Google the words "click bait"

Yes and no.

One "click" or "page view"is the internet equivalent of one reader or subscriber for what for print media is "paid circulation". A measure of an audience. Advertisers pay for how many potential eyeballs might see their messages. I forget the name of the organization that tracks and accumulates print media data to report the number of paid subscribers for each publication but that serves as one measure to justify ad rates.

The more eyeballs, the more can be charged. There was a time with internet ads that the ad placement would be based on total page views, not time. In other words, an ad is sold to produce 200 million page views, not sold to be run from May 1 to May 31.

If you manage a site and think people will be attracted to read a piece listing 15 movie star blondes who are really brunettes, you can put it on one page so that a viewer generates one click/page view. Or you can put each name on 15 different pages with a Next arrow at the bottom and stretch the same content out to produce 15 page views (or maybe an average of 5 or 6) per site visit.

The question was asked about sites that are set up to maximize the page view count. I believe that's something different from click bait.

Some of the ones also have other advertising on pages that you have to click past to continue to see the other pictures/read article. The placing of those ads is a revenue source.

I shut those kind of pages down, as soon as I realize, I have to click next. I have better things to do with my time.

Most all of those click bait sites get there stories from other places. If it lists a person's name, simply Google their name and you will find the story on a more reputable site.

If you are really interested in the story being told, do a search on google and you'll usually find a straightforward version, no clicking. In fact, there is a site that has the aim of taking those stories and runnning them, no clicking. I don't remember the name, unfortunately.

They want you to notice all the ads.

Click bait hate it! I close it down immediately.

Yes, and sometimes you accidentally click the ad. That is what they are hoping for. i have started to do what bleu does. You can google and find it on one page.

What I also hate is the lead in to why you want to read the story is always many clicks later. I honestly don't want the background story,. I too have stopped looking at these.

Every time you click next, the person who owns that page makes money. The more clicks, the more $$ in his bank account. I don't visit those pages.

What I also hate is the lead in to why you want to read the story is always many clicks later. I honestly don't want the background story,. I too have stopped looking at these.

That's how I feel about most food blogs. I don't care how many kids they have, if they're super-mom, yada yada. And far too many close-ups of the same food pic, sprinkling salt, stirring with a wooden spoon, etc. Just give me the darned recipe.

I have finally gotten tired of them and don't bother with them anymore, either.

Some of them are years old...over and over.

Agree totally with Uptown gal .

As others have said it is a simple and simplistic way for website owners of seeing how much of their content is viewed, mostly for the purposes driving ad revenues. It is more informative to potential website advertisers that a certain percentage of site visitors actually proactively clicked next 15 times to actively visit all of the pages that comprise the "article", than the alternative of reporting to advertisers "This many people visited the "article", but we have no idea whether they read any of it."

Since there is such a clear dichotomy between what best serves the needs of website readers and what best serves the needs of website advertisers, the choice the owner of a given website decides upon makes it is abundantly clear what is important to them.

Since I have ads, cookies and nearly all javascript blocked, the websites owners get much less saleable info from me. I cannot think of even a single time I have seen any ad anywhere on the internet site that then caused to to want to buy whatever the ad was for (in fact the only ads that have made any lasting impression on me are the ones that are so unutterably annoying that I vow to never buy or use that product or service ever again), so I think the whole notion of buying ads on websites is just a waste of the ad placers money.

Each one of those clicks puts a tag in your computer's history file. Finally, you get to the last page and it fails to display the answer to the in initial titillating title. As mentioned above, it has shoved a batch of ads your way at your expense of time and internet service.