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This Boring Headline is Written for Google
prostoalex writes "The New York Times is running an article on how newspapers around the country find their Web sites more dependent on search engines than before. The unexpected effect? Witty double entendres, allusions and sarcastic remarks are rewritten into boring straight-to-the-point headlines that rank higher on search engines and news-specific search engines. From the article: 'About a year ago, The Sacramento Bee changed online section titles. "Real Estate" became "Homes," "Scene" turned into "Lifestyle," and dining information found in newsprint under "Taste," is online under "Taste/Food."'"
It used to be that to get modded up you could read the article leisurely, understand what it's talking about, and then post your comment at any time... letting the merit of what you wrote stand on its own.
We don't do that anymore. These days, users become subscribers so that they can get first post and fool the moderators into thinking that what they wrote was insightful. Rather than discuss, as mentioned in the article, how a witty title that perhaps employs humor or puns is rewritten to something mundane so that a search engine can pick up on common keywords, people these days are engaging in what Linus Torvalds calls little more than a public wanking session trying to post comments more insightful than the rest.
Don't try for first post. Instead, take the hint that your posts just aren't really all that informative nor insightful and re-evaluate the sanity of continuing to post such drivel. Go take a look at comments like this and realize that trying to succeed with content like that is like punching moderators in the nuts trying to get excellent karma.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
the author didn't seem to consider the possibility that readers prefer this..
i personally would rather actually know what articles are about based on their headlines, than be tricked into reading something by a misleading headline. most headlines aren't "creative", so much as they are "dishonest" in the newspaper.
i skim through my university's paper every other week, and i usually am reminded why i don't read it more often.
-- lol pwned
This is really only tangentially about search engines. It's really about people finding things by searching, rather than by browsing, today.
It used to be a potential reader would be standing in front of a magazine stand, or leafing idly through a newspaper. To grab that reader, a witty, slightly hard-to-understand headline was great - it catches your attention and makes you at least look closer since you want to know what that mysterious piece is actually about. And thus you made the single-copy sale, and perhaps, in time, sold a subrscription.
Today we increasingly don't start by picking up a paper and looking within for what we want; we find things by searching for what we want and end up on anyone of a large number of newspapers and magazine sites. The choice of paper isn't the start of the process - the search is. And when we search, that witty off-color headline is going to mislead us since it doesn't actually contain the key terms that would indicate relevance. Making headlines and summaries clear, straight and to the point isn't about pandering to search engines, but of adjusting to the changing behavior of the readership.
It's the reader behavior that has changed. The search engine angle is just a smokescreen.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
There is an even better method for keeping witty headlines *and* be ranked in top position with google : pr0n. Here are some sample headlines :
- UN concerned about Iraq and free hentai
- Pope Benedict XVI replaces John Paul II in bondage
- France strikers and Natalie Portman arrested
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
...anyone should be able to read a headline and quickly get an idea of what the story's about. Much better to have some snarky news editor misleading us to get us to read their stupid story.
I, for one, welcome "boring, straightforward" news headlines. After all, it's news. Not commentary, not opinion. If I see a newspaper section marked "Scene" I'm not likely to know what it's about.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.