What Does Clickbait Mean?
Clickbait consists of attention-grabbing headlines used for Web content to lure readers into clicking on normally uninteresting content. Many websites use clickbait as a mechanism to gain popularity via higher click-through rates. Clickbait is characterized by a highly enticing headline with a hyperlink that, when clicked, reveals a website that has content that is not nearly as interesting as the headline. Clickbait is therefore considered to be a strategy to increase the number of views to a particular Web page.
Techopedia Explains Clickbait
Clickbait is used to direct the user to a page that may require payment, registration or a set of pages in order to increase the page views for the site. Clickbait works by making use of the curiosity-gap principle. The sensational headline of the clickbait helps in raising the curiosity of the readers, and thus gets them to click the link to the Web page. For instance, consider an entertainment website. An example of a non-clickbait link might say, “See how this celebrity lost 10 pounds last month.”
