clickbait

plural clickbaits · alternative click-bait · alternative click bait

1. InternetcountablederogatoryuncountablebusinessWebsite content that is aimed at generating advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs; such headlines.

   "His careful lawyerly writing would be out of fashion now", wrote one commenter after Kettle's piece. "It wasn't clickbait".

   2013 September 29, Peter Preston, The Observer

   4 more examples

   Fairfax's sites are renowned for what is sometimes called ‘clickbait’: headlines written to beguile passing eyeballs but which obscure nondescript or irrelevant stories.

   2012, Gideon Haigh, The Deserted Newsroom, Penguin, →ISBN

   In August 2016, leaders at Facebook announced a plan to identify and limit clickbait, because the Facebook newsfeed goal is to “show people the stories most relevant to them.”

   2017, Ted Kwartler, Text Mining in Practice with R, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN

   In comparison with algorithms used in the past, this SI based technique provided a better accuracy and a human interpretable set of rules to classify clickbaits

   2019, Deepanshu Pandey, Garimendra Verma, Sushama Nagpal, “Clickbait Detection Using Swarm Intelligence”, in Advances in Signal Processing and Intelligent Recognition Systems

   What is less clear is whether Maga’s identity crisis reflects a schism among the movement’s rank and file, with the potential for an anti-Trump revolt, or merely the incentives of clickbait-driven social media.

   2026 March 22, David Smith, “‘Extremely ugly’: Maga media figures squabble among themselves over Trump’s Iran war”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: link bait, shitbait

present singular third person clickbaits · participle present clickbaiting · participle past clickbaited · past clickbaited · alternative click-bait · alternative click bait

1. transitiveTo add clickbait to a web page; to direct clickbait at someone.

   But he'd clickbaited her.

   2017, Ainslie Paton, The Love Experiment, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Whether they're acts of clickbaiting or dumbness, internet headlines routinely mischaracterize quotes, inaccurately paraphrase statements, and misuse specific terms, all to make readers click.

   2015, How to Write About Music, →ISBN, page 60

   I have never clickbaited anyone with overexaggerated titles, but also never downplayed the severity of the content within.

   2017, Brian Whitney, Subversive: Interviews with Radicals, →ISBN