I like to describe Reuters.com as a financial news website with a general news edge. When looking at the most popular stories on our site, you’d expect to see the biggest stories from the business world riddling the top 10. But even business people have general interests — and traffic to a particular story can come from different sources. The end result is that our “most popular” list for 2010 has some entries you’d expect and some that are, well, off-topic.

Penises, for example.

The fourth entry in this year’s popular list has nothing to do with business, or U.S.  consumers, or world events.

In fact, it was of no relevance to most of our audience – unless some of you are male and interested in becoming a cop in Indonesia.

In that case, cross your legs and answer this question (preferably without blushing): Have you had your penis enlarged? If the answer is “yes” then you are out of luck. There will be no job with the police or military for you.  The reason? An unnatural size causes “hindrance during training.” The story implied by the headline seemed so outlandish it would be hard to pass it up. Headline: Police barred from penis enlargement

Often, a story vaults up the popular list because of key words.

Put “taxes” and “rise” in the same headline and you can almost see the online populace turning red with anger, uttering obscenities and calling for a pox on both houses of Congress as they clicked their way into the story.