Sentinel.com blog

The story about Jay Moriarity, from June of 2011, was among the Sentinel’s most popular this month

In the month of November, the Santa Cruz Sentinel website received 3,574,475 page views with 486,647 monthly unique visitors. In addition, Sentinel mobile apps received more than 700,000 page views.

The most-viewed story, about an employee who grabbed a robber’s gun, was helped by landing on the front page of fark.com. The second most popular story, Wallace Baine’s story from June of 2011 about Jay Moriarity, received attention from search traffic for Jay Moriarity as the movie “Chasing Mavericks” was released.

Other popular pages included the local election results page, which received more than 15,000 page views, the Sentinel online calendar (more than 90,000 views), and a nationally generated Victoria’s Secret slide show (63,000 views). The Sentinel’s media center, which features photos of interest updated daily from around the world, received more than 155,000 views.

Thanks to all for visiting. Here’s the list of most viewed stories.

1. Employee of Santa Cruz business thwarts armed robber by grabbing his gun, police say
2. On the 10th anniversary of the death of iconic surfer Jay Moriarity, his widow reflects
3. Obama’s speech on Election Night: The full text
4. Election Live Blog: Results and commentary on Bay Area, California and national races
5. Whale skeleton fossils in Santa Cruz area draw gawkers
6. Police: Ben Lomond man found lying in the middle of Ocean Street
7. Surfer who died at Privates Beach identified
8. Capitola Police: BMW chase suspect is wife of Soquel homicide victim
9. Police arrest three in Friday night homicide near Depot Park
10. Hundreds climb aboard for inaugural train ride up the coast; $14.2 million acquisition

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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

Posted from Santa Cruz, California, United States.