You’ll Never Believe Facebook Did This!!!

Do you hate headlines like the title of this blog post?…Headlines that try to entice you by piquing your curiosity, but which don’t actually give you enough information to decide if you’d really be interested?  I do and so, apparently, do the folks at Facebook and they are trying to do something about it.

In a recent blog post, Facebook announced that they have updated the algorithm used for the newsfeed to try to detect “click bait” and cause those posts to not show up in people’s newsfeed as much.  So, what is “click bait”?  According to the authors of the blog post:

“‘Click-baiting’ 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 News Feed.”

These are posts like the one to the right ->

It seems like it might be interesting, but then again, you don’t really know what the story about and, all too often, the real story is much less interesting than the headline.

In order to address click bait, Facebook will be watching how long people take to come back to Facebook after clicking a link.  If a lot of people are coming right back within a second or two, it’s probably click bait.  If most take a couple minutes to come back, then it’s probably a truly interesting piece of content.

Facebook is also looking at how many clicks a post gets compared to how many shares, likes, and comments it gets.  If there are a lot of interaction, then it’s probably legit.

So, if you’ve been using click bait headlines a lot, life’s about to get worse for you.  If you’re sick of seeing click bait posts, then life’s about to get a lot better. 🙂

So, what do you think?  Share a comment below and let us know.

• Do you think click bait is annoying?
• Have you ever posted click bait posts?  Did you find it actually helped you grow you audience?

Kurt Steinbrueck

OurChurch.Com Director of Marketing Services

Kurt serves as OurChurch.Com’s Director of Marketing Services, bringing over 20 years of expertise in search marketing, and has developed numerous marketing services and served hundreds of churches, schools, ministries, and businesses.

He has authored more than 500 articles on the subject, contributing to platforms like the Christian SEO Guys blog and Church Marketing University, and is an active participant on LocalSearchForum.com.

In addition to his professional accomplishments, Kurt is an ordained minister, serving as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wesley Chapel, FL, demonstrating his commitment to both faith and community. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree from Georgia Southern University. He also holds a Specific Ministry Pastor Certificate and a General Pastor Certificate from Concordia Seminary.