HuffPo Has More Readers Than WaPo, LAT, And WSJ

Apparently newspapers of the world should seriously be considering adding bikini slide shows to their online offerings: The Huffington Post recently passed the Washington Post, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal in number of readers.

Pronouncements like this — Gawker made a splash in September when they announced their traffic trumped that of the beleaguered LAT — are likely not quite as surprising as they would have been even a year ago; still it’s a phenomenal feat (or a terrifying one, depending!) considering HuffPo is not yet five years old. Below Paul Berry explains some of the science behind HuffPo’s huge traffic gains (via a panel at last week’s Webtrends event in New Orleans) and how the site’s ability to “see how they are doing on an hourly basis” is directly applied to content:

Paul said they look at the stories and what people care about to support optimization. They also constantly test features to see what headlines work better by putting up different combinations and making adjustments. These efforts are improving their bounce rate. This constant attention and adjustments of place and titles by editors stands in stark contrast to the print newspaper editors who decide once and day and throw stuff on your step with few ways to see what you do with the paper.

I suspect the part of these practices newspapers will be most likely adopt — regular readers of the NYT.com will have likely noticed they have already done so to some small extent — is the testing of which “headlines work better by putting up different combinations and making adjustments.”

The aspect of this that is worrisome where newspapers are concerned is the idea of being overly concerned about “what people care about to support optimization.” Real news is, at its core, facts that people should care about whether they are aware of it or not. One glance at HuffPo’s most trafficked posts will quickly lead you to conclude that what the people ‘care’ about, and what is therefore most optimized on the site, is usually, well, sex.