What were the hits for each story? We're not saying. Our competitors don't reveal how they're doing, and we'd rather keep our figures to ourselves for now. But we can tell you something about our method.

The Web's audience is expanding; a good traffic figure in January is only average by the end of the year. Site redesigns make calculations doubly complex. To lessen these distortions, we figured out the average traffic figure for each month. The 10 stories that scored the highest against the monthly average made it onto our list. But we also allowed for staying power: Traffic on the day of the McVeigh verdict was higher than for any single day during the Versace saga. Yet high McVeigh traffic lasted only one news day (how many different ways can you say "guilty," after all?); the Versace case kept clicks up for more than a week, so we gave it the edge. Besides those stories, only the Mars landing and Princess Diana's death held readers' attention longer than seven straight days.

Hit analysis is still more art than science, and while we hope to have captured the truth, who's to say the gremlins in the machine weren't having us on? Perhaps it's just that he was burnt from his grueling stay in the data-compiling cave, but one red-eyed team member gave this verdict: There are lies, damn lies and hit reports.