Looking back: The top 10 stories, plus the worst

From “dead-net” pricing to “bad language in the boardroom,” here are the top-viewed stories from the year that’s almost over. 

After about a million page views and a few seconds studying online traffic patterns, homechannelnews.com has identified the 2013 most-viewed stories.

Counting backwards from 10th to first on the charts, here are the year’s most popular stories, as measured by user traffic analytics, 

10. Orgill signs distribution deal with BMC (Jan. 10, 2013)

9. Lowe’s hires new chief merchant (Jan. 25, 2013)

8. At BlueLinx, restructuring is under way (June 26, 2013) 

7. Sold: Handy Hardware to Littlejohn (April 25, 2013)

6. The Top 300 Ride Again (June 19, 2013)

5. 84 Lumber launches All American initiative (Jan. 24, 2013)

4. Stanley rolls out a new logo (June 6, 2013) 

3. Bad language in the boardroom (June 4, 2013) 

2. Home Depot vs. Lowe’s: a Q4 comparison (Feb. 26, 2013) 

1. Lowe’s CEO embraces dead-net pricing (March 14, 2013) 

The same analytics engine that produced the top 100 also gives us this year’s “Mr. Irrelevant Award” -- the tag for the homechannelnews.com story that produced the least amount of interest online.

This year’s low-click generator and low-time-on-site cultivator comes from December: “China Ceramics announces board member resignations.”