Nick Denton, who owns Gawker Media, sent out the following memo today:

Our wordy headlines are a growing disadvantage. That's why from tomorrow we're going to warn you in the Kinja editor to keep your headlines below 70 characters — and we're going to only display 70 characters on the front page even if you go longer.

Why this drastic measure? Google and others truncate headlines at 70 characters. On the Manti Teo story, Deadspin's scoop fell down the Google search results, overtaken by copycat stories with simpler headlines.

Deadspin's headline was 118 characters. Vital information — "hoax" — was one of the words that was cut off. Our headline was less intelligible — and less clickworthy — than others. And Google demotes search results that don't get clicked on.