2014 was a tough year. We worried about the Ebola epidemic, mourned the loss of Robin Williams, and wondered what really happened on board Malaysian Airlines flight 370 (we're wondering still).

Google released its Year in Search to commemorate 2014, which revealed the top trends and stories of the past year. They also made a touching video (which we highly recommend watching).

This led us to reflect on which article topics were the most sought after in 2014, in terms of site traffic and popular pages. Was it the 2014 Ferguson unrest, which began with the fatal shooting of Michael Brown before snowballing into more violence? Perhaps it was Taylor Swift's record-breaking sale of 1989, or her fallout with Spotify? Did we clamor for more news on the Ebola outbreak, or ISIS, or were we too focused on how Kim Kardashian attempted to "break" the internet?"

We used the Similarweb platform to find out. What we discovered might surprise you...but then, 2014 was nothing if not surprising. As we move forward into 2015, let's take a look back at what was trending in 2014 and the stories that went viral.