PRESENT TENSE:BEFORE IRELAND played France in that extraordinary soccer match in Paris, a headline appeared on irishtimes.com, the website of The Irish Times. It read: "Ireland's World Cup Hopes Recede." It went up at about 10pm and by the next morning it topped the site's most read articles – a regularly updated top five list on the Irish Timeshome page. Clearly, people were fascinated to know just what blow had been dealt to the soccer team's chances before the big match. They would have been a bit irritated to instead discover a three-line piece about the men's hockey team, who had been beaten 3-0 by Belgium. Big news in the men's hockey world, no doubt. Outside it, not so much.

It was a prime example of the occasional strangeness that afflicts a newspaper’s Most Read list, how a headline can lure a reader into scanning something in which they have no interest and how getting into the Most Read column further perpetuates that popularity.

This week, the New York Timeshad an interesting report on what made its list of Most E-Mailed articles (it doesn't display the most read). Over a six-month period, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied the "virality" of articles and assessed them based on factors such as the time of day that they were published. They concluded New York Timesreaders were most likely to e-mail positive stories rather than negative ones and they like to pass on a lengthy intellectual read. Surprising stories appeal and science stories do very well because people like a bit of "awe" in their day.

The New York Timesjournalist expressed his surprise, saying that he had held certain prejudices about what attracted readers. "One, which I've happily employed, is to write anything about sex. The other, which I'm still working on, is to write an article headlined: 'How Your Pet's Diet Threatens Your Marriage, and Why It's Bush's Fault'." That reflects American interests – or, more precisely, New York Timesreaders' interests.

Here, opinion pieces do well, especially when economically-themed and apocalyptically-orientated. Sport features heavily on the Most Read list (the bobsleigh team were unexpected favourites all week) as do property and consumer stories. Health articles are regularly shared through irishtimes.com’s Most E-Mailed list. More generally, snappy headlines make a difference and being on the website’s home page is a major help.

From such generalities, then, an ultimate Irish TimesMost Read list might consist of the following headlines: 1. Ireland faces an economic apocalypse that will last for 50 years 2. Mansion for sale with a 75 per cent price cut 3. How the zombie banks created zombie hotels on ghost estates 4. Brian O'Driscoll injury concerns mount 5. "Brian O'Driscoll a flake," says Roy Keane

Then again, a story about French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy topped the most read on Wednesday. It might have shown our high brows or, as likely, our arched eyebrows (he had rather embarrassingly fallen foul of a hoax).

In a relatively small market, the flow of digital migrants can skew the statistics to an extent. The problem for an online newspaper, though, is that foreign visitors come and go quickly, unlikely to visit any other pages and not interested in the adverts flashing at them.

That trend also explains why a piece can slip by quietly, only to get picked up later on. This column’s biggest chart topper was a piece about Bono and Bruce Springsteen that took a couple of weeks to get picked up by U2 forums, after which I had an unprecedented reaction and the original column was dragged from its archival slumber and pushed back into the spotlight for a couple of days.

The list produces other quirks, most notably the way in which stories hang around long after they are out of date. There was a recent example of a story about Dublin Bus cancellations that stayed on the Most Read list for two days after the service was up and running again. On Wednesday, the bobsleigh story (left) was on the home page twice: one on the Most Read said the team had got a place, and a more up-to-date piece beside it said Brazil had launched an appeal.

Anyway, the New York Timesfigured out one new way to get something on its most e-mailed list: write an article about what makes that list. It was a fixture there this week. But it would be undignified and obvious to headline an article: "Please Put This Article On The Most Read List".

Not to mention embarrassing should such a cheap tactic fail.