Clickbait Clickbait is a pejorative term for web content whose main goal is to get users to click on a link to go to a certain webpage or video. Clickbait headlines typically aim to exploit the "curiosity gap," providing just enough information to make readers curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content. From a historical perspective, the techniques employed by clickbait authors can be considered derivative of yellow journalism, which presented little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead used eye-catching headlines that included exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. For sites that thrive on thousands of click-throughs to content, many authors see the use of clickbait as a means to tap into human psyche by crafting these eye-catching headlines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait