Facebook’s Clickbait Penalty: What You Need to Know

Several of our O&O properties have received Facebook clickbait warnings over the last few weeks. This prompted us to take a closer look at what these clickbait warnings actually means and how we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Here’s what you have to know:

1. In January, Facebook announced the release of a Page Quality tab for users who manage a page. On this tab, Facebook will let you know what content is in violation of their guidelines. This ranges from publishing fake news, hate speech, bullying others or publishing clickbait headlines. The tab will provide more insight into the specific content and reasons the content was demoted or removed.

2. In April 2019, Facebook introduced a “Click-Gap” signal into News Feed ranking. This signal generates from a web map of domains and pages and their internal and external links. Per Facebook, “Click-Gap looks for domains with a disproportionate number of outbound Facebook clicks compared to their place in the web graph. This can be a sign that the domain is succeeding on News Feed in a way that doesn’t reflect the authority they’ve built outside it and is producing low-quality content.”. To me, this seems like something that would hurt a site posting content that would potentially be a viral hit.

3. In May, Facebook updated their algorithm in two ways. First the algorithm would favor feed placements to content from friends versus brand pages. This tweak was made after user Facebook surveys revealed people are more interested in content from people they actually know. Content from your close relationships will show up even higher in your feed moving forward. The second update is a bit more vague, but basically is that Facebook will be favoring higher quality links. One signal they’re using to indicate the higher quality link is if the headline is click-bait.

4. Facebook describes clickbait as “when a publisher posts a link with a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see. Clickbait intentionally omits crucial information or exaggerates the details of a story to make it seem like a bigger deal than it really is. This gets attention and lures visitors into clicking on a link, but they then quickly return to News Feed.”

5. If clickbait headlines are currently a part of your traffic strategy, you should understand that much less people will be seeing it on Facebook moving forward. It’s better to create accurate headlines that deliver, your user will learn they can trust you. If it continues, there will be some sort of suspension to your account. Ours was 24 hours.

Details on what Facebook is flagging

Earlier this week, our social media editor, Alexa Thompson sent some updated guidelines to our teams on how we need to adjust based on these clickbait penalties. When it comes to what Facebook is actually flagging, she summarized as:

• A headline or caption that intentionally omits crucial information or exaggerates the details of a story to make it seem like a bigger deal than it really is.

• Any link post that withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is, forcing the reader into clicking on the link to get the answer.

• An account is more likely to be flagged if they are consistently posting links and not other types of content, such as videos or photos.

• Explicit images: When it comes to love and sex-related content, we need to err on the side of caution. Nudity, specifically nipples, will be flagged.

Social headlines should make people want to click by giving them information – not by withholding it.

How to avoid clickbait penalties:

• Don’t exaggerate what someone will get or how someone will feel if they read your post. Instead, headlines should set up realistic expectations for your reader. This will grow their trust in your brand and in the long run will benefit your traffic both from Facebook as well as in organic search.

• Ever hear the term VagueBook? It’s when you see a Facebook post that alludes to something but with no details. You can avoid being penalized by Facebook for clickbait by never doing that with your own posts. Don’t purposefully leave out helpful details so that people have to click in just to get the basics.

• As a user or a brand, make sure you’re not sharing pages that use clickbait headlines or have inaccuracies. Your brand reputation on Facebook is not only dependent on what you publish but also what you share.

When it comes to both your audience and your traffic, avoid clickbait as much as possible in your headlines. You don’t want your brand to be associated with misleading or exaggerated headlines. You may lose some traffic in the short term, but it’s more likely that you’ve seen less traffic lately if clicky titles are your norm. Engaging in this practice will end up leaving your readers disappointed.