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Now you can (easily) know every day what’s in your stars

As 2013 drew to a close, we counted up what people were looking at on timescolonist.com. That led to this popular list of the 25 most-read stories of the previous 365 days.
Cale Cowan

As 2013 drew to a close, we counted up what people were looking at on timescolonist.com.

That led to this popular list of the 25 most-read stories of the previous 365 days.

But there were many more statistics that told us a story about our readers and their habits when visiting us online. One of the most informative was a list of the top 10 search terms on the site.

For instance, of the top 10 searches, three of them were searches for "obituaries" (or "Obituaries" or "obituary"). That's good news, because we have a robust obituary section. A link can be found on the top left of the page.

obituary link

People also looked for "weather" fairly often. This is also good news, because you can find it at the top right of every single web page, every single day. No search necessary.

weather link

You get a quick view of the day's weather, or clicking on the icon will take you here.

Visitors also searched for "Raeside" and "Les Leyne" fairly often in 2013. They generally live in our Opinion section, but their popularity in searches may inspire us to promote them more often on the homepage.

Those looking for "archives" have a few options. They can go here and find archives of entire past issues of the Times Colonist print edition. (Warning: There is a fee.)

If you want to go further back, there is a link to the British Colonist (http://www.britishcolonist.ca/) archive of newspaper articles from 1858-1920.

Both of these features have permanent links on the bottom of every timescolonist.com page.

archive link

However, the searches also revealed something that wasn't so easy to find.

Many of our readers in 2013 were looking for horoscopes. We have them, but they're buried pretty deep in the classified section. And they don't show up in website searches.

So, we've fixed it.

First, a "horoscope" search at timescolonist.com will reveal our new page. But it's also been added to the main navigation bar under "Life."

Horoscope link

Click there and you'll find a new home for Sally Brompton's daily horoscope, the same that appears in our print edition and E-edition. We'll even leave a back catalogue for your perusal.

There were a couple more nuggets in those search results and we're working to make everything easier to find. Stay tuned for more announcements.

@CaleCowan

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