Most of the changes the digital revolution has brought to the media business have been positive. However, as part of an effort to draw more readers to sites via search engines, newspapers might have to wave goodbye to that wonderful industry tradition: The outstanding headline.

The problem, as the International Herald Tribune reports, is that search engines like Google or Yahoo don't have a sense of humour. According to the newspaper, the bots and spiders who crawl the net looking for information bring around news sites around 30 percent of their traffic. And the bots aren't programmed for wit, double entendres and humour - the stock in-trade of headline writers for a century.

Like so much in the industry, it boils down to a duel between the talent and the money men. That 30 percent of search-led readership is growing all the time, and what's more, often represents an international audience. Advertisers - about the only people who have proved willing to pay for online media - like high rates of traffic. Publishers want to keep them interested, and to do so they spend fortunes - up to $1.5 billion last year - fine tuning their websites to make sure no potential readers slip through the net.

And one of the first things optimising consultants do is advise editors to make headlines as prosaic as possible. No more quoting lyrics from obscure bands, no more amusing puns, no more surreal or baroque fantasies like SuperCallyGoBallisticCelticAreAtrocious (though "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" might just get in there).

Publishers are trying to get around this tyranny of the average, though. One way is to let the copy editor's skills run wild in the main headline, but to add a second headline below for search engines and idiots. So "Headless body in topless bar" would have a more prosaic description of the event slapped underneath it - much as it did on the original New York Post cover, which was subtitled "Gunman forces woman to decapitate tavern owner."

Do any readers have search engine friendly versions of the world's great headlines? Post them in the comments section below!