2014 was a huge year at standard.net.au with more than 1.7 million people visiting at least once.
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According to Google Analytics (figures taken December 23), there was a 74 per cent increase in traffic compared to 2013.
Seven of the most read online stories of 2014 now have a place in The Standard's 10 most popular of all-time, largely thanks to the ever-growing power of social media.
So here they are: our top 10 online stories of the year, which you can read now through links at standard.net.au.
The reaction to this tribute to Jock Anderson showed he was widely revered in the south-west community. The family man and football player was struck by a milk tanker and killed in June.
A carefully constructed headline helped capture both sides of this story, which was as bizarre as it was outrageous.
Concern for the well-being of this missing woman in January gained plenty of social media attention. Often all people can do to help is hit the "Share" button on Facebook, but even this small task can help make thousands of readers more aware of the police search.
6. Wild weather warning for south-west - 13,433 visitors
Mother nature ran wild across the south-west in late June. Each these stories drew huge attention as readers tried to keep up with the crazy weather battering the south-west coastline. Some amazing photos, including images submitted by readers, helped each story into our top 10 , while the online gallery posted the following day provided The Standard's most pageviews for the year - a staggering 495,356 hits
5. Support flows for texting crash victim - 15,496 visitors http://www.standard.net.au/story/2225030/support-flows-for-texting-crash-victim
This story was a follow-up to our most popular article of the year, showing the sympathetic victim's perspective and recovery process after being hit by a car while riding a bike near Port Fairy.
For those who don't know, "the gap" is a narrow space between the bowling alley and ice creamery on Timor Street. People often try to cross from one side to the other, but emergency services had to get involved when a 40-year-old woman tripped and couldn't free herself. "The gap" is one of Warrnambool's best-known modern traditions so this story quickly went viral on Facebook.
Fatal tragedies always draw huge interest from a community in shock. This terrible accident claimed the lives of three people, and later stories would tell more about the tragic circumstances that killed Good Samaritan dairy workers Jerome Mark Pellazar and Amando Isig as they tried to clear the road from a fallen tree.
Inspired by the popularity of Buzzfeed's "listicles", Matt Neal's hilarious piece outlined the best of local in-jokes and satirised some of the things we love about our fair city of Warrnambool. These included the aforementioned "gap", the whales, Kermond's hamburgers, the speedway and pretty much anything else integral to the Warrnambool experience.
This court story went totally viral in April due to the apathetic quotes from the offender towards the victim (mentioned in story No.4 on this list). The story popped up right across the internet, from the Huffington Post and Reddit to countless message boards and social networks. More than 21,000 readers were referred via Twitter and almost 19,000 found it on Facebook. The total number of readers surpassed our previous No.1 story by more than 100,000 as this quickly became The Standard's most read story of all-time (unless something pre-internet and pre-social media somehow went viral).
Matt Neal's one-star review of Michael Bay's latest release drew ire from Transformers apologists and fanboys alike, making it our highest read movie review of 2014. Thanks for reading.