How the Athletic Gets More Clicks with One Simple Trick

Getting a reader to actually click on a link is becoming a genuine uphill battle. We have been conditioned by the aggressive patterns of big tech, and the result is a general apathy toward standard headlines. If you want people to engage with your work, you cannot rely on the old playbook of just writing a catchy title and hoping for the best. This connects with to Get Cited & Stay Visible when the same signal needs a clearer operating decision.

To survive this environment, we have to stop treating our homepages as static directories and start treating them as marketing surfaces. The goal is to build and own your audience by making your content irresistible on the pages you actually control. One of the most effective ways to do this is by borrowing a page from The Athletic.

The Power of Visible Social Proof

The Athletic does something remarkably simple on its homepage: it displays the number of comments each article has generated. By doing this, they aren't just providing a metric; they are signaling to the reader exactly which pieces of content are sparking the most conversation.

This is a classic application of social proof. When a reader lands on a page, they are often undecided about where to spend their time. By showing that hundreds of other people are already discussing a specific story, the site removes the guesswork. It tells the apathetic reader that this specific piece of content is worth their attention because others have already validated it.

The financial results of this kind of focused growth are evident. In the second quarter of 2025, The Athletic saw revenue climb by a third to 54 million dollars, with an adjusted operating profit of 5.8 million dollars. Their ad revenue nearly doubled to 14.1 million dollars. When you look at the success of the New York Times and The Athletic, it becomes clear that these small, psychological levers in user experience drive significant business outcomes.

Expert Interpretation: The tradeoff here is between editorial control and audience preference. Editors usually want to push a specific narrative or a "prestige" piece, but social proof pushes what the audience actually wants. The decision you need to make is whether you trust your gut or your data more when deciding what gets the most visibility. A useful companion note is Brand Signals Are Rewriting the Authority Stack, because it looks at a nearby part of the same system. The same pattern also shows up in We Earned 1, where the practical question is how the signal becomes visible.

Why Engagement Signals Drive Clicks

Human nature draws us toward things that others are interested in. Most publishers talk about building a community, but few actually visualize that community for the reader. Comment counts serve as a beacon, signaling that a conversation is happening among like minded people.

Consider the psychological difference between two articles. If one has a single comment and the other has 500, the latter immediately piques curiosity. It suggests that the content is either controversial, deeply insightful, or highly relevant. It transforms a simple link into an invitation to join a discussion.

Clickability is often reduced to the "perfect" image or the "perfect" headline, but those are only half the battle. The engagement count provides a third layer of validation. This is especially critical for publishers with a large direct audience and a significant homepage presence. As referral traffic from search and social platforms continues to decline, maximizing the value of the traffic you already have is the only sustainable path forward.

Expert Interpretation: While this increases clicks, there is a risk of creating a "rich get richer" loop where a few articles dominate all the attention while quality, niche pieces are ignored. You must decide if you want to maximize total clicks or ensure a balanced distribution of views across your content library.

Expanding Beyond the Comment Section

While comments are a powerful signal, they are not the only way to measure what resonates. Not every high value article will generate a heated debate in the comments, but it might be shared widely or saved for later.

To be more rigorous, you can experiment with other signals such as likes, shares, or bookmarks. The goal is to identify the specific types of engagement that correlate with long term reader loyalty. By making these signals visible, you tell your audience with certainty which articles are worth their time based on actual behavior rather than editorial guesswork.

The key is to identify what your specific audience values. For some, a high share count is the ultimate signal of quality. For others, it might be the depth of the discussion. Once you identify these markers, making them visible allows you to prioritize your best performing content automatically.

Expert Interpretation: The danger here is "metric chasing." If you prioritize shares, you might accidentally encourage your team to produce "share bait" rather than deep, useful content. You have to define which engagement signal actually leads to a loyal subscriber versus a one time visitor.

Using Data to Determine Content Prominence

Many sophisticated publishers have moved away from relying solely on raw traffic numbers. Instead, they use composite engagement scores to decide which articles get the most prominent placement on the homepage or section fronts.

Traffic is a vanity metric; quality engagement is what builds a business. This means prioritizing metrics like session duration, scroll depth, and comment volume over simple page views. By focusing on these, you promote behaviors that indicate a truly engaged audience.

You can take this further by using statistical modeling or AI to find "over performers." This involves a Bayesian approach where you identify articles that are performing significantly better than expected given their topic or time of day. Instead of just promoting the article with the most views, you promote the one that is punching above its weight class.

Combining editorial judgment with actual audience behavior creates a superior user experience. It ensures that the most resonant content is the easiest to find, which naturally increases the overall click through rate of the site.

Expert Interpretation: Implementing an automated prominence system requires a technical investment in data pipelines. The tradeoff is a loss of "curation." You have to decide where the line sits between a human curated experience and an algorithmically driven one.

How to Test These Theories

If you want to implement this, the best approach is to start small and maintain very clear key performance indicators. Do not overhaul your entire homepage at once.

First, start with the simplest metric: comments. Display the comment count on a selection of homepage articles and measure the change in click through rate. This provides a baseline for whether your audience responds to social proof.

Once you have a baseline, you can expand the signals. Test whether likes or shares drive more clicks than comments do. It is important to remember that not all engagement is created equal. You need to establish which signals encourage the kind of repeat behavior that leads to long term growth.

Next, move toward identifying over performers. Instead of promoting the most trafficked articles, compare engagement against a benchmark. If a niche piece of content has a very high engagement rate relative to its low traffic, that is a signal that it is highly valuable to those who find it. Moving that piece to a more prominent position can unlock a wider audience for high quality work.

Finally, test the prominence itself. See if featuring these over performing articles more aggressively increases overall site engagement. However, a word of caution: click through rate is not a perfect metric. High CTR can often be a sign of rage bait or clickbait, which degrades brand trust over time. The goal is to increase clicks to high quality content, not just any content.

As it becomes harder to generate referral traffic from external sources, the only logical move is to squeeze more value out of the audiences you already own. Using social proof to guide readers toward your best work is a simple, effective way to do exactly that.

Expert Interpretation: When testing, the most common mistake is ignoring the "decay" of content. A piece might over perform for 48 hours and then die. Your testing should include a time element to ensure you aren't promoting "zombie" content that was popular last week but is irrelevant today.