Headline news at the BBC
The BBC news website is to carry longer headlines in a bid to boost stories’ searchability.
Front page headlines will still be limited to 31-33 characters so that they can appear on Ceefax and Digital Text.
Search me
But internal pages will carry 55-character headlines, which means they will be more search-friendly, as news editor Steve Herrmann explains on his blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/11/changing_headlines.html
Short changed
It makes sense. I always held up the headlines on the BBC news site as a great example of tight, disciplined editing. But it’s unlikely having another 20 characters will change this, and headlines have to be written for search engines as well as for humanoids.
The BBC news website is to carry longer headlines in a bid to boost stories’ searchability.
Front page headlines will still be limited to 31-33 characters so that they can appear on Ceefax and Digital Text.
Search me
But internal pages will carry 55-character headlines, which means they will be more search-friendly, as news editor Steve Herrmann explains on his blog.
Short changed
It makes sense. I always held up the headlines on the BBC news site as a great example of tight, disciplined editing. But it’s unlikely having another 20 characters will change this, and headlines have to be written for search engines as well as for humanoids.
Can’t help feeling a bit sic transit gloria mundi, though
What’s wrong with metadata, the semantic web and machine tagging? Use something like OpenCalais and tell the computers what an article is about.