Have you ever seen titles like “10 Things This Crazy Girl Did! You Won’t Believe No. 7!” on your Facebook feed? It’s clearly meant to be clickbait, luring readers to an article that is often not what the title promised.
Fortunately Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is going to change all this and you will see less headlines like that one above in your feed in the coming weeks. The new algorithm is programmed to look at commonly used clickbait phrases for headlines and filter them out. Articles with clickbait or misleading and exaggerated headlines will still be shown but will be ranked lower, decreasing its reach.
Facebook hopes that the new changes will encourage publishers to improve the quality of their writing instead of focusing on increasing page views through clickbaits. Sites who rely too much on clickbait headlines will be adversely affected, Facebook said.
As part of its drive to deliver ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ posts to its users, Facebook has implemented other algorithm changes such as allowing relevant news and posts from your family and friends to surface more, promoting content that you are likely to engage with, and factoring your time spent on Instant Articles in deciding what posts to show in your feed.
