Sentinel.com blog

March 2012 was the second biggest month for page views for the Sentinel website ever.

We had 3,612,051 views – only March 2011 (including tsunami coverage) had more views (3,804,403) . We had 476,986 unique monthly visitors last month, close to our average the past year.

Mobile apps
We launched our mobile news apps in February, but didn’t promote heavily until the beginning of March. We had 224,095 page views and 2,921 downloads of Android and iPhone apps.

Most-viewed stories for March:

1. Crews fight off San Lorenzo River to save Boardwalk
2. San Lorenzo River water running next to the Boardwalk
3. Live Oak murder victim had criminal past; motive for shooting unknown
4. 2011 Cabrillo College salary database
5. Santa Cruz Sentinel Photo Contest : 2012 Hook, Line and Sinker
6. Fatal wreck on Highway 17 backs up traffic for hours
7. Students rally at Occupy Education demonstration; man drives car through crowd
8. A little country, a little Santa Cruz: Former resident Joy Williams enjoys musical success
9. Doctors look for reason for 7-year-old’s sudden blindness
10. Police: 15-year-old arrested after hitting a Santa Cruz grocery store

Video stats for March (thanks Christina Gullickson):

Total video views via YouTube: 22,860

Top 10 videos, views:

1. Cat found in engine compartment of a car, 8,325
2. Slug blocks road leading up to UCSC campus, 1,451
3. Kevin Koch talks about saving neighbor from fire in Santa Cruz, 1,149
4. Tsunami hits Santa Cruz Harbor, 1,058
5. Off-season update with Dwight Lowery, 1,041
6. Illegal fireworks, 855
7. Truck stuck in Capitola, 689
8. Man tries to pay parking tickets with pennies, 547
9. Big surf in Santa Cruz, Jan. 5, 2012, 512
10. James Durbin: Love Me Bad, behind the scenes from video shoot, 423

We also had about another 3,800 views in Brightcove, which hosts our videos on our home page.

And one of our most successful reader experiences is through Flickr, where we had more than 220,000 views in March.

Thanks for all the staff’s hard work, and thanks for visiting!
- Tom