We’ve all seen clickbait, i.e. content blatantly written to attract readers simply by writing inflammatory opinions or incorrect facts simply to attract views for the site’s advertisers.

Have you ever asked yourself, “How to I write about the illegitimacy of this article/post without referring/linking back to the page and otherwise rewarding the writer by attracting more hits?”

The answer is to use an “archived page” of the article/post. An “archived page” is a replica of the page that is referable by a link & even completely downloadable in a ZIP file.

For example, let’s say you consider the following URL to be the clickbait post you want to reference but not actually send people to: https://kurtsh.com/2015/07/23/post-your-top-10-questions-about-office-2016-for-mac-answered/ You might instead refer people to the following Archived Page instead. It provides the same content, but no clickthrough revenue for the writer/site: https://archive.is/3tT12

ARCHIVING PAGES

The way you do this is by following this procedure:

Go to http://archive.is Enter the URL you wish to archive under the field, “My url is alive and I want to archive its content” It will process the URL then send you to a new shortcut to an archive.is page. Use the new URL for future reference to the clickbait.

CREATING A FAVORITE TO ARCHIVE YOUR CURRENT PAGE IN A SINGLE CLICK

An alternative way of doing this is to create a Favorite/Bookmark that will allow you to automatically archive ANY PAGE you’re currently visiting. This is the easiest way to

Simply create a Favorite with the following URL string:

Now, whenever you hit a page you consider clickbait, simply hit this Archive Favorite and you’ll have a referable URL that won’t reward the author with clicks.