Recently Hollywood has been hanging out more and more in West Michigan.

So, of course, when the rumor broke that Scarlett Johansson has car trouble while in Walker, Mich., it seemed very plausible and got everyone excited...

Sadly, it’s only a rumor. Once again, these fake websites have tricked people into thinking a celebrity is visiting a local town.  How do we know this is a fake story? Well quick check of the “ABOUT” section to the website it's posted on says:

About ky12news.com:
ky12news.com is an entertainment website composed mostly of articles containing fantasy news or satire. Though some articles on ky12news.com contain actual events, none of the articles on ky12news.com should be considered true and are simply meant for entertainment purposes.

So why do these sites even exist? It’s kind of like when newspapers used to give you a full week free if you just bought the Sunday paper; or how magazines will randomly start showing up at your house. In order to get advertisers, which is how these websites, the newspaper and magazines get money, they have to show they have subscribers or in the case of websites, they have to show they have web traffic.

So they post these fake stories so we’ll all click the headline, which in turn helps them sell ads. Right now you’re thinking, “Well I don’t stay on the site so it didn’t help them,” right? Wrong-ish, all they need is the number of visitors, so even though you left the page quickly, they still get to say (insert huge number here) people in West Michigan or worldwide visited our site, and then national or global companies see value and buy ad space on their site.

It’s a tricky world isn’t it? It’s also a world where Scarlett Johansson didn’t break down in Walker, Mich.

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