This is definitely going to be a bad news for click-hungry publishers on the popular social networking site: Facebook warns Page administrators of an upcoming change to its Newsfeed algorithm that will mark down posts guilty of click-baiting, or at least displays the symptoms of a click-craving link title.
However, it means good news for Facebook users who are easily irritated to see posts on their Newsfeed that, when clicked on, do not direct them to what the link title purports to be the content of the post.
One thing is sure about the changes in Facebook Newsfeed algorithm, and it is that it would also change the way advertisers and marketers reach their intended audience as well as users gain access to posts that actually matter to them.
Examples of click-baiting posts that Facebook is trying to crack down include links that contain such phrases as “This will blow your mind” and “You’ll never believe what happens next!” or the likes. These phrases are oftentimes meant to lure Facebook users into clicking on a post that contains a controversial image of a celebrity or any public figure, all in an effort to increase clicks for their products or links across the Facebook site.
Facebook researchers have found in a research that more users are actually attracted by posts containing those phrases, proliferating the posts to other users by just clicking on them and helping marketers increase their presence on Facebook. One disadvantage from this is that those posts that matter more to users get drown out in the process and hidden from view of the users.
The change comes after the result of a Facebook survey that found majority of the social network’s users want to see on their news feeds post titles that help them in a more defined way in deciding whether to read the article in full or leave it after clicking.
Facebook is using many approaches to know whether a post is click-baiting, like factoring in the amount of time a user spends on reading an article outside the site and tag that article as valuable to the user if it is read for longer periods. Otherwise it will be marked as a click-bait when a user clicks on it on Facebook and then leaves it after a few seconds. That means the title did not live up to its content.
Facebook will also downplay posts that are automatically shared on the news feed through third-party apps like Instagram and Pinterest.
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