Location: Help / Top Article Search Queries and Most Popular Articles for 2005

The tables below present the top search queries and most popular articles measured from traffic on the MagPortal.com website during 2005. MagPortal.com is a search engine and directory for finding online magazine articles from hundreds of online magazines. Traffic from our news feeds and newsletter has been excluded to avoid distorting the results.

These results reflect our best effort to provide a sensible analysis of the traffic on MagPortal.com. There are a number of factors that could bias these results, and the statistics should not be relied upon for making important decisions. Results may be biased due to abnormal usage of the site, demographics of MagPortal.com users differing from the demographics of general Internet users, or the influence of expectations (i.e. someone won't search for something that they don't expect to find here even if it is important to him/her).

The table below shows that the top four search queries for 2005 were the same as 2004. This does not mean that nothing has changed. The percentage of queries that were looking for "health" (the most popular search term) more than doubled from 0.252% in 2004 to 0.568% in 2005. That's up from a mere 0.091% in 2003, when "health" ranked only 7^th.

There seems to be a general trend of more searches concentrating on the most popular keywords. For example, the top four search terms all increased their percentages compared to 2004. Searches for "sex" have dropped steadily in the rankings from 9^th in 2003 to 19^th in 2005 in spite of a slight increase in the percentage of searches looking for that word — it just couldn't keep up with the gains of the other search terms. Of course, people may become less inclined to search for "sex" over time as they realize that we don't index the type of article they have in mind.

Terms like "science" and "computers" made steady gains while "depression" failed to make the top 25 this year. "Business" only ranked 9^th in spite of the fact that we index more articles on business than anything else. That could be because such articles are of interest to only a slice of the population (while health matters to everyone), or it could be because people use more specific searches (like "marketing" or "management") since "business" is so broad.

The list of most-clicked articles below shows a heavy bias toward articles on health. That could be due to the popularity of the subject, or it could be caused by a (relative) scarcity of articles on health (since any individual article has a better chance of being clicked if it has fewer competitors). Note that articles published early in the year may have an advantage since they have been in the index longer, giving them more opportunity to accumulate clicks. Articles receive the most clicks when they are new, so articles that hit the web during the summer or around holidays (when traffic to MagPortal.com is low) have a disadvantage.

Top 25 Most Popular Articles for 2005
Tufts Nutrition Spring 2005 Julie Flaherty	Is there a fat gene? Metabolism involves hundreds of genes interacting in uncountable ways. But some may play a bigger role than others.
Tufts Health Letter October 2005	Protein Makes You Feel Fuller A new study shows just as the air is going out of the "low-carb" diet craze, scientists may be figuring out why they seem to work for some people.
Scientific American May 2005 Larry Cahill	His Brain, Her Brain It turns out that male and female brains differ quite a bit in architecture and activity. Research into these variations could lead to sex-specific treatments for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.
HHMI Bulletin Winter 2005 Maya Pines	The Friendly Bacteria Within Us While we tend to think of bacteria as harmful, we all carry plenty of microbes that work to the good. Can we use them to treat or prevent diseases?
Delicious Living November 2005 M. Carol Burns	The Vitamin E-Alzheimer's Link Vitamin E has long been touted to protect against age-related brain degeneration, though the reasons have not been fully understood. Now scientists have a window into how vitamin E may work to prevent Alzheimer's disease.
Skeptical Inquirer October 2005 Patrick Johnson	Obesity: Epidemic or Myth? New evidence shows that the obesity epidemic is not as bad as we have been led to believe. However, that doesn't mean that we should dismiss the problem either.
Science News October 15, 2005 Janet Raloff	We're All Likely to Get Fat So you've kept a fairly trim physique into middle age. Don't get smug. A new study suggests that you too may develop a paunch or worse in coming years.
Nutra Solutions January 1, 2005	Magnesium for Memory An MIT researcher says a study with rats indicates that magnesium makes the mature brain open for growth and change.
Scientific American November 2005 Charles Q. Choi	Baby to Brain Mothers could literally always have their kids on their minds. Researchers find that in mice, cells from fetuses can migrate into a mother's brain and apparently develop into nervous system cells.
Nutra Solutions April 4, 2005	Proteins for All Reasons A study shows that a diet including milk proteins helps the performance of athletes.
Scientific American February 2005 R. Douglas Fields	Making Memories Stick Some moments become lasting recollections while others just evaporate. The reason may involve the same processes that shape our brains to begin with.
Science News September 3, 2005 Bruce Bower	Chimps to People: Apes Show Contrasts in Genetic Makeup Despite sharing much of their genetic identity with people, chimpanzees exhibit previously unappreciated DNA distinctions, according to the first rigorous comparisons of the two species' complete genetic sequences.
Science News November 5, 2005 Janet Raloff	Leaden Chocolates Chocolates are among the more lead-contaminated foods. A new study has probed the source of chocolate's lead and concludes it's not the cocoa bean. So, what is it?
BusinessWeek September 12, 2005 John Carey	A Better Way To Ambush AIDS? HIV increasingly outwits today's drugs even as side effects take a toll. But Panacos Pharmaceuticals' experimental drug opens the door to a new line of attack.
Science News October 15, 2005 Christen Brownlee	High Times for Brain Growth: Marijuana-Like Drug Multiplies Neurons A drug that functions as concentrated marijuana does may spur neurogenesis, the process by which the brain gives birth to new nerve cells.
TIME Asia January 17, 2005 Bryan Walsh	Food for the Brain Can an ingredient in Indian curry help prevent Alzheimer's?
Scientific American November 2, 2005 Diane Martindale	One Face, One Neuron A recent study indicates that our brains employ far fewer cells to interpret a given image than previously believed, and the findings could help neuroscientists determine how memories are formed and stored.
Technology Research News August 22, 2005	DNA Technologies The versatile DNA molecule has proven to be a powerful technological building block. Researchers have developed ways of combining DNA molecules that allow them to carry out computations in test tubes and create two-dimensional patterns and three-dimensional structures at the nanoscale.
Delicious Living October 2005 Elizabeth Marglin	High-Fat Diets May Keep You From Feeling Full A new study suggests that a high-fat diet can promote overconsumption by reducing sensitivity to the hormones involved with satiety.
Reactive Reports Issue 49 David Bradley	Hydrophobic Water? Researchers have found evidence to indicate that water molecules don't always want to bond to other water molecules, affecting the uniformity of water forming on metal surfaces.
Scientific American November 14, 2005 Gunjan Sinha	Bugs and Drugs Gut bacteria could determine how well medicines work.
Delicious Living April 2005 Anne Burnett	Kids need calcium and exercise Researchers suggest that because at least 90 percent of peak bone mass is accrued by the end of adolescence, it is important to optimize bone growth in younger years.
Reactive Reports Issue 45 David Bradley	Oil's Not Well Cooking with highly unsaturated oils and especially re-using oils can lead to high levels of a toxic compound hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal (HNE) in the food. The compound is readily absorbed by the body and is well-known for its harmful effects on proteins, DNA, and other biomolecules.
Scientific American September 19, 2005 Charles Q. Choi	Chatting Up Cells Stem cells can transform into whatever cell the body tells them to. Unfortunately, scientists have yet to master that particular gift of gab. But investigators may soon crack the language with tiny "chat rooms" for stem cells.
TIME Asia September 5, 2005 Bryan Walsh	A Very Sweet Drug The results of a recent study that showed a medicine derived from sweet wormwood can reduce the chances of death from severe malaria by 35%. The findings are likely to alter the World Health Organization's recommendations for treatment of the disease.

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