Your headline sounds too positive to click

Robertson and colleagues analysed 105,000 headline experiments from Upworthy, around 370 million impressions, A/B tested on real readers. Each extra negative word in an average-length headline raised click-through by 2.3%. Each positive word lowered it.

Outbrain, 65,000 paid headlines: positive superlatives like best or always performed 29% worse than a plain headline. Negative superlatives like never or worst performed 30% better. The gap between them was 63%.

The word families that pull:
Negation. never, nobody, not, no one, nothing
Loss. lose, gone, cost, cut, dead, stop

Reversal. actually, turns out, was never, still
Fear family. kill, fear, dark, war, danger

Numbers. exact, odd, unrounded. 22,364 beats over 20,000

What kills a title: best, amazing, incredible, ultimate, top. Overused into invisibility, and readers read them as selling.

Go and look at your last three titles. Count the positive words. 🙂