seems like it should be obvious to everyone... but I suspect that is my cocoon.