The Huffington Post Live Tests Two Headlines for the Same Article

The Huffington Post blog / news aggregator is one of the most popular sites in the US at the moment with traffic numbers overtaking some very established publishers. Part of its popularity can be attributed to an interesting way of determining better headlines by employing a live testing method in the vein of those Google uses for most of its products. Some of the original material on the site is released with two different headlines for a brief period of time and, depending on the users' reaction, one of the versions is chosen.

The method was revealed earlier this month by Paul Berry, the site's chief technology officer, in a panel at the Online News Association conference in San Francisco, as NiemenLabs reports.

The method is known as A/B testing and is widely employed in many studies of user behavior. It has also seen a great surge in usage online where it is particularly suited but this is one of the most original uses as it applies to editorial content.

The Huffington Post method is actually rather simple and fully automated. The editors create two headlines, which are then presented randomly each to half of the readers. Because of the site's large traffic numbers, in just five minutes, it is able to gather enough data to be able to choose one over the other depending on the number of clicks each gets. The winning headline is the one that gets used and most likely to generate the biggest traffic.

And, no matter whether the headlines have anything to do with it or not, the site must be doing something right as it has just passed both the LA Times and the Washington Post in unique visitors for the last month, according to Compete numbers. The site managed to get 8.4 million unique visitors in September, up from 7 million in August, compared to LA Times' 8.3 million and the Washington Post's 8.1 million.