English

Alternative forms

• click-bait
• click bait

Noun

clickbait ‎(uncountable)

1. (Internet marketing, pejorative) Website content that is aimed at generating advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs; such headlines.
   • 2012, Gideon Haigh, The Deserted Newsroom:

     Fairfax's sites are renowned for what is sometimes called ‘clickbait’: headlines written to beguile passing eyeballs but which obscure nondescript or irrelevant stories.

   • 2013, Peter Preston, The Observer, 29 Sep 2013:

     "His careful lawyerly writing would be out of fashion now", wrote one commenter after Kettle's piece. "It wasn't clickbait".

Synonyms

• link bait

Derived terms

• clickbaity