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Writers and editors love snappy headlines. And why not? Headlines help sell more copies and attract more online readers, and this viewership, online and offline, helps fuel ad revenues.

Lately however, headline writing is changing thanks to a very influential online “audience” that has emerged – a very literal, logical, just-the-facts “left brain” kind of reader, one not likely to understand witty, funny or pun-intended headlines. Just who is the viewer? It’s a ”bot”, a software program which crawls through the Web, “reading” and ranking the online news for search engines.

In an April 9th New York Times online article, This Boring Headline Is Written for Google, writer Steve Lohr outlines how bots are changing the way writers and editors craft their headlines to play to these influential bots, with an eye toward attracting more eyeballs, which in turn attracts more advertisers. In short, headlines in many cases are now being written with the virtual bottom-line impact of bots and search in mind.

And no wonder. According to Lohr, these bots help deliver a third of the traffic on some newspaper, magazine or television news Web sites. “And traffic means readers and advertisers, at a time when the mainstream media is desperately trying to make a living on the Web,” says Lohr.

About a year ago, says Lohr, “The Sacramento Bee changed online section titles. ‘Real Estate’ became ‘Homes,’ ‘Scene’ turned into ‘Lifestyle,’ and dining information found in newsprint under ‘Taste,’ is online under ‘Taste/Food.’”

Some news sites offer two or even three headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers, says Lohr. Then, a click to a second Web page finds a more factual or detailed headline. 

Take for instance The Star-Tribune of Minneapolis, Minn. In its April 13th online edition, the first headline a live viewer sees is: “Union: Ford Plant to Close”, while on the subsequent detail page the headline reads: “St. Paul Ford workers being told plant will close in 2009.”

According to Michael Schudson, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who was interviewed and quoted in Lohr’s NYT article, “…newspaper headlines and the presentation of stories in print are in a sense marketing devices to bring readers to your story. Why not use a new marketing device appropriate to the age of the Internet and the search engine?”

In the future, when you might expect to see a headline screaming, “Extra, Extra, Read all about it,” your internet search may actually bring up a very succinct and factual “Read It!”