Others have suggested "click-bait", which is probably the most likely term for a headline specifically. It does assume the reasoning though, that it's being don

Others have suggested "click-bait", which is probably the most likely term for a headline specifically. It does assume the reasoning though, that it's being done to drive views at the direction of marketing. Which granted is not an unreasonable assumption, even media with very strong editorial policies that will push back against most interference may consider "mere headlines" be a place they can sacrifice to marketing, it's not uncommon these days in many places to actually have a few different headlines created, served up at random to a sample of initial browsers, and then have whichever one gets the most clicks selected as the one that is displayed generally. However if you want a more general term one might be "purple prose", which can apply not just to headlines but to any text in an article. It's a subjective judgement, but the idea is when there is text that is so excessively ornate, emotional, extravagant, etc that it actually breaks the flow of your attention and reading of the content itself. Basically, prose that stops serving to convey the content and starts drawing attention to itself for the sake of itself. It comes from a passage in one of the poetic works of Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, from Rome). Again, it is subjective, because sometimes content really does deserve heavy levels of verbage and different people have different tolerances. But when flowery prose gets in the way of comprehension rather than enhancing it it's a good candidate.