Headline Keywords used by Leading News Organizations

Headlines have a huge impact on click-through rates and sharing. In order to gain insight into the types of headlines leading news organizations are using, let’s take a look at a series of heat-maps created using the headlines from leading outlets collected between October 21 and January 211.

A few things worth noting:

CNN uses headline keywords related to financials and stocks with more frequency, while Fox News focuses on government and the U.S.
AOL News is all about opinions, while the Huffington Post is focused on headline keywords related to photos and videos.
Facebook and Wikileaks are on the top of every news organization’s coverage.

Keeping in mind that the ‘hotter’ colors on the heat maps (red, orange, yellow) indicate that headlines containing these words are shared most among readers, and the ‘cooler’ colors (navy blue, sky blue) are shared the least among readers, the biggest takeaway from the heat-maps might be to use the word “new” in your headlines whenever possible.