14 days later: Stories that soared, and those that sank

In this fortnight’s visual overview of Dawn.com trends, a side-story from the FIFA World Cup 2014 that clubbed football with religion managed to top the 'most popular' list.

Amassing over 129,000 views, the wire story focused on Algerian footballers denying their defeat to Germany was connected with the Muslim players fasting during Ramazan. This story has been used as an example further down to demonstrate the ‘anatomy’ of traffic on the website.

While the first instalment of this overview saw a contrast in ‘high’ and ‘low’ traffic between two stories, we have now juxtaposed three stories in one set in order to show our readers a comparison of stories that got ‘high’, ‘average’ and ‘low’ traffic.

Out of the top 1,000 stories in the time period June 25-July 8, 2014, we selected the articles below based on importance editorially, their placement on the homepage, and the fact that they were shared through our social media accounts. Comparisons were made based on combinations that reveal interesting trends in audience choices. All data was gathered from Google Analytics or the Dawn website.

While a number of factors must be taken into consideration such as layout, publishing time and social media, the exercise provides a general snapshot that highlights what stories gained top of mind, compared to those that did not. This is part of a monthly exercise to show page view trends.

Note: The life cycle of a story ranges from 24-48 hours on average, which means that this is the period during which it gets the most traffic/visitors.

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