Slashdot Mirror
How Huffington Post's Clever Traffic-Generation Machine Works
Hugh Pickens writes "Frédéric Filloux writes that traditional newspapers that move online are losing the war against pure players and aggregators because original stories are getting very little traffic due to the poor marketing tactics of old-fashion publishers. Meanwhile, aggregators like the Huffington Post use clever traffic-generation techniques, so the same journalistic item will generate much more traffic. Here's an example: On July 5th, The Wall Street Journal runs an editorial piece about Mitt Romney's position on Obamacare and the rather dull and generic 'Romney's Tax Confusion' title for this 1000-word article attracted a remarkable 938 comments. But look at what the Huffington Post did: a 500-word treatment, including a 300 words article plus a 200-word excerpt of the WSJ opinion and a link back (completely useless) but, unlike the Journal, the HuffPo ran a much sexier headline: 'Mitt Romney is 'Squandering' Candidacy With Health Care Snafu.' The choice of words for the headline takes in account all Search Engine Optimization prerequisites, using high yield words such as 'Squandering' and 'Snafu,' in conjunction with much sought-after topics such as 'Romney' and 'Health Care.' Altogether, this guarantees a nice blip on Google's radar — and a considerable audience : 7000+ comments."
"Huffington Post has invested a lot in SEO tools and will even A/B test headlines to random groups. 'I was told that every headline is matched in realtime against Google most searched items right before being posted. If the editor's choice scores low in SEO, the system suggests better terms,' writes Filloux, adding that original stories are getting very little traffic due to the poor marketing tactics of old-fashion publishers. 'Who can look to the better future in the digital world? Is it the virtuous author carving language-smart headlines or the aggregator generating eye-gobbling phrases thanks to high tech tools? Your guess. Maybe it's time to wake-up.'"
I agree that The Huffington Post is doing much better search engine optimization. That part is true because when I google for a news item they somehow will beat out even the AFP in my search results. And I do think that gets them more traffic. But I don't think counting the number of comments means anything at all. Even as a liberal, some of their titles disgust me so there's no question they are poking and prodding readers into commenting more.
Lastly, ever since The Wall Street Journal put up that arcane paywall, I don't think I can even read the comments let alone click a link to go there and see anything. Even if it's an Op-Ed they are practically gutting themselves while aggregators feed off their remains.
using high yield words such as 'Squandering' and 'Snafu,'
How exactly are those "high yield words"? They just seem more memorable and inflammatory to me which (surprise surprise) nets them 7 kilocomments.
My work here is dung.
Their use of SEO not-withstanding, judging articles by the number of comments generated is kind of like judging the performance of a car engine based on how load the stereo gets.
Controversial topics will get many more comments than topics about boring stuff. Hell, comments with horrible grammer andd skeling mystakes will get more comments than the actual story.
And yes, I realize the irony of posting this in the comments section of Slashdot. ;-)
We don't live in Shouldland.
I was listening to NPR last night and heard this debate program (originally from April 2012):
When It Comes To Politics, The Internet Is Closing Our Minds
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
But which one had better quality?
I'll gladly go to a site with 50 comments making a quality discussion and just read without commenting rather than going to a site with 5000 comments, most of which are people that never read the article or are completely offtopic.
That said, I don't know why the hell I'm on Slashdot.
It's internet trolling, nothing more. Huff uses inflammatory words to work people up so they post, it's not constructive or useful it just further creates an Us vs Them mentality. Not really what reporting needs.
Just look at those ads on the right of your 'gmail' account. Stuff like, "Other women hate her." and "Language professors hate him." Really? That's marketing prowess? Like I'm gonnuh click on any of that shit. I don't read from the Huff, by the way.
The only standard in corporate journalism of any type (HuffPo included) is number of eyeballs sold to advertisers. People think we still see solid debate from the 4th estate... and they are completely wrong.
Oh my, I never realised that the average readership of the average media outlet is drawn in by the headlines. That really *is* news. Wow.
But WSJ doesn't get revenue from comments or traffic flow, they get revenue from subscribers. As a publication about the business environment it's important that they keep articles and especially headlines professional sounding lest they damage the brand. HuffPo is a volume site where driving traffic is the main goal. WSJ has a lot fewer hits but makes a LOT more off of each customer. In fact, WSJ is gaining subscribers in a rapidly dying business so their lack of sensationalism may not drives huge traffic to them but is driving the RIGHT traffic to them.
Would you care to elaborate? (And yes, I do know who Ms Riefenstahl was)
Headlines like that, and whole articles too, on Huffington Post and other sites have a kind of breathless, plastic insincerity that I find grating. They are like products designed by committee guided entirely by focus groups. I hope it only works at driving traffic to them now because the web is still new enough to enough of the public that the culture hasn't evolved defenses against this kind of manipulation. I'm imagining some earlier days of advertising where "9 out of 10 doctors agree ... " could make people think "Well, I'd better change toothpaste right now!" and I hope the Huffington Post style of writing will soon sound just as lame.
Can anyone even partially read those 200/500/1500 or whatever comments (4000) on Huffingtonpost?
... not much on content, shallow, often frustrating to read those.
Isn't that a deterrent, to stay away from those "posts" - totally useless!
Furthermore, Huffingtonpost lures with catchy headlines and provides
It may be clever and create traffic - for what - ads? Aren't ads automatically avoided by viewers, those popups glaring at you before you even can look at the page?
Don't you love all that crap!
Huffington Post is one of those sites I avoid because they mainly cut/paste the entire article and don't reference the original site. A few times I've followed the link I've had to play google detective for a few minutes to find the original article. Just seems shady and with the news of how little to not they pay the people who write for them I stay away from them.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
What you call "clever traffic generation techniques" are properly called "yellow journalism". These ideas are not new, they've been around for 150 years. Ranting headlines are not a new idea for ancient media like the WSJ or NY Times: they've seen it all before, and have survived for 150 years by rejecting these unethical tactics.
I'm a liberal democrat, and I agree with some of what the Huffington Post is pushing. But what they do is not journalism.
Other than the fact that both organizations host "news content," they aren't comparable. Whether or not you approve of it, the WSJ is a traditional newspaper with "journalism" sections and "opinion" sections with different editors and standards.
HuffPo may contain journalism but it isn't the point. It's a combination rabble-rouser + echo chamber. You would never see a headline like theirs on a WSJ news article because it's repackaging it as commentary rather than news -- and even if that's a difficult line to keep track of for every news organization, HuffPo doesn't pretend to try. And why should they? Their audience doesn't seem to want them to.
Samsung Blames Galaxy SIII Burn On "External Energy Source"
Where the actual story is "Samsung not to be blame for every idiot thing someone could do with/to their products" rather than "Samsung devices potentially dangerous, Samsung attempt to pass the buck".
Years ago, I wrote newspaper heds for a living. It was fun, challenging work to see what you can cram into a very limited space. And to try to convey the article's meaning. Even more "fun" when you have minutes or just a minute to meet a deadline. The WSJ hed is right out of the paper and no doubt fits a two column layout. Huffo wasn't bound by the old physical layout.