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Obscuring the subject to force a click. "This disease" instead of "Sudden oak death". The idea is that person will read the scary part, want to find out which p
by Tossrock 10y ago
Obscuring the subject to force a click. "This disease" instead of "Sudden oak death". The idea is that person will read the scary part, want to find out which particular disease it is, and click through. It's headline SEO 101.
- chc 10y agoThe odds aren't great that a given person knows what "sudden oak death" is, so that doesn't seem to add much except an extra expectation on the reader. I'm pretty sure this headline is not far from what it would been as a newspaper headline 30 years ago. It would have just been "Disease" rather than "This disease" since newspaper headlines favor brevity, but using common nouns in headlines for things that aren't super well-known is a pretty established practice (e.g. "Florida man" rather than "Robert Johnson"). I guess basically, it doesn't seem like the name of the disease is really the point of the article.
- Dylan16807 10y agoYes. You either already know about the disease or you don't. The wording of "disease" vs. "sudden oak death" doesn't change how much I want to click at all. It's not a situation where the title might obscure which disease is causing the problem. There's one problem. And "sudden oak death" is sort of a fake name anyway.