When we launched Independent.com as a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week daily news, arts, and entertainment Web site in April 2007, we knew the world of journalism was changing, but we never could have guessed how quickly and dramatically the online component of The Santa Barbara Independent’s media empire would grow. Today, during a normal week, we publish dozens of articles that never make it to our printed pages, from breaking news reports and up-to-the-minute event listings to our regularly contributing community of online columnists, press releases from the business and nonprofit worlds, contests, polls, battles of the bands, and more.
In 2011 alone — at least up through Christmas Day — we tallied more than seven million (!) pageviews, according to our internal analytics, with about 100,000 people clocking in a half-million pageviews each month on average, as confirmed by outside web tracking sources. That makes Independent.com by far the most visited news Web site on the South Coast, a title we’ve been proud to hold pretty much since we started this machine.
Expect some cool changes for 2012, including a retooled homepage, as well as a growing focus on our social media campaigns. But before we get there, we figured it would be enlightening to take a look back at the articles that really soared in 2011, ones that online readers simply could not get enough of. Some of them reveal a genuinely broad interest in Santa Barbara-based stories, others reflect the oddities of Internet traffic virality, and others show a combo of both. So here’s a little rundown on the posts that excelled, and a little bit about why we think they did.