5 ms·
Techcrunch titles are getting longer, but I don't know if that trend stretches out to the web at large. So I did a quick survey of my blog ( http://www.pureman
by user24 16y ago
Techcrunch titles are getting longer, but I don't know if that trend stretches out to the web at large.
So I did a quick survey of my blog ( http://www.puremango.co.uk http://www.puremango.co.uk ) which has been running for 6 years.
Here is a graph of the results: http://i.imgur.com/l2iKC.png http://i.imgur.com/l2iKC.png
There's a slight upward trend, but I'm certainly not seeing as direct a correlation as there is on techcrunch (but then they have more data)
So perhaps this is the result of a particular editorial style rather than a wider trend. Worth investigating though.
If you have a wordpress blog, here's the SQL I used:
SELECT post_title, post_date
FROM `wp_PREFIX_HERE_posts`
WHERE post_type = "post"
ORDER BY post_date ASC
Then I just took it into excel with the following formula to count words:
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1;" ";""))+1
- ptrwtts 16y agoPerhaps you're not optimizing your titles as well as you could be....TechCrunch did just sell to AOL so they must know what they're doing!
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoIf you're using MySQL, you can add the following: CHAR_LENGTH(post_title) as characters AFAIK most SQL servers have some equivalent of a LEN() function. Edit: Better yet, try something like this: SELECT left(post_date, 7) as month, ROUND(AVG(CHAR_LENGTH(post_title)), 0) as characters FROM `wp_PREFIX_HERE_posts` WHERE post_type = "post" GROUP BY left(post_date, 7) ORDER BY left(post_date, 7) This will provide you an average post title length by month. Edit 2: Incidentally, here's a chart of article and blog title lengths for articles and blog entries on a moderately well-read civic affairs website I edit: http://min.us/mvfTrxx http://min.us/mvfTrxx